This is silly. Way too many things would meet this standard for "scam"/"ponzi". Gold for example: it costs money to dig it out of the ground, and critically to keep it stored securely, insured, tested for purity, etc. Consider how much money the USA must spend keeping its gold stockpile safe! Those are pure drags on the system so indeed the total amount spent on gold must always be more than net proceeds from gold sales after accounting for cost of ownership.
A ponzi scheme can turn into a roughly zero sum game if there isn't a rush but instead stable behavior over hundreds of years. Which is exactly what you describe with gold.
Plus, gold actually does have some industrial uses so its value is actually somewhat greater than zero even if people one day woke up and didn't think it looked good for jewelry :P
I'm sure there are many such examples.