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Giving religions tax free status.
Corporations are people. Money is speech.These simple assertions have guided America toward more greed and more war than any other decision in history. It has set us on the path towards far worse ends than most other single events.
In American history: Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which made corporate bribery legal. Government no longer served the people from that point on.
In retail history, probably Sears not realizing that they were basically Amazon before Amazon. Mail order with warehouses all over the United States. How could you improve that business model?Oh, the Internet you say? Never heard of it.
Brexit.
Some guy introduced rabbits to Australia in 1788 so that he could hunt them for sport.
Blockbuster not buying Netflix.
“Mao’s push to have farmers in China produce their own steel using backyard furnaces, which lead to a wacky chain reaction eventually leading to a famine that killed millions.““Mao also ordered the extermination of sparrows in an attempt to protect grain crops. Millions of sparrows were killed, allowing locusts to proliferate.“The locusts consumed so many crops that there was widespread famine and 45 million people died.”
Letting politicians trade stocks.
Allowing a handful of people control the vast majority of media.
“20th Century Fox let George Lucas keep all the merchandising r⁷ights for Star Wars because they thought it would be a giant flop and noone would watch it.““George Lucas is now worth 5.3 billion dollars.”
In 1350, the Scots heard that England was having a spot of trouble with the bubonic plague, and decided to launch an invasion that would take advantage of the English, who were dropping like flies and would thus be easy pickings. The Scots invading army lost 5000 men to the plague in very short order. They decided to cut their losses and fall back to Scotland to be safe. Of course they brought the great plague with them, which devastated Scotland too.
So that one fish decided to try what happens when you leave the water.. That’s when it really started to go downhill!
The wrong turn that driver made in 1914.
Yahoo not buying Google.
If Parliment had just given the colonies their own representation in the House of Commons they could have likely avoided the entire revolutionary war and the US would not have formed. We’d likely have like 9 smaller versions of Canada on the east coast with a large Mexico and several interior Native American nations today.
I think the best political f**k-up happened in 1984 when New Zealand’s arrogant prime minister got drunk in his office late one night and called a snap election in two week’s time.His government was voted out. It became known as the Schnapps Election.
Not the worst, but that incident where they sent out an emergency alert saying “inbound ballistic missile threat to Hawaii. This is not a drill” always sticks out in my mind. People were seeking shelter in manholes, and it took them 45 minutes to send out a follow up alert saying “just kidding. Everything is ok”. I can’t even imagine.
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Norway wanted to give sweden 50% of our oil profits in exchange for 50% of Volvo. Swedens government said no as one of their minister meant that “there is no future in oil”. Norway’s sovereign fund (the oil fund) can now purchase every single stock on the swedish stock exchange and still have money leftover.
The invention of plastic.
“You can’t be a part of our art school”.
“Netflix offered themselves to Yahoo. Yahoo instead bought Tumblr.“Heads rolled at Yahoo.”
The Fourth Crusade.It started as a crusade for Jerusalem from an invasion through Egypt and the crusaders ended up invading Croatia and Constantinople. This also led to the weakening of the Byzantine Empire and eventually its downfall.
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The Germans smuggling Lenin into Russia during World War I to create a revolution.
PPP “loans” in the US. The fraud is off the charts.
“In 1984 in Australia, the then PM Malcolm Fraser of the National Party called a snap double dissolution election, hoping to catch out the unpopularity of the Labour Party opposition leader, Bill Hayden.““Fraser didn’t know that while he was meeting with the Governor General to call the election, Bill Hayden had resigned, and was to be replaced with the massively popular Bob Hawke.““Labour won in a landslide.”
Leaded gasoline.
Mao’s push to have farmers in China produce their own steel using backyard furnaces, which lead to a wacky chain reaction eventually leading to a famine that killed millionsAlso Nixon deciding to spy on the Democrats even though he almost certainly would have won re-election if he didnt.
“As much as 1972 was Nixon’s political peak, it was also the beginning of the end. Watergate moved slow and it would take two years of leaks and stories to finally end in his resignation.““Nixon’s legacy would have been top-tier had Watergate never tainted it (theoretically).”
From an objective point of view, probably the Khwarazmian Empire pissing off the Mongols.Hitler invading the Soviet Union was bad but at least after that f**k-up Germany continued to exist while the Khwarazmian Empire got absolutely destroyed and much of its population was massacred.
The Atlanta falcons drafting Michael Penix Jr. #8 overall after giving an enormous contract to 35-year-old Kirk Cousins.
“Then they try to blame it on a combination of ‘improper training’ and their computer software.““Why is it so easy to make that huge of a mistake‽ Why aren’t there multiple safeguards and higher-ups involved‽‽““The conspiracy theorist in me almost thinks they did it on purpose to test how people would rea
I think we can all agree the biggest f**k up in history is the PlayStation 2 only having 2 controller ports instead of 4.If they had made it 4 controller ports at the start, there wouldn’t be an Xbox or a Nintendo anymore.
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