this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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[–] jeremy@midwest.social 47 points 2 years ago (7 children)
[–] OwenEverbinde@lemmy.myserv.one 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The entire industry is built on catering to the vast swaths of women who get ignored by doctors and need somewhere to turn.

I highly suspect doctors are taught in medical school, "women are over emotional and prone to exaggeration."

Hell, "hysteria" was considered a valid diagnosis until the 1950s.

[–] Enigma@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I was suffering from hyperemisis last year and it took 3 doctors before I finally found one to take me seriously, which I consider it lucky it only took 3. The last doc I was practically on my hands and knees begging them to take me seriously.

In the middle of all that I also ended up with pneumonia. Normally I never get sick so I was like wtf is going on. But anyways, a doctor finally took some chest x rays and 2 weeks later they call to tell me that my X-ray was clear. I. Went. Off. I ended up having to go to the ER 2 days after the doctor visit because I could no longer breathe, it was so painful. How is it possible that my x ray was clear??? Then another week goes by and the assistant calls to tell me that I do have pneumonia and a prescription has been sent in. I just hung up and filed complaints with everyone I could. That office was a hot mess.

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[–] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 2 years ago (6 children)
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[–] Fondots@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

People always chime in with stories about how chiropractors helped them with XY and Z problem they were having.

And overall I don't doubt them. There's a lot of things that can go wrong with your spine or other joints, and I'm certain that some of them can be addressed by physically manipulating and adjusting it.

But the basic premise of chiropractic treatments is that basically all human ailments can be fixed in that way, which should sound like total bullshit to anyone with half a brain. And that's before you get into all spiritual nonsense that pervades a lot of the field.

Now some of them understand that that's a load of bullshit and may even be realistic about the things they can treat, but it can be pretty damn hard to sort them out from the ones who think that your pancreatic cancer is caused by ghosts in your spine and they know how to get them out or some bullshit like that.

Now if you have a good idea what your issue is and what needs to be done to fix it, take the time to carefully vet your chiropractor to make sure they're not going to try some crazy bullshit on you, you very well may be able to get a decent treatment from them. Maybe you'll even be able to save some money going with that.

But for most of us who aren't doctors and so only have kind of vague ideas what exactly the issue is and that the treatments we're doing actually make any sense, and don't necessarily have time to do all of that research and carefully vet that the person treating them isn't secretly a quack, you could just get the same sort of treatments from actually physical therapists, orthopedists, physiatrists, etc. with the added benefit of them actually understanding the issues and how to fix them properly.

Chiropractors are kind of like the rednecks of the medicine world. Some of them know exactly what they're doing with that harbor freight welder, they may not do things by the book but they know for certain what works and what doesn't and more importantly know when something is beyond what them and their buddies can accomplish on a free Saturday with a case of beer and when they need to suck it up and limp their truck to the shop and let a professional deal with it. Others know just enough to be dangerous and while they can get the job done 90% of the time or at least not make things worse, that 10% of the time something is literally going to blow up in someone's face. And still others are just meth heads looking to make a quick buck and it's a miracle they're not behind bars. And when you see them hanging around the local watering hole, it may not be totally clear which is which until it's too late.

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[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 32 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Private health insurance is the biggest fucking scam ever. The private insurance companies benefit by getting the aggregate healthiest population into their plans (working adults). The most likely to be expensive people, i.e. old people (on medicare) or poor people (on medicaid, or not even on an insurance plan) are on government, tax payer insurance plans. There is literally no reason except for corporate profiteering that Medicare should not be expanded to cover all people.

Also all those conversations, especially in the 2020 election period, were totally bullshit. You say something like M4A will cost 44 trillion dollars or whatever, which sounds like an insane amount of money. What is often left out of the discussion is that estimated cost was 1) over 10 years and 2) has to be weighed against the current costs we already pay for insurance. So the deal was very simple: the overall costs would go down because the overall spending would be less, and at the same time millions of people without coverage would be covered, and at the same time you don't have to contemplate stupid bullshit like in network, out of network providers. Or ever again talk to your insurance about why something is or isn't covered. Boils my blood when I think too much about this.

Not even gonna weigh in on things like how medicare can't negotiate prescription drug prices (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/us/politics/medicare-drug-price-negotiations-lawsuits.html), or how dental, vision, and hearing are treated separately from general healthcare, or how med school is prohibitively expensive, or how the residents after med school are overworked because the guy who institutionalize that practice was literally a cokehead. Those are all just bonus topics. The point is we are getting fleeced.

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[–] MiDaBa@lemmy.ml 28 points 2 years ago (3 children)

The stock market and publicly traded companies. The idea that a business that is making consistent profits isn't good unless those profits are increased each quarter is asinine. This system of shortsighted hyper focus on short term quarterly growth for the sake of growth is the cause of so much pain and suffering in the world. Even companies with amazing financials will work to push workers compensation down, cut corners and exploit loopholes to make sure their profits are always growing. Consistent large profits aren't good enough.

[–] AssholeDestroyer@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago

Instapot. Instapot made too good of a product, most people buy one and its good for years. That's good for consumers but terrible for investors. The company that bought them out and took them public saddled them with a ton of debt from other sectors and now they're bankrupt.

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[–] 1984@lemmy.today 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Subscriptions.

People pay every month but most don't use the sub to it's full value, and forget how expensive it becomes over the years. And you don't own anything on a subscription, you just borrow it.

Also trial periods that prolong automatically into subscriptions.

[–] squaresinger@feddit.de 13 points 2 years ago

Unpaid overtime.

Framing "fulfilling your contract" as "silent quitting".

In what other context would be "delivering what's in the contract" anything less than satisfactory?

When I buy a litre of milk and the box contains exactly a litre of milk it isn't "silent stealing" either.

[–] unscholarly_source@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (12 children)

My personal top 3:

  • insurance
  • subscriptions
  • Google and similar data hungry companies (while not a financial scam but moreso a privacy scam, companies like Google and Meta profiteering on our personal data without our knowledge or awareness)
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[–] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 10 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Professors requiring their own, expensive textbook for their course.

[–] AdmiralShat@programming.dev 1 points 2 years ago

This! My English teacher in my first year required us to buy a specific book that she wrote from a specific book store for $250. You had to bring it and the receipt in proving you bought it and aren't just sharing with someone else.

We then opened the table of contents to "go over" the book and never touched it again.

She then said "you should probably leave those here so you don't forget them". Never fucking touched it again.

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[–] andthenthreemore@startrek.website 10 points 2 years ago (2 children)

First Past the Post voting at elections.

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[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 9 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Wedding rings/diamonds in general.

The tradition isn't as old as people think and was literally started by a jewelry company to sell more jewelry. Specifically diamonds, which are not as rare as commonly believed and if not for the false scarcity and misinformation, would be dirt cheap.

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[–] Stoneykins@mander.xyz 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

Car dealerships. They are awful on purpose. In many places car manufacturers are not legally allowed to sell their cars directly to customers, in order to create what is essentially legally mandated car dealerships, which all suck.

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[–] buckykat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Car based infrastructure

the stock market

capitalism

[–] Steeve@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Unregulated capitalism imo. I don't buy the idea I've seen around here that capitalism itself is the problem and switching to communism would solve all the problems. Both are systems that have merit, but when left unchecked all the power and money will go to the few, like we have now.

[–] Nevoic@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

If by "have merit" you mean "has some positive aspects", sure. Every system has merit. Slavery had merit (slave owners got cheap cotton). The Holocaust had merit (antisemites felt better). The issue is weighing the merit against the negatives. You can't just say two systems have positive aspects and call it a day.

Are you a fan of democracy or authoritarianism? Capitalism is a system where productive forces are driven undemocratically, in the name of profit instead of by worker democracy. The commodification of everything exists in a world of private property:

  • our bodies (labor power)
  • our thoughts (intellectual property)
  • the specific ordering of bits on a hard drive you own (digital media, DRM)
  • the means of production (which exist as a result of collective knowledge, infrastructure, and labor)

These things being commodified and privatized are ridiculous in any democratic, non-capitalist system.

However, these ridiculous conditions are absolutely necessary in a capitalist society. Without them the system falls apart. And as society continues to progress, the situation gets more and more ridiculous.

What about when AI "takes away" jobs for 50% of Americans (as in capitalists fire humans in favor of AI)? That'll collapse our society. Less work would be a good thing in any reasonable system, but not in capitalism. Less work is an existential threat to our society.

If we ever have an AI that is as capable as humans are intellectually, the only work left for us will be manual labor. If that happens, and robots get to the point of matching our physical abilities, we won't be employable anymore. The two classes will no longer be owners and workers, they'll be owners and non-owners. At that point we better have dismantled capitalism, because if we don't then we'll just be starving in the street, along with the millions who die every year from starvation under the boot of global capitalism.

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[–] Redfish@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Tipping in restaurants…pay the workers.

[–] Rediphile@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 years ago

Yep, tipping is fundamentally unethical.

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[–] original_ish_name@lemm.ee 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

The price for glasses. It's like this because of a stupid duopoly

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[–] Pyrate37@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

Insurance. A promise they try really hard to break.

[–] clausetrophobic@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)
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[–] Skeith@discuss.online 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Homes as wealth-creators.

Americans take it as received wisdom that homes are meant to generate income through higher valuations over time. We just assume home prices go up over time and if it's not actively increasing in value, the home was a failure.

Many other countries don't treat homes this way. They are dwellings, invest what you want to your liking, but it's not a retirement account.

This focus on wealth generation creates lots of perverse incentives, such as exclusionary zoning, building on lots that are overly large, and suburban sprawl. These don't reflect people's actual, desired form of housing but rather maximize wealth for homeowners at the expense of everyone else.

We have a completely warped view of housing that causes us to be preyed upon by real estate agents, landlords, HOAs and the like.

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[–] Peddlephile@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

Private health insurance.

Banks.

[–] bushvin@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago
[–] CorrodedCranium@leminal.space 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Dollar stores. A lot of the time they are profiting by selling you a smaller quantity at a slightly lower price. They target low income communities.

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[–] mats@feddit.de 3 points 2 years ago

Windows. You pay ~100€ just to give your personal data to MS and get a bloated OS that will use all of your resources. Even MacOS is a more fair deal than this.

[–] ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 years ago

Capitalism and the 5 day 9 to 5 work week

[–] tiefling@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 month ago

Most forms of insurance in the US

[–] terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 years ago

Insurance (am American)

[–] TARgz@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Your ISP is suddenly asking for more money. What are you gonna do? Disconnect from the internet?

[–] heavyboots@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

Service as a subscription, for me. It used to be you bought a product and then you owned it. Now if you want practically anything from streaming media to freaking car washes, you have to "subscribe".

Religion. Whole cloth.

[–] candyman337@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 years ago

Credit scores

[–] Krulsprietje@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

Printer inkt. In our shop people are still buying them for a way to high price…

[–] WetBeardHairs@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Real estate agents getting 6% commission from the seller.

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[–] notme@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago
[–] Thundernuggets@reddthat.com 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Giving money to politicians.

[–] Nachorella@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 years ago

I agree with this so much. Political parties should just be given one tv ad and one pamphlet. Only allowed to talk about their own policies and nothing else. Exclusively government funded. Any extra donations and you're no longer representing the people's interests so you're murdered or something idk.

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