The word folly has two meanings that are actually tangentially related.
The first meaning is "lacking good sense; foolishness." The second meaning is a "costly ornamental building with no practical purpose, especially a tower or mock-Gothic ruin built in a large garden or park."
Both can refer to a waste of time, money, or other resources.
There are several events in history that were labeled follies for the money spent versus the expected gain. However, over time, some supposed follies turned into triumphs.
The purchase of a large tract of North American land from the French in 1803 was originally seen as folly, as was "Seward's Folly"—the label given to the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867.
However some seemingly wasteful blunders remain ill-conceived after decades or even centuries.
Reddit user forty5v asked:
"What was the biggest waste of money in human history?"
Children
"Me forgetting to turn off the lights, according to my dad."
~ Th3Giorgio
"Moving the thermostat from 68° to 69° will do that too."
~ america-inc
"One day, not long after I started living on my own, I was rushing out the door late for work. I realized later on that I forgot to turn off my light before leaving."
"I spent all day agonizing about how much power I had wasted and how much it would cost me."
"At the end of the month, my power bill had literally no change from that light. Turns out a single light is, in fact, really cheap to power."
~ ShiraCheshire
Acoustic Kitten
"The CIA putting a microphone into a cat to spy on Communists 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
"With what I know about cats, it can’t be ruled out that the cat did it on purpose purely because it knew how much it would inconvenience the CIA agents."
~ evoke3
"What fascinated me about Acoustic Kitten—the name of the operation—is that anyone that has spent 3 minutes with a cat will know all of this was a very, very stupid idea."
"I can only explain it taking into account the amount of drugs—Project MKUltra—the CIA was using in that moment."
~ Snoo57830
Fitness
"I’d have to say that gym membership I didn’t cancel until 8 years after I moved away."
~ highfunctioninglazy
"My mate did this. Joined a gym in 2016...forgot."
"Joined a new gym in 2021 and realised he'd spent about £600 on a membership he'd literally used once."
"£600 ($730) for one hour of using a gym."
~ The96kHz
War—What The Hell's It Good For
"4 trillion dollars to replace the Taliban with the Taliban has gotta be up there."
~ names-r-hard1127
"This is what's most insane."
"Imagine everything else that could be done with FOUR TRILLION DOLLARS."
~ CIearMind
"That's about $12,000 for every single US resident today."
~ Jmersh
OOO
"$35,000,000,000 for the Metaverse."
~ nickthekiwi
" Mark Zuckerberg was REALLY inspired by Ready Player One."
~ Robcobes
The Other Great Wall
"The Great Wall of Gorgan, built by the ancient Sasanian Empire in modern-day Iran. The purpose was to protect themselves from Nomadic invadors."
"It was constructed with 100 million man-days of labor, which is equivalent to around 300,000 workers toiling for five years straight."
"Considering the average labor cost, material expenses, and other related expenditures, the total cost of the project could have reached an astronomical sum of approximately $130 billion in today's dollars!"
"Needless to say, that it failed its intended purpose as Huns devised techniques to overcome the wall without much hassle."
~ hobabaObama
The War To End All Wars
"World War One. 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."
~ MIKOLAJslippers
"It also caused WWII. With WWI being the root cause, it probably is the most expensive endeavor in all of human history."
~ OkHead3888
Laser Kiwi
"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 waste of time and money for a result they should have been expecting from the very beginning."
~ mediocre_mediajoker
"It wasn't a complete waste of money—it produced Laser Kiwi!"
~ dexter311
Titanic Error
"Those guys who bought tickets on the DIY Titanic sub."
~ Yeet-Retreat1
"I mean, they did eventually reach the Titanic, so the ticket wasn't lying."
~ wildcatofthehills
"The ocean is a mighty trash compactor."
~ Shanghaipete
Imported Sand?
"Most of Dubai's artificial islands."
~ indywizard08
"They require constant and neverending upkeep to even continue existing. No one bought most of the private ones, either."
"So it's already a massive loss to begin with, but it also just keeps on bleeding money and resources for no gain at all."
"But hey, they're attractive to suckers who read travel magazines and watch hustle grindset TikToks, so who can really say whether they're good or bad?"
~ _tyjsph_
EU Doesn't Miss You
"Brexit. Tanking the economy to own the libs."
~ gw-green
"Brexit cost 800 billion."
"Chernobyl cost 600 billion."
"Brexit is officially a worse disaster than Chernobyl."
~ Anal_bleed
NFTs
"Got to be that person who bought the first ever tweet as an NFT, purchased for $2.9 million, now worth about $4."
~ Qabbalah
"That was a weird few months when a nontrivial number of people were trying to convince me a JPEG of a poorly drawn monkey was somehow worth more than a car."
~ breakermw
The Vasa
"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
Darien Scheme
"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
"Turns out Scottish people do not survive long in the sun in the tropics. It's like the Wicked Witch of the West getting splashed with water."
~ FartingBob
"To be fair, almost no one survives well in the Darien Gap, even today."
"However, the fact that the Company of Scotland felt it was really important to pack their luggage full of hats and bibles definitely didn't help."
~ Ugolino
What historical waste of resources would you add to the list?
