Sometimes, something is so ingrained in our society that we don't really realize that we're being taken advantage of. Like, designer labels for instance. We pay exorbitant prices for clothing or purses all just because someone richer and more powerful than us says they're worth more.
And since things like this have been part of our society for a verrry long time, it's kind of mind-blowing when you think about what a huge scam they are.
Over on the Ask Reddit subreddit, user u/Montazio posed the question, "What's 100% a scam but we accepted it in our society?" And people in the comments gave some super thought-provoking responses. Here are some of the best:
1. "The fact that health insurance doesn’t cover your vision or dental."
3. "The idea that you have to either stand or sit for eight hours a day depending on your job (as if we couldn’t have a happy medium). I promise you, I can scan items sitting down just as well as standing up."
4. "College textbooks."
"Paying $200 for a required physical book, in order to read the required 1/10th of it, and then the college making it obsolete the next year even though it's only a year old, so you can't even sell it back. They're not even IT books — which I could maybe understand — but history, English, and physics books, which NEVER CHANGE."
"Those access codes are a fucking racket. But if that's what your class requires, you have to buy it. Kinda fucked up."
5. "That it’s considered normal to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding, ring, bachelor party, etc."
6. "Luxury skincare. Go to a dermatologist, pay less, and get real results."
"Most high-end skincare contains ingredients that are, in their pure form, quite cheap to buy at this point."
7. "America's tax return system."
"The government takes more money from you than they should (in most cases), and you have to fill out lots of paperwork to try to catch them on it or pay someone to do it for you. Then, when you get that money back, even though it should've been yours to begin with, you feel like you got 'bonus money,' which a lot of people just end up spending on random shit so the government gets to skim some more of that off in sales tax.
What's always hilarious is the fact that so many people view this as 'free money' that they get every year, when in reality, it's a reflection of a flawed system."
8. "Claw machines."
9. "Paying the same price for digital and physical games. Like, correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't we pay less when buying a digital game? When you buy physical, you are paying $70 for the disc, the box, the art, probably the distribution cost, and the game. When you buy digital, you're paying $70 for just the game. It doesn't seem logical to me."
10. "Subscription services for fucking everything."
11. "America’s tipping culture. The fact that businesses have put the burden on consumers to pay their employees livable wages is a joke."
12. "Diamonds."
"They’re literally just priced by a company to create value. It’s just a rock."
13. "Payday loans."
"I went through a hard time years ago and ended up having no other option but a payday loan. I was stuck in this cycle of paying off the loan and taking the same amount for another week to get by. Never again."
14. "Unpaid lunches that extend your work day."
"It makes no sense to me. If it’s unpaid, why the fuck do you have to extend your workday?"
15. "Service fees on tickets."
"I was looking for tickets to a pro hockey game. The ticket price was $108, and the fee was $83."
16. "Most funeral services. They try to upsell you so much, and it feels so wrong."
"We chose cremation after my mom died. We still had to pay 400€ for a plain wooden box! A cardboard box would've been fine — the box ends up as ashes."
17. "We use taxpayer money to fund biomedical research, which we then write up into a research study and pay the journal so that they can publish the said study only for the journals to turn around and put them behind a paywall."
"We also use taxpayer money to fund years of biomedical research, which occasionally results in a groundbreaking drug/treatment, which then gets licensed out (usually) by a pharma company, who then marks up the price and charges the taxpayer an absurd amount of money to use said drug."
18. "'Influencers' advertising products. I don't think I've ever seen a YouTuber pitch a product that didn't come across as super phony."
19. And finally, "In the US: credit scores."
What are some other things that we just accept despite them clearly being a scam? Let me know in the comments below.
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.