Every industry has its scams

I've been thinking a lot about this lately.

I'm convinced that every single industry has its scams, regardless how necessary it is for us.

Take the medical industry for example. As important as healthcare is for all of us, there's a ton of scams within it. One scam that comes to mind is the way behavior and mood control drugs are pushed on all of us. It's bad enough that we see this stuff advertised on TV. 70% of people on anti-depressants aren't clinically depressed, so what does that tell you? Most of it is a scam to push people into taking pills, doctors telling their patients they need this stuff when they don't, and the advertisements convincing people to demand their doctors and pharmacists write prescriptions for such substances they don't need anyway. Much of the time there's no financial consequences for them, as lots of these people are on some sort of government-funded medical assistance program that they are taking advantage of for no good reason. So it's a money pit for all parties involved.

Take education for another example. Education is very important. Without it, society will crumble. However, kids spend 12-13 years in grade school, to grow up unprepared for the real world. In many cases the funding doesn't go to teachers and classroom curriculum, but to corrupt administrators. 12-13 years is a long time, and you could teach someone to be masterful in just about anything. But it's sad to see semi-literate high schoolers who can't do long division or write in cursive these days. While education is important, we see the money invested in education going to the corrupt officials who don't care if kids do better. Meanwhile the teachers who have a passion for watching their pupils grow, get screwed over.

Take MY industry for example. I'm a designer who creates new things and improves on existing items. I also design graphics for marketing as well. Even though my industry is important for improving lives with design, there is a dark side to it that pushes consumers to Keep Up with the Hendersons. In that they are pushed to buy new products to replace items they don't need replacing.

This brings me to the maintenance &repair industry. You'd think the maintenance & repair industry would be morally superior to my design industry. But I find that plumbers, mechanics, contractors, and more often lie to their clients by telling them certain things need fixing when they in fact do not.

What scams exist in your line of work? If you say, "No scams exist in my line of work," I won't believe you.

 

most industries, other then finance, its not entirely built into. calling finance and industry is itself a scam though.
and of course, any industry can have or be a scam, sure. so can and does every ideology.
so are a lot of interpretations and perspectives of many beliefs.

for artists who live from commission to commission, its always tempting to claim that they're going to be out on the street in a week or two,
unless more people commission them. not that this is always a scam either.
most or at leas a lot, of preservatives in foods are as much there for cosmetic reasons as to keep you from getting sick and suing them.
any fast food joint that claims their burgers aren't a much textured soy as the law lets them get away with, well the people who work there might not know it,
because they come that way already from the central franchise. another one is those fresh green salads that have been fresh for that last couple of days,
because they freshen them up with something called stay-white, which is actually sodium theophosphate, or something like that.
anyway, yah, its a kind of weird chemical salt.

oh yes, the world is full of 'improved designs', throw away conveniences, and security packaging.
i can simpathise with security packaging though,
putting little things in great big packages that are hard to open to keep people from shoving them in somewhere and walking out without paying for them.

 

That's capitalism for you

 

I'm in software. It's mostly a house of cards.

The industry is moving to push everything to SAAS (software as a service). Basically you don't pay for a hard copy of Microsoft Word, but pay a continent $7.99 a month for it. There are a few advantages for the consumer in there, like constant new features and bug fixes, and there are times where it's pretty legit, but mostly it's a squeeze. If you're not giving your own data away, you're often paying to give it away.

Automating away jobs is a feature and not a bug.

 

How predictable lol. You didn’t read the part a about subsidized medicine and education in my post, did you?

 

I little taste of your own tedious 'medicine'. What if you mainly got reactions like this on all your political and societal posts? Wouldn’t you get enough of it at some point, tend to regard those posters as trolls. I think its a miracle you still get granted the respect of be taken seriously. Because seriously, any time your posts on these matters get properly challenged you go that route.

 

Do you need me to spell out all the scams in government sector jobs for you Asmo? All the corruption that’s taken place in the police department. All the constant violation of human rights. Foreign aid funds that never make it to the people in need, but instead wind up in the pockets of 3rd world leaders. Wasteful government spending on developing an anti-gravity pen, when a regular pencil works just fine in space. And all the wasteful military operations that don’t make our countries any safer, but benefit only a select few at the top. Not sure where your hollier-than-thou attitude comes from.

Regarding my political and societal posts, I know I’m hated by many. But I love all my haters. Including you

 

If most people really hated you, you would be treated a lot differently. Most just got enough of you resorting to cliché remarks and jokes when it gets difficult. As has been pointed out; its not predominantly your views that people dislike, but how you go about them.

If everybody would react to your posts as you do to ours we wouldn't have any good discussion. It would look more like a pitiful exchange in a comment section on the average social media news article

 

Please explain in earnest why you are asking me this. If you can be bothered

 

You forgot the opiate for the masses.. aka .

SPORTS.

 

Because it seems you placed the entire blame of what I listed in the OP on capitalism when there are plenty more scams in regulated tax-and-spend industries. I assumed you needed a reminder.

 

I.e, "but thats not MY capitalism" or "thats not REAL capitalism"









*i put a winky but in reality that is how ridiculous you sound when you say that about European style democratic socialism

 

Anyways back on topic, I work in the legal field. For a firm that primarily represents corporations. Nuff said. You get a scam, and you get a scam, and you get a scam. Scams for everyone, my firm will help provide legal recourse for it

(I'm on the accounting side of things though so I dont really have anything to do with it)

 

Goddamn it man. I just explained (as if it wasn't obvious enough) it was a joke, resembling your own reactions.

 

what would you tax if you didn't make everything have to be about money that had no reason to be to begin with?

you know, the real scam, is people whinning about the tyranny their own hatred of consideration for others creates. their hatred of logic in the service of consideration, their hatred of honesty, and their hatred of imagination, that sucks all the joy out of life.

how is this not whinning at people refusing to give a free pass, to one ideology (capitalism) at the expense of everything else? no one is claiming there is some other magical ideology, that's just another trojan horse to try and paint that picture. (but i will claim that it is possible to put NO ideology, including your precious capitalsim, ahead of the kind of world real people are forced to live in)

 

I work in two different industries and I don't think there are many "scams" in either. At least not on the level of some type of conspiracy. It's mostly "buyer beware" types of things. Dishonest salespeople, etc.

 

Better call Saul.

 

Mike Woods please!







nobody will get that, but I doubt I'll ever have the opportunity to post it again.

 

The greatest scam, is that gratification can come from acquisition,

and while many people do buy into it, the trouble with capitalism,
is its dependence upon people doing so.


Whether it is symbolic value, personal relationships, or even specific categories or particular details of physical things, gratification comes not from accumulation at all.

This is why some people can have everything, and that even includes religious belief as well, and still feel unsatisfied, like there's still something they're missing. And there is.


Gratification comes from creating and exploring, albeit you need tools, and you can love having them, but it is all about what you DO with them them. And if you can't create and explore with something, whatever it might otherwise happen to be, other then survival itself, it has no real value in your life.



The other thing to always keep in mind, is that no matter where you go or what you do,

you will still experience the kind of surroundings, that your priorities and perceptions and everything you do, because its almost always some sort of reflection of them, even when you don't think about it, especially when you don't think about it, statistically participate in creating.


And that a culture of loving the combination of logic, consideration, honesty and imagination,
can turn any hell into a paradise,

but it only takes hating any one of those, to turn a paradise into a hell.


And culture, in the sense i'm using it, in the sense i'm always using it,
is that statistical sum, of what all of us think we know,

and that 'vibe' if you will, created by how all of us, not just ourselves, act.


So there are these two things, the kind of world we individually experience that all of us together create,
and then there is that sense of how gratified or not we feel, that comes only from our own creating and exploring.


No belief, no ideology, not even my telling you this, has anything to do with it.


You can have all the beliefs you want, that's fine, there can be gods or god-like beings,
there is certainly a universal wonder of strangeness,

but it remains creating and exploring for gratification,

and logic, consideration, honesty and imagination, for the kind of world,

everyone, including yourself, no matter how much you may try to cocoon yourself,

no matter how much you acquire with which to do so, still has to live in.


even when you've passed on, to some other life, this will still be the same,
logical foundation of all of existence.


Your non-physical friends can forgive whatever you do,
but they're not going to make it not ever having happened for you.

 

Yeah I guess dishonest salespeople are usually the origin point of most scams. Telling people to get things they don't need.
I find that if salespeople are selling a bad product for too long, people begin to catch on via consumer reports and reviews.

The Pet Rock of the 1970s was popular only for so long.