What are some notable scams in history that went unnoticed for so long?

Religion

The American healthcare system.

Homeopathy, acupuncture, ozone therapy... all "alternative medicines" basically.

That you can get rich if you work hard.

A large portion of art/artifacts are forgeries. Everyone is alright with it because galleries and collectors want to brag about having some unique old art piece and forgers are very good at making pieces that would fool anyone who is just looking at it.

Lotteries. They're just tax for poor people.

Ponzi schemes, especially the insurance companies. They really are a Ponzi scheme.

Think about it, they promise you things asking for money, then when you need their services they decide where you go, how much they will pay (leaving the rest for you to pay as a deductible), then they turn around and increase your costs for their services, that they fight tooth and nail not to pay anything.

Toothpaste.

You only need to squeeze out an amount the size of a pea on to the bristles of your toothbrush.

The image of squeezing along the entire length of the brush bristles was concocted by an ad agency, a la Mad Men, to make consumers use their toothpaste faster, hence buy more product.

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. unlimited-power

printer ink, it costs them like 3 cents to make each cartridge and they sell it for so god damn much.

they also go out of their way to have chips in the cartridges and in the printers that make the printer not function if any ink is even running low, doesn't matter if you want to print something in black and white you had better fucking buy more cyan ink

Bitcoin

Tax-free charitable organizations

Credit scores are a scam to sell credit cards.

You take small loans each month via a credit card that you have to pay back. This increases an imaginary number that lets you take out bigger loans in the furure.

This is all tracked by private companies that you trust with your personal data. That, or you'll not be able to take out a loan if you want to buy a house or start a business.

If you have a good credit score it means that you don't overspend or forget to pay, which you can also achieve with a regular debit card by default. This doesn't serve people, only the banks who expect that a number of people will overspend or not be able to pay their loans back.

Credit cards alone aren't the problem. Forcing them on people with the credit score system is.

Mormon church

Homeopathy. It's literally based on the idea that diluting stuff turns it into a remedy.

Landlords

Bernie Madoff should have been caught years before he did.

Capitalism

Capitalism, religion, monarchy, and religion.

Old Egypt was full of pyramid schemes way back then

Capitalism and the interest based investor economy.

It's absurd that people still think chiropractic is legitimate.

Restaurants being rated with “Michelin stars” was created as a ploy to encourage people to buy cars and drive more to go on road trips to these restaurants so they’d wear through more tires and have to buy more

*Edited because I was a bit off base

The current economic order cringe

ESG and carbon offsets as an effective way of combating climate change

That 90% of the people who don't watch sports on Cable TV subsidize it to the tune of 10% of their bill for the 10% of people who watch it

Windows

capitalism

HR departments in corporate jobs.

Chiropractic medicine

Theranos ‘company’.

Luxury handbags that cost $60k. Not just a handbag, but to diversify your investment and launder money.

ITT: Things people personally think are scammy, but not actual legally-defined scams.

World's smallest skyscraper, the product of a remarkable con.

Capitalism

stonks-up in general.

When some talking head talks about why stonks-down today or stonks-up today, the real reason is "insiders traded it that way" with a mix of "this is how rich assholes feel."

Interest and Rent.

Passiv income in general ,as it obviously constituts itself from other Peoples Active Income , its per definition a scam...

*"Because you once where in need and i lended you some coin , you now have to pay me back a expotentially rising amount of Coin ! its rate of rising is not messured on your harvest or the amount of offspring of your Herd but on Time going forward ! Because it surely will ! , If you Cant you will fall in Debt-Slavery to me. I am a Risktaker . you take the Risk . I Take . Always ." *

they sold you for absolute Fools , Folks !

(PS: Muslims not included)

The US dollar with no backing value

The Democratic Party of the USA

Phoebus Cartel, essentially the few oligopolistic light bulb companies got together and colluded and intentionally reduced the lifespan of light bulbs.

Religions

I'm going to go with the great wine fraud

Neither are scams but the UK is fond of permanently doing temporary things. Income tax in the UK was first imposed as a temporary measure to fund the Napoleonic Wars but after Waterloo it was never repealed since it brought in so much. Same sort of deal for the 70 mph national speed limit, it was a temporary measure in the 1960s apparently in response to someone caning it down the motorway in an AC Cobra and as we know, there’s nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.

Bitcoin

Religion. The absolute first.

Neoliberalism!

The second is financialization.

Both are huge scams still running.

Enron, perhaps. I think it qualifies.

A good documentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron:_The_Smartest_Guys_in_the_Room

Battle Passes

But in history it took forever for people in Holland to realize that Tulips are not worth entire plots of land

Are we allowed to mention capitalism and brexit?

Banks.

Lottery's the expected value is always lower than the prize of a ticket. And even if you win it is on the back of other poor desparete people who lost. An then there is the fact winning often leads to a lot of other problems.

Microtransactions

The Russian collusion hoax!

The Bernie Madoff investment scandal. Started in the 1970’s and continued into the 2000’s. It eventually dissolved in 2008 during the financial crisis. There’s a really great documentary on Netflix about it.

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.

Compound interest

The United States of America

Religion

Fósil fuels

Barrack Obama

1950 to present antipsychotics whose severe side effects are written off as crazy talk.

Replies are wild, i love it

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.