Round Ups history money

‘What was the biggest waste of money in human history?’ – 17 times money was spaffed up the tallest of walls

Nobody likes to splash more cash than they have to. But if you’ve ever thrown your money down the drain, go easy on yourself.

That’s because your spending habits are probably nothing compared to an r/AskReddit thread started by user forty5v. In it, he asks people to chip in with their tales of money mismanagement by asking:

‘What was the biggest waste of money in human history?’

And here are 17 prime examples of cash being spaffed up the very tallest of walls.

1.
‘4 trillion dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban gotta be up there.’
-names-r-hard1127

2.
‘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.’
-thosearesomewords

3.
‘Got to be that person who bought the first ever tweet as an NFT, purchased for $2.9million, now worth about $4.’
-Qabbalah

4.
‘The Darien scheme. For those who don’t know it was Scotland’s attempt to set up a colony in Panama and link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. About 20% of Scotland’s wealth was thrown at it and it completely failed in just 2 years.’
-Firm-Engineering2175

5.
‘I’d have to say that gym membership I didn’t cancel until 8 years after I moved away.’
-highfunctioninglazy

6.
‘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.’
-Democracystanman06

7.
‘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 shit)’
-Stubbby

8.
‘Can’t believe nobody has mentioned world war 1..

‘Literally all of the world’s most wealthy nations are 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.’
-MIKOLAJslippers