Religion
I am an atheist and I believe the world would be much better without religions. Having said that, I don’t conisder it as a scam in itslef. Instead they must have been something evolved over the time due to our ignorance, fear and helplessness. The very same factors that still keep them going.
But hell yeah, people are exploited in the name of religion. I’m from India, one of the largest so called democracies, currently under the governance of a fascist hindutva party that thrives on polarizing people in the name of religion.
BTW I was actually looking for specific instances of scams carefully plotted by known people, companies or even countries instead of broad answers like religion.
Having said that, I don’t conisder it as a scam in itslef
I think the more correct thing to say is that Organized Religion is a scam. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being religious (provided you don’t force those views on others), but organized religion always winds up rotten at the top - and it’s not surprising. Organized religion is one of the most powerful tools for controlling people, even if it wasn’t (though it might have been) intended to be that way at the beginning. A king/president/dictator can threaten the lives of their subjects, but only a holy man can threaten their immortal soul (from the perspective of the devotee anyways).
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being religious (provided you don’t force those views on others)
Hum. That’s like saying “there’s nothing wrong with being convinced that 2+2=5”. There’s something intrinsically mistaken about it, and I don’t think it’s defensible.
Now that’s a take I completely stand behind and agree with. I couldn’t have put it better myself. That said, some religions were not made with the intent of controlling others. I don’t think Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism were made with the intent to control people. We can argue about Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as they were made for control by their founders, and what they intended for these movements after their deaths we do not know (or at least I don’t, maybe someone out there does).
Again - I’m not arguing necessarily that any of them started out that way, in fact - I’m willing to bet that very few (looking at you, Mormons) actually were. Most religion (in my humble opinion) just stems from folks trying to make sense of an unfathomable universe using what tools are available to them at the time. But once you have the religion, and you have holy men/women who have the ability to excersize some form of power over their flock, you’ll inevitably find corrupt people flocking to those positions, as they do in every position of power. Then over time they’ll carve out more power for themselves and more authority, find ways of extracting influence and power from their positions until soon you’ve got “holy men” living in palaces with the authority of kings.
It’s just human nature for positions of power to eventually become corrupted to some degree, and positions of religious authority offer an unparalleled lever in which to move the masses, which only serves to make it more attractive to would-be tyrants
Cryptocurrency in general. Even on the surface, as presented, the main appeal to buy in is “to get rich from it” and the main way you’re supposed to get rich is “other people buying in, get in early while you can.”
Ponzi. Schemes. All of them.
Ever since the 90’s, almost every protest or riot that has been on TV in the past few decades has been based on circumstances everyone has been misled or lied to about. I say this generally, I’m not speaking about any specific ideology or any particular group. All the protests follow the same pattern of epiphany, yet they keep happening.
The ones that took place during covid scammed us all because covid required those in charge to say “don’t worry, us being out in the open didn’t cause the virus to spread, we took precautions”. Today, covid commercials will say those same groups that those protests were made for were disproportionately affected by covid as if it’s because of human right, and nobody is connecting it to the fact the protests happened during a time when every restaurant had plexiglass barriers. Again, not speaking for any group in particular, this was a fault for the Canadian truckers, BLM, those Trump-voting Libertarians, etc.
This thread just opened my eyes. I really thought Lemmy being so young would mean the average users would be pretty saavy and intelligent. Nope, same idiots as Reddit and everywhere else.
The American healthcare system.
Luxury handbags that cost $60k. Not just a handbag, but to diversify your investment and launder money.
That you can get rich if you work hard.
The current economic order
Oof ow my democratic centralism
Capitalism
more like Crapitalism
Religion
Baconreader refugee
tips fedora How very euphoric of you good sir. Have a bacon narwhal day!
Homeopathy, acupuncture, ozone therapy… all “alternative medicines” basically.
Once I made a joke online about paying for homeopathy by dipping a dollar in a jar of water and giving them the jar, and like five people I know unfollowed me lol
Capitalism
Capitalism, religion, monarchy, and religion.
calling capitalism a scam is moot, the other viable alternative, socialism is even worse.
also, no country on planet earth is pure-capitalism, not even in US. Northern European countries have proven that market economy with the right taxation policies can effectively distribute income. I wished more wokeist knew about this or at least bothered to do a bit of research.
Love to be told I need to do research by someone who can’t even use words correctly in a sentence
Gosh I didn’t know a country couldn’t be capitalist if there were taxes. Please tell me more about basic terminology everyone else in the world is using wrong but you.
“i can’t participate in a normal, healthy discussion and refute the other person with clearly made out points so I am going to resort to ad-hominem insults to gaslight and invalidate his points.”
the “wokeist” label wasn’t directed at you, i’m more commenting about individuals that take issue with cApiTaliSm but not really addressing the issue properly. Wokeists THINK capitalism is wrong BECAUSE it is capitalism. I am all for income redistribution and support a just and equitable society if you’re wondering before you come at me again.
In any case, you’re the one asserting it’s a scam, shouldn’t you be the one explaining why capitalism is a scam? the onus is on you mate, not the person cross-examining you.
In short, the accumulation of capital by the capitalist class, profit generated by labour, as labour is the only source of capital. Hence, the working class sells its labour to the capitalist class for a wage, which ensures we’ll never get the full value of our labour.
Sounds like a scam to me. Also ‘no country is full capitalist’ just shows how little you actually know about the topic at hand, yet you remain unbearrably smug in your ignorance. Real lib shit.
Northern European countries have proven that market economy with the right taxation policies can effectively distribute income.
France has no gold or uranium mines inside its borders, yet has a shitload of gold and uranium. Where did it come from?
Look at this dude never having heard of unequal exchange.
Also
wokeist
Fuckin hell lmao least deranged
A.I.
The Russian collusion hoax!
The downvotes drive your point home, it’s a debunked conspiracy theory that blueMAGA still regurgitate to this day https://jacobin.com/2020/04/russiagate-christopher-steele-dossier-trump-election
