Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
28submissions
1week left
27 Times People Wasted Money In Ridiculous Ways
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.
Click here & follow us for more lists, facts, and stories.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Stonehenge.
The whole thing was supposed to be 18 inches tall, but the work crew misread the runes.
RELATED:
#2
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*****g waste of time and money for a result they should have been expecting from the very beginning.
#3
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.
#4
Anything government related. The list would be as incomprehensible as most of their decisions are.
#6
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.
#7
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.
#9
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.
#10
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.
#12
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.
#13
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.
#14
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.
#17
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.
#18
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.
#20
Got to be that person who bought the first ever tweet as an NFT, purchased for $2.9million, now worth about $4.
#21
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.
#22
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
#23
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!
#24
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.
#27
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.
You might also like: 47 Interesting Photos That Show The Side Of History That Didn’t Make The Cut Into Textbooks
#28
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.
Add Your Answer! This post is a community curated
Add Your Answer!
Explore more of these tags
Related on Bored Panda
