I'm going to go with the great wine fraud
this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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Asklemmy
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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.
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Enron, perhaps. I think it qualifies.
A good documentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron:_The_Smartest_Guys_in_the_Room
in general.
When some talking head talks about why 
today or today, the real reason is "insiders traded it that way" with a mix of "this is how rich assholes feel."
Battle Passes
But in history it took forever for people in Holland to realize that Tulips are not worth entire plots of land
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HR departments in corporate jobs.
You don't want to deal with the shit HR handles for you.
I'm sure there are plenty of bad, bureaucratic messes, but 3/4 of the HR departments I the last 10 years have been quite helpful.
The outlier was just not very communicative, but otherwise good.
Maybe it's the industry. I work in clinical so we're used to documenting the fuck out of everything. HR mandated documentation is just another step to cover all of our asses.
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I’m not sure you know what the word “scam” means.
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.
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tax in the UK was first imposed as a temporary measure to fund the Napoleonic Wars but after Waterloo it was never repealed since it brought in so much.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.
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Fósil fuels
Phoebus Cartel, essentially the few oligopolistic light bulb companies got together and colluded and intentionally reduced the lifespan of light bulbs.
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Neoliberalism!
The second is financialization.
Both are huge scams still running.