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“Purchased For $2.9 Million, Now Worth About $4”: 30 Examples Of The Biggest Wastes Of Money
According to data from the Drug Policy Alliance, the United States government spends $39 billion each year on the war on d***s. Cumulatively, it amounts to $1 trillion since 1971. However, recent findings have shown that illegal drug use in the US is once again on the rise, putting the effectiveness of these efforts and the amount of money spent in question.
The war on d***s is just one of the many examples where people spent exorbitant amounts on something that isn’t widely beneficial. Recently, a discussion about it surfaced on Reddit when someone asked, “What was the biggest waste of money in human history?”
The responses poured in, from similar war-related expenditures by other countries to the millions of dollars spent on the very first NFT.
These answers may disappoint you but also expose how ill-advised people can get with money.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
4 trillion dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban gotta be up there.
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#2
Bailing out billion dollar companies during COVID like Delta Airlines that charges me $50 to bring a bag on an airplane. Instead of, you know, training new doctors or fast tracking those already in med school, or paying off their student loan debt.
#3
I gotta go with Nanni for buying that sub-standard copper from Ea-nāṣir bank in the 1700s BCE. Just a terrible decision all around, from what I've read.
#4
Tax breaks for the rich.
#5
UK voting for Brexit. This has cost billions already in lost GDP with the eventual figure likely in the 100s of billions as it impact compounds in the decades to come.
Collective madness.
Did I say that out loud? (he/him)cis/het 1 day ago
Blame Cameron for this one. A referendum in the UK is not legally binding on parliament, but Cameron promised to honour the result and then fűcked off to let everyone else clean up the mess.
#6
Quantatitive easing, and the banking bailout.
We’ve created a system where businesses can be ‘too big to fail’ and they can expect a bailout when they get into trouble, but when times are good all the profits go to the shareholders. So we’ve privatised profit, and socialised risk. This means we’ve effectively rigged the game for capitalism, making a system where market forces are no longer fully in play, and creating zombie companies that should have folded a long time ago.
#7
Me forgetting to turn off the lights, according to my dad.
#8
Capitalist agriculture and food distribution. Like every second potato is thrown away, milk is overproduced and thrown away, cow hides are destroyed rather than tanned for leather to keep leather prices stable, insecticides and herbicides to maintain massive monocrops killing pollinators and low key poisoning us instead of higher total mass yield less intensive multi cropping, like keeping pigs on an apple orchard to eat the fallen apples where the apple eating beetles lay their eggs to k**l off a pest instead of spraying... oh no but instead we feed the pigs unsold grocery store stuff, all ground up, the packaging left on rather than paying people to take it off first. So much for labor efficiency, thanks capitalist goons. Restaurants not sending their best either, it's waste cruelty and exploitation all around the chain and the cost is incalculably high.
Verena 1 day ago
Food waste, from animals bred to end up in the dump to giant monocultures destroying ecosystems, is a crime. It always is paired with overproduction, poisoning nature and animal cruelty. It is a war we as consumers fight against ourselves. Most consumers can achieve a change, by slightly changing shopping habits. There is no general recipe, everybody has to make individual choices. And voting for a club of oligarchs is not helping.
#9
Trump's $1.7 trillion gift to the wealthiest of the wealthy. Everyone in the US is paying $5,000 of their taxes directly to them. Call me crazy but I think we should claw it back.
#10
The Swedish ship Vasa.
The Vasa was built in the 1620s to take advantage of the very newest in warship technology, a second row of guns. It was to be a symbol of Sweden's might, and thus was decorated with beautiful statues and carvings. This ship took three years to build and cost roughly 5% of Sweden's GDP.
Unfortunately, the effect of a second row of cannons on seaworthiness was poorly understood. With great fanfare, the ship set off, experienced its first breeze, and still within full view of the city of Stockholm, capsized and sank.
#12
War on dr*gs, an impossible battle.
Ok_Turnover_1235:
Trillions of dollars later and h*roin is 50x cheaper and 10x more potent.
Susie Elle 1 day ago
Someone told me a while ago that cocaine is now expensive, by comparison, and somehow that genuinely surprised me (if they were correct).
#13
The Vietnam War at $176 billion. Countless dead for no reason, and nothing positive came of it.
Nils Skirnir 1 day ago
In today’s money about 2 trillion, w/o considering NPV. Of course still less than the Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syrian escapades.
#14
Scientology.
Sven Horlemann 10 hours ago
First, it is no religion. They said they are a religion for tax reasons - not paying tax, that is. Secondly, I just saw a video from 2 ex-scientologist, highest level (one the niece of the current leader), and they say there are about 15 - 20 thousand (!) scientologists in the world. Not the millions they claim.
#16
Can’t believe nobody has mentioned world war 1..
Literally all of the world’s most wealthy nations completely financially ruining themselves and slaughtering a large proportion of their young men and all of the historical consequences that followed over essentially nothing and achieving nothing except for a massive geopolitical regression with costs which we are arguably still reeling from today.
Nicole Weymann 1 day ago
"But it won't be wasted when we WIN!" /S Plus there's a number of industrialists who got pretty wealthy from aiding and abetting in the slaughter. What's a few million corpses if YOU got rich, or firmly established your dominance over your peers? Of course it was worth it!! /S
#17
Everyone here has better answers but I've gotta mention Twitter. What an absolutely idiotic way to buy a company. Acquire because someone told you you can't, fire 80% of the staff, abolish the branding completely, remove mod support, offer worthless utilities that used to be free as part of a "premium service," then force push notifications to every single user that are really just your personal tweets, and when people still won't listen to you masquerade as an anonymous user on your own app/company, artificially inflate your own follower count, and be your own biggest supporter.
#18
Got to be that person who bought the first ever tweet as an NFT, purchased for $2.9million, now worth about $4.
ॐBoyGanesh 1 day ago
I was skeptical of the few friends who were raving about crypto, but they seemed to fair ok by getting in early & out quickly. However, with the two who raved about NFTs my opinions on them took a dive & my perspective of who they were had a major shift for the worse. The concept was well thought out, but people ignored the obvious long term flaws of this type of virtual commodity and I just felt they lacked good judgement.
#19
When Covid was in full swing and the entire trading market crashed then the federal reserve tried to “stimulate” and “save” our overlord corporate scum by injecting 3 trillion dollars into the stock market just for it to immediately crash again like 2 minutes later.
#20
When the US government bailed out Goldman Sachs after Goldman Sachs bought AIGs failing bonds at pennys on the dollar, fully knowing they would fail, and getting bailed out by ex Goldman Sachs Ben Bernanke at full face value of the bonds. Biggest robbery of the American Taxpayer and largest waste of money in history.
Colin Powell’s lie about weapons of mass destruction and the resulting War on Terror is also up there. But to be fair the US had to respond to 911 physically. Was just so overblown
Nicole Weymann 1 day ago
"had to respond to 911 physically": yeah, right, gotta go find someone to beat up in revenge. Just try and make sure to get the right guys to set an example. "Right" as in "small enough not to make problems", of course - as opposed to "the ones actually responsible". Still effed up on both counts anyway.
#21
Indulgences. As in the Free Pass given for sins during the Crusades. You could literally buy God's forgiveness for sins past or future.
I'm no accountant but I'm pretty sure that's a waste of money!
#22
King Louis IX spent something like the entire GDP worth of France on religious relics such as a piece of the True Cross. A sliver of wood said to have been from the cross that Jesus was crucified on. It doesn't take a genius to see it was a fake now.
Annik Perrot 1 day ago
The relics market was a really big thing at the time. Possessing one was a sign of power, and à source of wealth since pilgrims would come by thousands to see it.
#23
The Iraq War (2003-2011): Regarding the cost, Estimates vary, but it's in the trillions of dollars, with some sources suggesting around $3 trillion when including long-term healthcare for veterans, interest on borrowed money, etc.
General Anaesthesia 1 day ago
"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learnin'?" - US President GW Bush, 2000
#24
New Zealand spent about 25 million dollars (NZD) on a flag referendum, before it started the public were against it saying we would never change the flag, the government persisted anyway, two years later the public voted to keep our current flag, so we did 😅 massive f**king waste of time and money for a result they should have been expecting from the very beginning.
#25
Stonehenge.
The whole thing was supposed to be 18 inches tall, but the work crew misread the runes.
#26
Those guys who bought tickets to the titanic sub.
Peter Parker 1 day ago (edited)
Judging by the amount of time they are spending down there, I'd say it was money well spent.
#27
Insurance.
I can't believe this isn't near the top right now with the CEO and the fires.
Verena 1 day ago
Insurance is a bet on misfortune happening to you. Back in the day, people understood that if everybody chips in, hardship of a few could be covered, by this stabilizing the community. Due to today a lot of people swoon and adore the rich and famous, a few people learned how to get rich with that. If you hate the rich, stop making them rich.
#28
There was no other human project that was of a greater magnitude than the Reality Labs @ Meta. For reference it cost is comparable to the core part of the Apollo Project so far and it is only the beginning. Total cost of Meta's Metaverse exceeded $100B in 2023. No other single project comes close to this. (and its s**t)
Capital Expenditure each year:
2018: $13.92B
2019: $15.65B
2020: $15.72B
2021: $19.24B
2022: $32B
2023: $28.1B
2024: ??? (expect significant reduction)
EDIT:
Fixed the inflation adjustment as correctly pointed in comments. In today's dollars, Apollo program main development was ~$150B, with ~$300B for all auxiliary projects included. Keep in mind, Metaverse is shutting down in its INFANCY after ~$140B devoted to it. Nothing has been fundamentally accomplished other than a multiplayer Sims4 ripoff. Apollo program landed a man on the moon within $180B employing about 400k people pushing the boundary of the technology in electronics, transmissions, material science, propulsion etc. that we inherited as a society.
robert copher 1 day ago
Good, let ALL of Meta fail please. It has added nothing of value to society
#29
Nuclear weapons - 5600 BILLION US dollars
To create a weapon, that is designed not to be used, but instead to create a scenario (mutually assured destruction) so they are never used.
#30
The CIA putting a microphone into a cat to spy on commies only for that cat to get hit by a car, I think it was like 6 million dollars and countless years of preparation and training only to be lost under some tires.
Note: this post originally had 51 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
What do you think ?
Nils Skirnir 1 day ago
The trillions we spend every year to make entertainers, sports figures, gamblers, Las Vegas, billionaires, politicians, etc even wealthier
Apatheist Account2 1 day ago
Agreed. No sportsman is worth in a week what I earned in a lifetime (and I was well above average salary).
Load More Replies...
Jonathan English 7 hours ago
Irish government spent €330,000 on a bike shelter for 18 bikes. €330,000 euro on a f*****g bike shed
Mook The Mediocre 1 day ago (edited)
"war on d***s" How bloody pathetic is that Puritanical kneejerk censorship? You should be ashamed that you can't use perfectly normal words in your posts. And later you censor the words "kill" and "heroin." Who is moderating these posts - a geriatric nun? It's absurd, and making me leave the Panda behind as a spineless puddle of weak-willed froth.
Nils Skirnir 1 day ago
The trillions we spend every year to make entertainers, sports figures, gamblers, Las Vegas, billionaires, politicians, etc even wealthier
Apatheist Account2 1 day ago
Agreed. No sportsman is worth in a week what I earned in a lifetime (and I was well above average salary).
Load More Replies... Jonathan English 7 hours ago
Irish government spent €330,000 on a bike shelter for 18 bikes. €330,000 euro on a f*****g bike shed
Mook The Mediocre 1 day ago (edited)
"war on d***s" How bloody pathetic is that Puritanical kneejerk censorship? You should be ashamed that you can't use perfectly normal words in your posts. And later you censor the words "kill" and "heroin." Who is moderating these posts - a geriatric nun? It's absurd, and making me leave the Panda behind as a spineless puddle of weak-willed froth.
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