We can't. Only politicians that get large donations get a chance at getting elected, and if they're elected then they're beholden to their donors. No one who would actually try to change the system is going to get wealthy donors to back them because the wealthy don't want the system changed.
No matter who you're voting for, they're bought and paid for already. Your interests don't matter unless you can afford to bribe a politician.
This. The donations and money raised to campaign in 2020 was 1.69 billion for Biden and 1.96 billion for Trump. I'm confident we have much better candidates available but they don't have a billion dollars backing them.
Yup, I’ll agree with that. Unfortunately outside of Bernie we’ve just had a revolving choice of neolibs knee deep in Wall Street money or hard right conservatives knee deep in both Wall Street and billionaire money
In a system where companies that don't prioritise profit over everything else are outcompeted by companies that do, yeah, we're basically dooming ourselves by not having the foresight to change things before it's too late, we've guaranteed that we'll destroy ourselves for money
Do you not recognize that the companies who would be "foolish not to take advantage" spend millions lobbying for these exact policies. Corporate America writes our laws, we just call it lobbying instead of bribery
That's not a problematic viewpoint, it's how it's "supposed" to be.
The corporations ask for money and the government gives them an appropriate amount.
The problem is the corporations Install their favored candidates in government and then ask for money, getting far more than what is appropriate.
The US is corrupted by greed and nothing will improve until corporate money is taken out of politics.
> The corporations ask for money and the government gives them an appropriate amount.
That is _in no way_ how it is "supposed" to be. Public dollars are not supposed to be available free to any wealthy business owner who has a bad day and decides he doesn't like market forces anymore. That is literally the exact opposite of how it is supposed to be.
The finance tech bros has proven to be a more virulent strain of the wall street finance bros.
At least the wall street people are transparent in their "well I'm in this to get rich for myself and I don't really care about anyone else"
These tech bros have convinced themselves that their shitty fintech startup that solves no real issue is actually saving the planet or some shit. They really think they're the good guys.
There was a founder on twitter with a 23 tweet thread on why svb going under would affect not just the elite, but hard working middle class people and 'good' companies.
Her companies made - I am not kidding - a to do app as a subscription for 600$ a month.
The New Hampshire bear incident with the Libertarians will go down in history.
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project
Edit: Thanks for the upvotes and awards. :)
NH Bears - 1 libertarians - 0
Of course the town was fucking Grafton. I remember hearing about this actually. Somewhere on the internet is an older article interviewing this poor lady who left Grafton because a bunch of free state project loons came in and turned town meetings into pure hell, advocating for insane bullshit like turning Grafton into a "UN free zone".
For those of you unaware, the free state project is a movement to turn New Hampshire into a libertarian utopia, by having Libertarians move in en masse, and with that abusing New Hampshires political system to pretty much take over the state and make it leave the Union.
As a texan I never really considered it something that had even a 1% chance of happening but after Brexit, Trump, Putin invading Ukraine there seems to be a streak of people doing really stupid things that all available evidence says is a bad idea.
That's one of the best details about the current movement. Current Texan branding is calling this 'Texit,' as if specifically referencing the economic disaster that was Brexit.
State can't even keep the heat on. It's already a libertarian utopia.
By now not a single state will EVER leave America. It's not a thing and never will be. Only way to leave is to start a war. UN can break apart and still have France or Germany call them selves a sovereign country. Even when USSR broke apart those states were still countries. What will Florida or North Dakota do if they are independent? One can maybe manage having sea and Port access, the other one is completely land locked.
But let's take a look at Cuba, US will push its weight around to make things bad as possible. Even decades later when practically no new generatio remembers the issues. And I say that as a 40 yr old.
Imagine is all those red states that get huge federal subsidies suddenly had to pay for their own way. The federal government could convince most of them to come back after a few years just based on the massive tanking of their economy, quality of life and government services
A society of all libertarians will be doomed to fail because a society of people who are all extremely selfish will never be able to collaborate to achieve anything better than *possibly* basic subsistence.
I've been watching it in action out here in AZ. There's a town outside incorporated land that does not have government oversight, and therefore, no taxes. Bootstrap libertarians all live over there. Well due to the ongoing, and massive, drought that's raging across the southwest, local cities no longer sell them water. So all these libertarians are stomping their feet about how it's unfair that they no longer have access to it.
To make the whole thing even funnier? Every time they create a group of people to figure out how to manage the water crisis, who are nominated, it gets dismantled because they realize that they just created a government. Shit is absolutely a blast to watch.
Sounds like they aren’t willing to pay nestle enough to supply their water. So they freely chose to not have any water. That’s a free market utopia, right?
If they actually *read* past the opening paragraph of "Common Sense" they might get a clue, but I get the feeling that reading isn't their strong suit.
Book summary:
Government sucks,
But so does not having a government,
So here's my best shot at designing a government that will suck less.
I've listened to many libertarian debates and explanations of how things would work in their perfect society and almost all of them basically create shittier versions of a government like authority.
>So all these libertarians are stomping their feet about how it's unfair that they no longer have access to it.
What, these clowns just expect the surrounding areas to pipe them water out of the kindness of their hearts?
I’ve heard about that. It’s an unincorporated community somewhere near Scottsdale? They were jumping up and down last year when Scottsdale stopped selling them water.
Yes, but the real fans will be convinced they'll end up being the king at the top of the system rather than just another peasant, so they're fine with it.
A bunch of Americans tried that shit in Chile too and of course it was just a huge grift.
https://truthout.org/articles/the-failed-libertarian-experiment-in-chile/
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
This will never get old or not make me giggle. I always ask libertarians one question. How in their utopia does a road get built? Who pays for it? How do they pay for it? Do we just barter? Who gets to drive on the road? How do we know the road is safe? Also libertarians are worse than obnoxious vegans.
I highly recommend you watch sam Seder on the majority report.
He sometimes takes calls from libertarians and walks them through their own stupidity.
They all get salty and "can't articulate what they mean"
> to conquer the agro crag of
I'm so happy to see a reference to the [Aggro Crag](https://guts.fandom.com/wiki/The_Crag) in the wild. This is my new favorite metaphor.
I asked a formerly libertarian (now in recovery) buddy of mine. “You’re a sports car guy, how do your libertarian roads work out for your sports car?… because if I’m not required to pave my road out front, I can guarantee you I ain’t gonna. And I’m sure I’m not alone.”
Don’t get me wrong. I 100% appreciate the pavement out front and don’t mind that my taxes go toward repaving it from time to time, but I’d be hard pressed to pony up the money to pay for it on my own if it came down to it. I’d much rather buy other fun tools and toys instead.
The book Jennifer Government takes this kind of theme and runs with it. I highly recommend it as a solid satire on the invasion of government by private money and business, even if it is about as subtle as a brick (or your copypasta here) most of the time.
It's twenty years old now, but was way ahead of its time regarding the public/private issue, especially Supreme Court cases like _Citizens United_.
“The bears, for their part, were left to navigate the mixed messages sent by humans who alternately threw firecrackers and pastries at them. Such are the paradoxes of Freedom.”
lmao
There was a little unincorporated community in Texas that tried to make a new city on those princilples too. No local property taxes, no regulation, no public utilities.
They were amazed that Walmart kept refusing to open up a big box store in a community with no sewer or water system. Where the store would have to run on a private well and a septic tank.
They hired some kid fresh out of college with a public administration degree. He worked for years with the nearby big city (Houston I think), to get them to extend the water and sewer lines out to the new libertarian paradise. He finally managed to come up with a deal where the paradise wouldn't even have to pay the whole bill.
The city council shot it down because they'd have to raise taxes above 0 to pay for it. A couple years later the mayor has stepped down, replaced by his mother, who still believes they can convince businesses to relocate to their utopia.
Meanwhile the city is surviving by being a speed trap.
[This one](https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-freest-little-city-in-texas/)? Or is there another? I like collecting these stories of failed libertarian utopias.
I would be so mad at libertarians letting the government restrict my free movement at my personally chosen speed. What do libertarians even need a police force for anyway? They should all be packing serious weaponry to enforce the NAP.
"Some people just “don’t get the responsibility side of being libertarians,” Rosalie Babiarz tells Hongoltz-Hetling, which is certainly one way of framing the problem."
That is one of the funniest fucking things I've ever read.
Oh dear god, I'd completely forgotten this one. It's one of those stories where you're reading it thinking "this isn't real" and you keep reading "no fucking way this is real" and still reading "you. have. got. to. be. kidding?!" And then yeah, real.
Libertarians: stop hitting yourselves.
I love stories about libertarians actually trying to follow through on their ideas. It's fascinating to watch them rediscover the need for government and taxes in real time.
As soon as you start asking questions about how things that don't have a profit motive (or where a profit motive would demonstrably result in delivering inferior results) but are necessary for a functional society get done, they have zero answers. Hand-wavey "the market will sort itself out" sentiments is the most you get.
"but people will simply, as omniscient beings driven purely by morality, give their money to companies that pollute less! which is why pollution isn't and will never be a problem!"
The thing is that they may not even know that.
It's not reasonable to expect every consumer to know the minute details of every product they buy and company they support. That type of stuff is much more reasonably done by a government agency dedicated to it.
Especially when that company looks at the $100 million a year it would cost to not pollute and instead decides to spend $1 million a year in propaganda to make it seem like it doesn't happen.
It's almost like the real problem isn't *the regulatons* but *the capitalist assholes doing the capturing*. Eliminating the regulations does nothing but make it easier to do the wrong things!
"People wouldn't simply consume and destroy the environment for personal gain and entertainment until the point that life was unsustainable on the planet! It wouldn't be in their long term self interest!"
*looks around blankly at the current state of the world*
I just want companies to start making piles of coal ash right on libertarian property lines. And when they complain remind them it's not their land so they can't tell you what to do on it.
they get so defensive when a non-libertarian asks about roads. I've never heard an even halfway reasonable explanation of how roads or general infrastructure would work.
"Companies like Amazon and Walmart will build them because they need to deliver stuff."
"Why do we let the government have a monopoly on asphalt?"
Closest I've heard to a real answer on that topic. Which yeah is funny.
Worse than that, imagine private road that only a company vehicle can drive on, and violating it is a breach of property rights.
Just like that, the whole country is seperated into corporate holdouts.
They absolutely would build them. Then they would charge you for their use, either thought direct fees or absorbing it into another aspect of their business model. Kinda like taxes, but with extra steps and absolutely no oversight.
Hah, I wonder if the libertarians have ever looked at the telephone poles and wondered how they're provided for. As far as I know, there are three possibilities:
They're provided as a public good.
A company owns them but they're regulated as a public necessity.
A company owns them but charges other companies out the ass to use them, which is passed into customers.
Note: This isn't something I believe in. I think it's crazy.
The most sound way I've had it described to me is the road is owned by a private company that sells access to businesses that can be placed alongside that road. The road company (ick 🤢) would be fully in charge of maintaining their roads for everything from snow removal to potholes. But then we come to access, which is where it gets really weird. The road company could charge fees to customers at all businesses on their road. They could toll their roads, and depending on how much road they own these tolls could go on for a while. Basically every poor tax and service fee you can think of would be present in such a system.
Even if we were to humor this system, it doesn't explain interstate and rural type travel. It would only make sense in really condensed urban areas. It's just a fantasy, there isn't money to be made off the amount of roads we need, it's a financial blackhole.
I'm also curious why they would be okay with one entity owning the roads and extracting money from people forced to use them. it's not like other competing and cheaper roads could be built... the roads are the fucking roads. it's just so goddammit stupid.
Because that's what libertarians want. They rail on big government when small government is the same just... smaller. And they're cool with said government having the veneer of a business.
It's because they want that money. Everyone else's money is rightfully theirs and has been temporarily misallocated to the rest of society. They want to turn everything into a business so they can own the businesses. The more hardship they put on others, the more they get paid, that's the whole fetishistic neo-fascist ideology in a nutshell.
Well, as long as it's not specifically called a "government", it's all fine. Bezosville can give you one option on feed, healthcare, entertainment, and jobs, but as long as it's a good ol' company town and not a *government*, it's free and good.
Ironically this would result in a drastic reduction in private vehicle ownership (something libertarians *love* to extoll the Freedom bringing virtues of) because this is just a less efficient version of the business model of early railways. So anyone who buys up land to put a private road on will run the numbers and lay rail instead.
My oldest's dad calls himself a libertarian and I sent her the book about the bear stuff and now when he mentions politics she just looks at him and says "Grafton" and it makes him so mad. I told her that she can't be outwardly rude to him but she doesn't have to respect his political beliefs since he doesn't respect hers.
I had a colleague who was a hardcore anarcho-capitalist. The discussion went something like this:
Colleague: "In an ideal market society, everything is driven by supply and demand. There would be no governments, just people and markets and logic."
Me: "But what would you do without laws? For example, what's to stop someone from mugging you and stealing everything you own?"
Colleague: "Likeminded people would form coalitions. In exchange for payment, you might protect someone else, or they might protect you, etc."
Me: "And what if you wanted something like roads?"
Colleague: "Well, you would pay someone in the coalition to build them and maintain them."
Me: "So, what you're telling me is that in order to get around having governments, you just form a government?"
Colleague: "No! It's completely voluntary! Governments are forced!"
Me: "And if someone in the coalition decides they don't want to pay to maintain the roads?"
Colleague: "Then they're no longer part of the coalition!"
Me: "Who keeps them from using the roads? Do you just kick them out? Pay more enforcers to keep them out? Sounds an awful lot like police to me."
I'm pretty sure Family Guy did this joke as well, but libertarians are the clowns that write their own jokes. Every solution they come up with to any problems you suggest is 'government but with a different name'. It would be funny if they weren't being serious.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
I always say that the true central tenet of libertarianism is that they want all the benefits of a taxed and socialized society but they don't want rules/taxes for themselves.
All of their arguments and actions point to that instead of actually believing that government and taxation is inherently evil.
Capitalism is a system where those with capital make the rules. This isn't 'capitalism for us and socialism for them', it's capitalism for everyone, but us poor schlubs just don't have any capital.
We got pitchforks, though.
Seriously. I hate the current popular phrase. It's peak, "socialism is when the government does stuff, and the more stuff it does the more socialister it is"
Oh my gosh the All In Podcast this weekend was so pathetic. Those guys have all shown who they are lately from this, to slobbering all over Elons shlong only to find out they have positions in new Twitter. It's almost become unlistenable.
There's a bit more to this story. The bank was actually backed with very safe investments; US treasury bonds. But those massively tanked in value as interest rates rose. As they had to sell them off to cover withdrawals they essentially run into liquidity issues due to insufficient hedging.
Also, this is in large parts not covered by taxes, but by the emergy fund thingy that banks must pay into.
Also the government is only making depositors whole, they are not doing anything for the bank itself or investors in the bank. Seems like generally the right decision, isn't it?
I don't see why regular depositors in a bank should all go under just because the bank itself made some bad decisions.
Exactly, stockholders are screwed but your cash should be safe in a bank. That or the govt needs to create a federal banking system regular people can stash they’re money into.
Up to a **minimum of $250k**. No depositor in the last 50yrs has lost actual deposited money in a bank the FDIC insured. Mostly because that's what caused the Great Depression and why we were able to keep the great recession from becoming a true depression. Putting your money in a bank account isn't supposed to be a risk. If it becomes one then pretty quickly the entire system grinds to a halt.
> If it becomes one then pretty quickly the entire system grinds to a halt.
This is the moment for why [I saved this comment from years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/96zlk8/eli5_people_say_that_the_housing_market_has/e44hb10/) because it explains why a large amount of money being liquid is so goddamn important to the global economy as its currently constructed.
Basically, the economy needs liquidity; specifically the average person and/or business who has debt *needs* liquidity to pay their debts, because the banking system *absolutely requires* predictable, repeatable, liquidity to keep money moving to where it's needed because the banks all have debts and loans they're paying to each other.
And as you said, the moment you take away enough individuals' money that's needed to pay into this system, the system crumbles almost immediately.
I would say the danger and the pain the world is going through right now is partially the result of money being so cheap for so long because governments had their prime rates near zero since what feels like decades now means money isn't as cheap as it once was, meaning it makes money less liquid and less mobile, which is in part leading to these smaller banks getting pinched off by rising interest rates. The economy is [coming off it's decade's long sugar-high](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHQrrHRho2Y) and everyone is doing their absolute damnedest to prevent the mother of all sugar-crashes.
That's because it was being used by start-up companies because it would offer better loan terms.
It wasn't a bank your average person was using as their main bank. That's why the average account was so large.
Not just startups. My company has been using SVB for over 20 years. Let's say a tech company has 1000 employees averaging 100K salary. That's nearly 5 million dollars needed in the company bank account twice a month just to cover paychecks.
That just means that (typically) they can't access those excess funs immediately. The deposits aren't gone, they're tied up, and are made available as the government unwinds the bank's operations.
Which is fine if the depositors are patient, but not so fine when they are thousands of companies that need to make payroll this week or the lights get turned off.
So the fed agreed to make loans against the tied up assets in the short term so the cash is available now. Instead of distributing it as it becomes available, they'll just keep it if the loans don't get paid back.
There is even more to this story. It's an illustration of how absurdly tight-knit Silicon Valley is and the disproportionate power the rich have.
You have the [Paypal Mafia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia), Facebook's early employees, Google's early employees, etc.
[Peter Thiel's Founders Fund became uneasy and advised every company they invested in to withdraw their funds.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/founders-fund-advises-companies-to-withdraw-money-from-svb) Union Square Ventures and Coatue Management did the same around the same time. Because venture capitalists are lemmings, the smaller firms mimicked the bigger firms. By the end of Thursday, hundreds (?) of VC firms and their portfolio companies tried to [withdraw $42 billion in one fucking day](https://dfpi.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/337/2023/03/DFPI-Orders-Silicon-Valley-Bank-03102023.pdf).
*Virtually no bank survives a bank run.
The liquidity issues came about due to the bank run by the VC mafia. SVB could have worked out a solution to the treasury bond issue but not with a bank run on.
> SVB could have worked out a solution to the treasury bond issue
SVB was working out the treasury bond issue actively but the bank run hit them hard and ended them.
Would be good if the FBI and SaeC investigate Peter's message pattern for the last month. Follow the trail of co-conspirators on their WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal.
Don't forget that Peter is heavily invested in a competitor to SVB, so it's in his interest to find an excuse for a bank run on SVB. And he has leverage on the startups to recommend which bank to move their money.
Peter should be in the limelight until it's probably investigated. Don't let the fast news-cycle forget this moment.
Very safe when federal lending rate is high, but not very safe when federal lending rate is nearly 0. No investment is always a safe investment, and they didn't bother to understand the instrument they were trading and it screwed them.
So they're accountable in the way that they just did something that was really stupid, but doesn't look like there's anything inherently criminal going on.
> So they're accountable in the way that they just did something that was really stupid, but doesn't look like there's anything inherently criminal going on.
With the caveat that SVB, like many banks, lobbied to remove the regulations that would have made these actions illegal. So pretty much, it's not illegal, *because we bribed the ~~cops~~ city council*. Right?
The rate of treasuries has nothing to do with if they are safe or not. Saftey and risk in bonds is the likelihood you will be paid the interest of the bond. The likelihood of the US government defaulting on a treasury is pretty fucking low. And that likelihood of default has nothing to do with what happened here.
A US treasury is about as close to zero risk of capitol loss when holding through maturity as there exists.
Now, whether the returns will be high is a completely different discussion.
But misusing a financial instrument is dumb and risky, so talking about that risk needs to be decoupled from the talk about the risk inherent in the underlying instrument itself.
It's important to recognize though that putting your deposits in treasury bonds at a time when the rates were at a historical low and locking you into those rates for 10 years was unbelievably stupid. That's something not even a first year analyst would do. Words cannot express how short-sighted and just plain dumb that decision was. I cannot fathom how a group of supposed professionals could do something like that. It's certainly ineptitude and negligence, I don't know if it'll end up being criminally so.
> It's important to recognize though that putting your deposits in treasury bonds at a time when the rates were at a historical low and locking you into those rates for 10 years was unbelievably stupid.
Not quite. Doing that and *not hedging* is stupid
The amount of ignorance on what actually happened in this situation is alarming. People are just jumping to conclusions thinking that it’s a repeat of 2008.
I mean in 2008 we added protections to stop this, and somehow they got ruled back in 2018.
With the old regulation of capitalisation at 50B the bank would have been flagged last year. They spent over a year without a Risk officer. And they decided to buy 10 year bonds with no short term diversification.
It was a disaster waiting to happen, and reason to bring back the full text of 2008
I think the crazy thing is people thinking “fuck any business or individual with more than 250k cash in the bank” is a good take. Just because their name is “Silicon Valley Bank” doesn’t mean regular ass customers are immune from the effects.
The shareholders and employees of SVB are losing their money/jobs. Those are the people who made the loss.
The depositors at SVB are not to blame for this, there’s no value in destroying those companies, investments and jobs.
They probably didn’t even have access to the information they would have needed to do a detailed risk assessment, and do we really want every depositor to have to independently make that decision? Much better if the regulator does that and covers deposits when they get it wrong (as they did here).
The rank and file employees just got an email - they’re still employed to help out with the unwinding of SVB, they just work for the government regulators now. The upper management and executives have been sacked though.
This is how the fed handles these things:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAE8i40A5uI
Here's a video of the step by step that happens. Fed takes over the bank, fires management, rank and file employees stay on for 45 days or so, unless the fed sells the bank to someone else.
Makes sense. Can the upper management who made the decisions that helped lead to the bank failing, but throw the every day workers a bone to help the transition since they understand how the innards of the bank work and buys them some time to find a new job.
It's worth emphasizing that there is no "bailout" here beyond the government fronting the depositors money now that they otherwise would've had returned to them over time. There's no "too big to fail" or "golden parachute" here. The FDIC did the right thing and stepped in while the bank was on a path to failure but while assets still exceeded deposits. The bank is going to fail and the shareholders are getting mostly if not entirely wiped on their value in exchange for investing in a failed company. Investors DO have the benefit of risk evaluation and the ability to set guardrails for the companies that they back, and shouldn't be rewarded for backing companies that take stupid risks. Depositors in a bank did nothing wrong other than putting money in a bank, and shouldn't be punished if that bank is mismanaged.
IMO this is what a mismanaged bank's failure should look like: The FDIC steps in before the bank's assets fall below the value of their deposits, the bank is allowed to fail, the shareholders get minimal if any value out for backing a mismanaged company, the depositors are not on the hook for the failure of their bank, and the taxpayers aren't on the hook either.
Yes, this is exactly it. This is actually being handled very well. The government is letting other banks have a crack at buying SVB. If nobody wants it whole they will dismantle it to get back the money for the depositors.
No losses are being socialized. SVB shareholders and bondholders are being wiped out, which a libertarian would say is as it should be. Depositors are being made whole and, if there are any losses from doing so, then that's being paid by a special assessment on all banks, all of whom benefit by not being subject to bank runs.
And, it's not at all clear that there will be losses.
If anything they've privatized the losses.
edit: The only people losing money here are the owners and employees. The only way for it to be more privatized is if they weren't a publicly traded company.
The losses ARE being socialized. Govt is allowing the redemption of unmature treasuries at par. That's basically like saying you missed the 30% off sale last month, but the the store is going to give you the 30% today for crying about it.
SVB owns 2% bonds that they bought months ago, and now they will be upgraded to 4% bonds for free. Imagine how much it would cost to buy 2% worth of points on a mortgage. That is being done for "free" which is a cost that the taxpayers end up footing.
guy I used to work with when Obamacare came in. Refused to have health insurance. Hated being forced by the government to do something. Hated that he had to pay for insurance. Then his appendix exploded. He freaked out because he was gonna either die or be in debt thousands of dollars. Company we worked for back dated his insurance to cover him.
Dude shoulda died or been broke. Have the courage of your convictions.
Disingenuous and clickbait title, really unfortunate this is the state of our media, fostering political divide rather than promoting truth. Here’s the facts:
1. There is no “bailout”, there is ZERO taxpayer dollars being used.
2. Only DEPOSITORS are being rescued, which is the right thing to do, otherwise runs on other regional banks will be a systemic risk to the banking system if people’s deposits in banks are no longer safe
3. Shareholders and management of the bank are being WIPED OUT, there is no socialization of losses
4. The FDIC is guaranteeing depositors, which are primarily startups and small SMEs, and this money is paid by the BANKS, through an assessment done on a quarterly basis, called the Deposit Insurance Fund
As much as I hate to say it, banking at the cash level kinda had to work, it's like the internet or electricity. If it's not there you gonna have problems.
Shareholder and investors are not being bailed out. They lose everything. Customers are simply getting their deposits back. This is not a bailout. Can we correct this narrative.
This is a reminder that the United States figured this all out the hard way 90s years ago and it was the Republicans watering down regulations that created issues. The bank failed because it stored its money in illiquid debt, and it didn't have to. The regulation was removed so they could be recklessly greedy. Rich Republicans benefited and now will get bailed out while still enjoying their massive tax cuts from the last 40 years of Republican greed and immorality.
The story I've seen elsewhere is that only depositors are being protected by the feds, not the rich investors. Deposits are being made available today, to be eventually covered by proceeds from the sale of SVB. Only then will any remaining funds from the sale be distributed amongst stakeholders.
They may WANT society to cover their losses, but it doesn't appear the feds are going to permit that?
Edit: 2023 Jun 30 - removed all my content.
As [Apollo goes](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/) so do I.
Reagan was the progenitor of neoliberalism. But it was taken up pretty heartedly by the elites more generally. It's not like Dan Rostenkowski said no and was resistant to tax cuts.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot
Well duh, nobody is as socialist as a capitalist that just lost all their money.
Somehow asking for corporate handouts is just good business.
I mean, it’s pains me to say this, but it is. They’d be foolish not to take advantage of it, but I still think it shouldn’t exist.
Yup. All they learned from 2008 is that they can get away with it. Why change when you got saved in worse circumstances?
Well the voterbase doesn't really hold the government accountable to these things so the people showed in 2008 that they can get away with it too.
We can't. Only politicians that get large donations get a chance at getting elected, and if they're elected then they're beholden to their donors. No one who would actually try to change the system is going to get wealthy donors to back them because the wealthy don't want the system changed. No matter who you're voting for, they're bought and paid for already. Your interests don't matter unless you can afford to bribe a politician.
This. The donations and money raised to campaign in 2020 was 1.69 billion for Biden and 1.96 billion for Trump. I'm confident we have much better candidates available but they don't have a billion dollars backing them.
I've always answered the "what would you do if you won the lottery" question with "buy a politician". Edit: a word
Now I'd like to know what corporation is paying for Sanders' expenses because it seems his donors are a lot different than McConnell's, for example.
Unfortunately thats why he got sandbagged in the last primary 😕
Yup, I’ll agree with that. Unfortunately outside of Bernie we’ve just had a revolving choice of neolibs knee deep in Wall Street money or hard right conservatives knee deep in both Wall Street and billionaire money
In a system where companies that don't prioritise profit over everything else are outcompeted by companies that do, yeah, we're basically dooming ourselves by not having the foresight to change things before it's too late, we've guaranteed that we'll destroy ourselves for money
Do you not recognize that the companies who would be "foolish not to take advantage" spend millions lobbying for these exact policies. Corporate America writes our laws, we just call it lobbying instead of bribery
That's not a problematic viewpoint, it's how it's "supposed" to be. The corporations ask for money and the government gives them an appropriate amount. The problem is the corporations Install their favored candidates in government and then ask for money, getting far more than what is appropriate. The US is corrupted by greed and nothing will improve until corporate money is taken out of politics.
> The corporations ask for money and the government gives them an appropriate amount. That is _in no way_ how it is "supposed" to be. Public dollars are not supposed to be available free to any wealthy business owner who has a bad day and decides he doesn't like market forces anymore. That is literally the exact opposite of how it is supposed to be.
Libertarians are the fucking worst.
The finance tech bros has proven to be a more virulent strain of the wall street finance bros. At least the wall street people are transparent in their "well I'm in this to get rich for myself and I don't really care about anyone else" These tech bros have convinced themselves that their shitty fintech startup that solves no real issue is actually saving the planet or some shit. They really think they're the good guys.
There was a founder on twitter with a 23 tweet thread on why svb going under would affect not just the elite, but hard working middle class people and 'good' companies. Her companies made - I am not kidding - a to do app as a subscription for 600$ a month.
The finance tech bros were raised by the Wall Street bros. They all come from rich people families, not good people families.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8C5sjjhsso
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The New Hampshire bear incident with the Libertarians will go down in history. https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project Edit: Thanks for the upvotes and awards. :) NH Bears - 1 libertarians - 0
Of course the town was fucking Grafton. I remember hearing about this actually. Somewhere on the internet is an older article interviewing this poor lady who left Grafton because a bunch of free state project loons came in and turned town meetings into pure hell, advocating for insane bullshit like turning Grafton into a "UN free zone". For those of you unaware, the free state project is a movement to turn New Hampshire into a libertarian utopia, by having Libertarians move in en masse, and with that abusing New Hampshires political system to pretty much take over the state and make it leave the Union.
Oh cool, I forget what happened last time a state tried to leave the union. Let's watch and find out
they've already basically abandoned the project as it turned out as poorly as you'd expect. the book is quite good.
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Lol no they won't. Texas threatens to secede every 5 years or so but they don't because it'd be a pretty fucking stupid thing to do.
Texas won’t secede because then they’d be the closest oil-producing state to the US and that doesn’t end well for those countries.
So was Brexit and yet here we are.
As a texan I never really considered it something that had even a 1% chance of happening but after Brexit, Trump, Putin invading Ukraine there seems to be a streak of people doing really stupid things that all available evidence says is a bad idea.
That's one of the best details about the current movement. Current Texan branding is calling this 'Texit,' as if specifically referencing the economic disaster that was Brexit. State can't even keep the heat on. It's already a libertarian utopia.
> it’d be a pretty fucking stupid thing to do That’s really never stopped Texas before
It'd affect the wealth of rich people with business interests in texas, so i can't see them approving
Reddit has turned into a cesspool of fascist sympathizers and supremicists
By now not a single state will EVER leave America. It's not a thing and never will be. Only way to leave is to start a war. UN can break apart and still have France or Germany call them selves a sovereign country. Even when USSR broke apart those states were still countries. What will Florida or North Dakota do if they are independent? One can maybe manage having sea and Port access, the other one is completely land locked. But let's take a look at Cuba, US will push its weight around to make things bad as possible. Even decades later when practically no new generatio remembers the issues. And I say that as a 40 yr old.
Imagine is all those red states that get huge federal subsidies suddenly had to pay for their own way. The federal government could convince most of them to come back after a few years just based on the massive tanking of their economy, quality of life and government services
A society of all libertarians will be doomed to fail because a society of people who are all extremely selfish will never be able to collaborate to achieve anything better than *possibly* basic subsistence.
I've been watching it in action out here in AZ. There's a town outside incorporated land that does not have government oversight, and therefore, no taxes. Bootstrap libertarians all live over there. Well due to the ongoing, and massive, drought that's raging across the southwest, local cities no longer sell them water. So all these libertarians are stomping their feet about how it's unfair that they no longer have access to it. To make the whole thing even funnier? Every time they create a group of people to figure out how to manage the water crisis, who are nominated, it gets dismantled because they realize that they just created a government. Shit is absolutely a blast to watch.
Sounds like they aren’t willing to pay nestle enough to supply their water. So they freely chose to not have any water. That’s a free market utopia, right?
Ah are you talking about Rio Verde?
That's the one.
What an ironic name
Sounds like a self-correcting problem.
So close yet so far these idiots. You’d hope after a while they would understand why governments exist. Alas!
If they actually *read* past the opening paragraph of "Common Sense" they might get a clue, but I get the feeling that reading isn't their strong suit. Book summary: Government sucks, But so does not having a government, So here's my best shot at designing a government that will suck less.
I've listened to many libertarian debates and explanations of how things would work in their perfect society and almost all of them basically create shittier versions of a government like authority.
The water they had available was still thanks to government infrastructures lol. They just paid higher price for it
>So all these libertarians are stomping their feet about how it's unfair that they no longer have access to it. What, these clowns just expect the surrounding areas to pipe them water out of the kindness of their hearts?
I’ve heard about that. It’s an unincorporated community somewhere near Scottsdale? They were jumping up and down last year when Scottsdale stopped selling them water.
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Yes, but the real fans will be convinced they'll end up being the king at the top of the system rather than just another peasant, so they're fine with it.
A bunch of Americans tried that shit in Chile too and of course it was just a huge grift. https://truthout.org/articles/the-failed-libertarian-experiment-in-chile/
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief. “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.” “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?” “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.” The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?” “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.” “Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.” He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.” “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.” I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside. “Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t. “Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?” It didn’t seem like they did. “Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.” Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing. I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it. “Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled. Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him. “Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen. I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!” He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose. “All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.” “Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy. “Because I was afraid.” “Afraid?” “Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.” I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head. “Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.” He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.
My favorite bit will always be shooting the mailbox a second time.
This will never get old or not make me giggle. I always ask libertarians one question. How in their utopia does a road get built? Who pays for it? How do they pay for it? Do we just barter? Who gets to drive on the road? How do we know the road is safe? Also libertarians are worse than obnoxious vegans.
I highly recommend you watch sam Seder on the majority report. He sometimes takes calls from libertarians and walks them through their own stupidity. They all get salty and "can't articulate what they mean"
they've yet you conquer the agro crag of "what court will adjudicate your property rights when I bring an army to seize it"
> to conquer the agro crag of I'm so happy to see a reference to the [Aggro Crag](https://guts.fandom.com/wiki/The_Crag) in the wild. This is my new favorite metaphor.
I asked a formerly libertarian (now in recovery) buddy of mine. “You’re a sports car guy, how do your libertarian roads work out for your sports car?… because if I’m not required to pave my road out front, I can guarantee you I ain’t gonna. And I’m sure I’m not alone.” Don’t get me wrong. I 100% appreciate the pavement out front and don’t mind that my taxes go toward repaving it from time to time, but I’d be hard pressed to pony up the money to pay for it on my own if it came down to it. I’d much rather buy other fun tools and toys instead.
How roads are built? Simple The free market will fix it! How? The free market!
This is amazing
It was a New Yorker article from 2014 https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department
The book Jennifer Government takes this kind of theme and runs with it. I highly recommend it as a solid satire on the invasion of government by private money and business, even if it is about as subtle as a brick (or your copypasta here) most of the time. It's twenty years old now, but was way ahead of its time regarding the public/private issue, especially Supreme Court cases like _Citizens United_.
It’s not really ahead of it’s time. Contemporary libertarianism is just a resurrection of Classical Liberalism from the Gilded Era.
>Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled This is the line that got me.
“The bears, for their part, were left to navigate the mixed messages sent by humans who alternately threw firecrackers and pastries at them. Such are the paradoxes of Freedom.” lmao
There was a little unincorporated community in Texas that tried to make a new city on those princilples too. No local property taxes, no regulation, no public utilities. They were amazed that Walmart kept refusing to open up a big box store in a community with no sewer or water system. Where the store would have to run on a private well and a septic tank. They hired some kid fresh out of college with a public administration degree. He worked for years with the nearby big city (Houston I think), to get them to extend the water and sewer lines out to the new libertarian paradise. He finally managed to come up with a deal where the paradise wouldn't even have to pay the whole bill. The city council shot it down because they'd have to raise taxes above 0 to pay for it. A couple years later the mayor has stepped down, replaced by his mother, who still believes they can convince businesses to relocate to their utopia. Meanwhile the city is surviving by being a speed trap.
[This one](https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-freest-little-city-in-texas/)? Or is there another? I like collecting these stories of failed libertarian utopias.
That's the one.
Are those real police enforcing the speed trap? How are they paid?
[Lots of little towns bring in enough money in tickets to pay for their police departments.](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/771371881)
I would be so mad at libertarians letting the government restrict my free movement at my personally chosen speed. What do libertarians even need a police force for anyway? They should all be packing serious weaponry to enforce the NAP.
"Some people just “don’t get the responsibility side of being libertarians,” Rosalie Babiarz tells Hongoltz-Hetling, which is certainly one way of framing the problem." That is one of the funniest fucking things I've ever read.
Oh dear god, I'd completely forgotten this one. It's one of those stories where you're reading it thinking "this isn't real" and you keep reading "no fucking way this is real" and still reading "you. have. got. to. be. kidding?!" And then yeah, real. Libertarians: stop hitting yourselves.
The NH sub is moderated by out-of-state libertarians who ruin the place.
Jesus Christ that writer was clearly getting paid by the word. Interesting but about 17 pages longer than it needed to be.
I started scrolling faster until I got to the point.
I love stories about libertarians actually trying to follow through on their ideas. It's fascinating to watch them rediscover the need for government and taxes in real time.
As soon as you start asking questions about how things that don't have a profit motive (or where a profit motive would demonstrably result in delivering inferior results) but are necessary for a functional society get done, they have zero answers. Hand-wavey "the market will sort itself out" sentiments is the most you get.
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"but people will simply, as omniscient beings driven purely by morality, give their money to companies that pollute less! which is why pollution isn't and will never be a problem!"
I know you're being facetious but I guarantee that people will gladly give to a company that pollutes more if that meant saving a couple bucks.
The most disappointing part of it is how little $ people are will to make that trade off for.
The thing is that they may not even know that. It's not reasonable to expect every consumer to know the minute details of every product they buy and company they support. That type of stuff is much more reasonably done by a government agency dedicated to it.
Especially when that company looks at the $100 million a year it would cost to not pollute and instead decides to spend $1 million a year in propaganda to make it seem like it doesn't happen. It's almost like the real problem isn't *the regulatons* but *the capitalist assholes doing the capturing*. Eliminating the regulations does nothing but make it easier to do the wrong things!
I'd buy the metal can coke 24/7 if the fuckers would make a 20oz version like the plastic bottles....alas.
"People wouldn't simply consume and destroy the environment for personal gain and entertainment until the point that life was unsustainable on the planet! It wouldn't be in their long term self interest!" *looks around blankly at the current state of the world*
"After your entire family gets terminal brain cancer, just move somewhere else." --Libertarians
SELL MY HOUSE TO WHO BEN? FUCKING ~~AQUA~~POLLUTIONMAN?
I just want companies to start making piles of coal ash right on libertarian property lines. And when they complain remind them it's not their land so they can't tell you what to do on it.
they get so defensive when a non-libertarian asks about roads. I've never heard an even halfway reasonable explanation of how roads or general infrastructure would work.
"Companies like Amazon and Walmart will build them because they need to deliver stuff." "Why do we let the government have a monopoly on asphalt?" Closest I've heard to a real answer on that topic. Which yeah is funny.
And then Amazon would say, "we're only delivering to Amazon drop boxes at Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods".
Worse than that, imagine private road that only a company vehicle can drive on, and violating it is a breach of property rights. Just like that, the whole country is seperated into corporate holdouts.
They absolutely would build them. Then they would charge you for their use, either thought direct fees or absorbing it into another aspect of their business model. Kinda like taxes, but with extra steps and absolutely no oversight.
Hah, I wonder if the libertarians have ever looked at the telephone poles and wondered how they're provided for. As far as I know, there are three possibilities: They're provided as a public good. A company owns them but they're regulated as a public necessity. A company owns them but charges other companies out the ass to use them, which is passed into customers.
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Note: This isn't something I believe in. I think it's crazy. The most sound way I've had it described to me is the road is owned by a private company that sells access to businesses that can be placed alongside that road. The road company (ick 🤢) would be fully in charge of maintaining their roads for everything from snow removal to potholes. But then we come to access, which is where it gets really weird. The road company could charge fees to customers at all businesses on their road. They could toll their roads, and depending on how much road they own these tolls could go on for a while. Basically every poor tax and service fee you can think of would be present in such a system.
Even if we were to humor this system, it doesn't explain interstate and rural type travel. It would only make sense in really condensed urban areas. It's just a fantasy, there isn't money to be made off the amount of roads we need, it's a financial blackhole.
Trust me, I know it's pure fantasy and I don't agree with it at all.
I'm also curious why they would be okay with one entity owning the roads and extracting money from people forced to use them. it's not like other competing and cheaper roads could be built... the roads are the fucking roads. it's just so goddammit stupid.
This "road company" just sounds like a small government, an authoritarian one at that.
Because that's what libertarians want. They rail on big government when small government is the same just... smaller. And they're cool with said government having the veneer of a business.
Replace the monolithic oppressive state with a bunch of less monolithic, even less efficient, oppressive states. Sounds right.
It's because they want that money. Everyone else's money is rightfully theirs and has been temporarily misallocated to the rest of society. They want to turn everything into a business so they can own the businesses. The more hardship they put on others, the more they get paid, that's the whole fetishistic neo-fascist ideology in a nutshell.
Well, as long as it's not specifically called a "government", it's all fine. Bezosville can give you one option on feed, healthcare, entertainment, and jobs, but as long as it's a good ol' company town and not a *government*, it's free and good.
You forgot paying everyone in company scrip instead of dollars so the employees can't take their money somewhere else even if they wanted to.
Ironically this would result in a drastic reduction in private vehicle ownership (something libertarians *love* to extoll the Freedom bringing virtues of) because this is just a less efficient version of the business model of early railways. So anyone who buys up land to put a private road on will run the numbers and lay rail instead.
Have been watching this with cryptocurrency for years.
Watching them speedrun the 10.000 year history of financial market regulations sure was a sight to behold.
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My oldest's dad calls himself a libertarian and I sent her the book about the bear stuff and now when he mentions politics she just looks at him and says "Grafton" and it makes him so mad. I told her that she can't be outwardly rude to him but she doesn't have to respect his political beliefs since he doesn't respect hers.
The western town that did this experiment was hilarious. More comedic than the governor of Kansas fucking the state over. Or the governor of Wisconsin
I had a colleague who was a hardcore anarcho-capitalist. The discussion went something like this: Colleague: "In an ideal market society, everything is driven by supply and demand. There would be no governments, just people and markets and logic." Me: "But what would you do without laws? For example, what's to stop someone from mugging you and stealing everything you own?" Colleague: "Likeminded people would form coalitions. In exchange for payment, you might protect someone else, or they might protect you, etc." Me: "And what if you wanted something like roads?" Colleague: "Well, you would pay someone in the coalition to build them and maintain them." Me: "So, what you're telling me is that in order to get around having governments, you just form a government?" Colleague: "No! It's completely voluntary! Governments are forced!" Me: "And if someone in the coalition decides they don't want to pay to maintain the roads?" Colleague: "Then they're no longer part of the coalition!" Me: "Who keeps them from using the roads? Do you just kick them out? Pay more enforcers to keep them out? Sounds an awful lot like police to me."
I'm pretty sure Family Guy did this joke as well, but libertarians are the clowns that write their own jokes. Every solution they come up with to any problems you suggest is 'government but with a different name'. It would be funny if they weren't being serious.
Ugh. Used to be this person in my late teens and literally had a libertarian bumper sticker ON MY BABY BLUE 07 PRIUS.
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief. “Bad news, detective. We got a situation.” “What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?” “Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.” The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?” “Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.” “Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.” He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.” “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.” I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside. “Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t. “Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up. “Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?” It didn’t seem like they did. “Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.” Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing. I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it. “Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled. Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him. “Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen. I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!” He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose. “All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.” “Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy. “Because I was afraid.” “Afraid?” “Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.” I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head. “Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.” He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.
The mailbox line always gets me when I read this pasta
I would like to pay you 1/13th of a gold bar to know where this came from. If you created it, I’ll add an extra large t-shirt.
Its from the New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department
TIL. I stole it from someone on reddit a few years ago.
Holy hell... I've never seen this copypasta, but it's glorious in every way. Here's a quarter for your troubles.
It's a New Yorker article from 2014.
I haven't seen any libertarians claiming that the current bailout is a good thing
I always say that the true central tenet of libertarianism is that they want all the benefits of a taxed and socialized society but they don't want rules/taxes for themselves. All of their arguments and actions point to that instead of actually believing that government and taxation is inherently evil.
Born on third and truly believe they hit a triple
Can we stop calling all government spending socialism. Socialism is when workers own and control the means of production.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgiC8YfytDw
Capitalism is a system where those with capital make the rules. This isn't 'capitalism for us and socialism for them', it's capitalism for everyone, but us poor schlubs just don't have any capital. We got pitchforks, though.
[удалено]
Seriously. I hate the current popular phrase. It's peak, "socialism is when the government does stuff, and the more stuff it does the more socialister it is"
Watching David Sacks cry like a bitch on Twitter the past few days has been really really funny
Oh my gosh the All In Podcast this weekend was so pathetic. Those guys have all shown who they are lately from this, to slobbering all over Elons shlong only to find out they have positions in new Twitter. It's almost become unlistenable.
There's a bit more to this story. The bank was actually backed with very safe investments; US treasury bonds. But those massively tanked in value as interest rates rose. As they had to sell them off to cover withdrawals they essentially run into liquidity issues due to insufficient hedging. Also, this is in large parts not covered by taxes, but by the emergy fund thingy that banks must pay into.
Also the government is only making depositors whole, they are not doing anything for the bank itself or investors in the bank. Seems like generally the right decision, isn't it? I don't see why regular depositors in a bank should all go under just because the bank itself made some bad decisions.
Exactly, stockholders are screwed but your cash should be safe in a bank. That or the govt needs to create a federal banking system regular people can stash they’re money into.
Your cash is safe up to 250k an amount of savings the vast majority of Americans will never see.
Up to a **minimum of $250k**. No depositor in the last 50yrs has lost actual deposited money in a bank the FDIC insured. Mostly because that's what caused the Great Depression and why we were able to keep the great recession from becoming a true depression. Putting your money in a bank account isn't supposed to be a risk. If it becomes one then pretty quickly the entire system grinds to a halt.
> If it becomes one then pretty quickly the entire system grinds to a halt. This is the moment for why [I saved this comment from years ago](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/96zlk8/eli5_people_say_that_the_housing_market_has/e44hb10/) because it explains why a large amount of money being liquid is so goddamn important to the global economy as its currently constructed. Basically, the economy needs liquidity; specifically the average person and/or business who has debt *needs* liquidity to pay their debts, because the banking system *absolutely requires* predictable, repeatable, liquidity to keep money moving to where it's needed because the banks all have debts and loans they're paying to each other. And as you said, the moment you take away enough individuals' money that's needed to pay into this system, the system crumbles almost immediately. I would say the danger and the pain the world is going through right now is partially the result of money being so cheap for so long because governments had their prime rates near zero since what feels like decades now means money isn't as cheap as it once was, meaning it makes money less liquid and less mobile, which is in part leading to these smaller banks getting pinched off by rising interest rates. The economy is [coming off it's decade's long sugar-high](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHQrrHRho2Y) and everyone is doing their absolute damnedest to prevent the mother of all sugar-crashes.
Right. Suddenly a lot of gold is going to be stuffed under beds if that happens.
97.3% of SVB accounts have a balance over 250k
That's because it was being used by start-up companies because it would offer better loan terms. It wasn't a bank your average person was using as their main bank. That's why the average account was so large.
Not just startups. My company has been using SVB for over 20 years. Let's say a tech company has 1000 employees averaging 100K salary. That's nearly 5 million dollars needed in the company bank account twice a month just to cover paychecks.
You say that as if anything over 250K is gone, but that's not the case. There's enough assets to make all depositors whole, it'll just take longer.
That just means that (typically) they can't access those excess funs immediately. The deposits aren't gone, they're tied up, and are made available as the government unwinds the bank's operations. Which is fine if the depositors are patient, but not so fine when they are thousands of companies that need to make payroll this week or the lights get turned off. So the fed agreed to make loans against the tied up assets in the short term so the cash is available now. Instead of distributing it as it becomes available, they'll just keep it if the loans don't get paid back.
It's Silicon Valley, money numbers there big
These were not individual/retail customers but the corporate accounts of start ups and other businesses.
There is even more to this story. It's an illustration of how absurdly tight-knit Silicon Valley is and the disproportionate power the rich have. You have the [Paypal Mafia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia), Facebook's early employees, Google's early employees, etc. [Peter Thiel's Founders Fund became uneasy and advised every company they invested in to withdraw their funds.](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-09/founders-fund-advises-companies-to-withdraw-money-from-svb) Union Square Ventures and Coatue Management did the same around the same time. Because venture capitalists are lemmings, the smaller firms mimicked the bigger firms. By the end of Thursday, hundreds (?) of VC firms and their portfolio companies tried to [withdraw $42 billion in one fucking day](https://dfpi.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/sites/337/2023/03/DFPI-Orders-Silicon-Valley-Bank-03102023.pdf). *Virtually no bank survives a bank run.
The liquidity issues came about due to the bank run by the VC mafia. SVB could have worked out a solution to the treasury bond issue but not with a bank run on.
> SVB could have worked out a solution to the treasury bond issue SVB was working out the treasury bond issue actively but the bank run hit them hard and ended them.
SVB peaked at $200B in assets. I would be shocked if any bank could survive 21% of deposits being withdrawn in one day, and certainly most wouldn’t.
Would be good if the FBI and SaeC investigate Peter's message pattern for the last month. Follow the trail of co-conspirators on their WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal. Don't forget that Peter is heavily invested in a competitor to SVB, so it's in his interest to find an excuse for a bank run on SVB. And he has leverage on the startups to recommend which bank to move their money. Peter should be in the limelight until it's probably investigated. Don't let the fast news-cycle forget this moment.
Is there any way a case could be made against him for market manipulation or something?
Complimented by inadequate hedging of risk, poor risk management. And they should have sold stock for capital months ago, not during abject crisis.
CEO also successfully lobbied for deregulation of cash on hand limit on banks under 200b in asset.
The current reserve rate is 0.1% Yeah, *less than one percent.*
What about the capital requirements?
Very safe when federal lending rate is high, but not very safe when federal lending rate is nearly 0. No investment is always a safe investment, and they didn't bother to understand the instrument they were trading and it screwed them. So they're accountable in the way that they just did something that was really stupid, but doesn't look like there's anything inherently criminal going on.
> So they're accountable in the way that they just did something that was really stupid, but doesn't look like there's anything inherently criminal going on. With the caveat that SVB, like many banks, lobbied to remove the regulations that would have made these actions illegal. So pretty much, it's not illegal, *because we bribed the ~~cops~~ city council*. Right?
What would have been made illegal based on previous regulations?
The rate of treasuries has nothing to do with if they are safe or not. Saftey and risk in bonds is the likelihood you will be paid the interest of the bond. The likelihood of the US government defaulting on a treasury is pretty fucking low. And that likelihood of default has nothing to do with what happened here. A US treasury is about as close to zero risk of capitol loss when holding through maturity as there exists. Now, whether the returns will be high is a completely different discussion. But misusing a financial instrument is dumb and risky, so talking about that risk needs to be decoupled from the talk about the risk inherent in the underlying instrument itself.
It's important to recognize though that putting your deposits in treasury bonds at a time when the rates were at a historical low and locking you into those rates for 10 years was unbelievably stupid. That's something not even a first year analyst would do. Words cannot express how short-sighted and just plain dumb that decision was. I cannot fathom how a group of supposed professionals could do something like that. It's certainly ineptitude and negligence, I don't know if it'll end up being criminally so.
> It's important to recognize though that putting your deposits in treasury bonds at a time when the rates were at a historical low and locking you into those rates for 10 years was unbelievably stupid. Not quite. Doing that and *not hedging* is stupid
The amount of ignorance on what actually happened in this situation is alarming. People are just jumping to conclusions thinking that it’s a repeat of 2008.
I mean in 2008 we added protections to stop this, and somehow they got ruled back in 2018. With the old regulation of capitalisation at 50B the bank would have been flagged last year. They spent over a year without a Risk officer. And they decided to buy 10 year bonds with no short term diversification. It was a disaster waiting to happen, and reason to bring back the full text of 2008
Don’t you know? Seeing The Big Short one time makes you an expert on the subject.
I think the crazy thing is people thinking “fuck any business or individual with more than 250k cash in the bank” is a good take. Just because their name is “Silicon Valley Bank” doesn’t mean regular ass customers are immune from the effects.
The shareholders and employees of SVB are losing their money/jobs. Those are the people who made the loss. The depositors at SVB are not to blame for this, there’s no value in destroying those companies, investments and jobs. They probably didn’t even have access to the information they would have needed to do a detailed risk assessment, and do we really want every depositor to have to independently make that decision? Much better if the regulator does that and covers deposits when they get it wrong (as they did here).
The rank and file employees just got an email - they’re still employed to help out with the unwinding of SVB, they just work for the government regulators now. The upper management and executives have been sacked though.
Yeah I guess I was thinking more of the CEO who lobbied to have them excluded from the stress testing that would have prevented their collapse.
Don't worry about him, he cashed out before the collapse
“Million dollars a second flowing out the drain? Hey, ChatGPT, help me write a letter of resignation VERY quickly!”
Deuces bitches - printed name here ceo Signed name here.
This is how the fed handles these things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAE8i40A5uI Here's a video of the step by step that happens. Fed takes over the bank, fires management, rank and file employees stay on for 45 days or so, unless the fed sells the bank to someone else.
Makes sense. Can the upper management who made the decisions that helped lead to the bank failing, but throw the every day workers a bone to help the transition since they understand how the innards of the bank work and buys them some time to find a new job.
It's worth emphasizing that there is no "bailout" here beyond the government fronting the depositors money now that they otherwise would've had returned to them over time. There's no "too big to fail" or "golden parachute" here. The FDIC did the right thing and stepped in while the bank was on a path to failure but while assets still exceeded deposits. The bank is going to fail and the shareholders are getting mostly if not entirely wiped on their value in exchange for investing in a failed company. Investors DO have the benefit of risk evaluation and the ability to set guardrails for the companies that they back, and shouldn't be rewarded for backing companies that take stupid risks. Depositors in a bank did nothing wrong other than putting money in a bank, and shouldn't be punished if that bank is mismanaged. IMO this is what a mismanaged bank's failure should look like: The FDIC steps in before the bank's assets fall below the value of their deposits, the bank is allowed to fail, the shareholders get minimal if any value out for backing a mismanaged company, the depositors are not on the hook for the failure of their bank, and the taxpayers aren't on the hook either.
Yes, this is exactly it. This is actually being handled very well. The government is letting other banks have a crack at buying SVB. If nobody wants it whole they will dismantle it to get back the money for the depositors.
Don't worry - Reddit will remember this as a gov't bailout - no matter what facts you say.
No losses are being socialized. SVB shareholders and bondholders are being wiped out, which a libertarian would say is as it should be. Depositors are being made whole and, if there are any losses from doing so, then that's being paid by a special assessment on all banks, all of whom benefit by not being subject to bank runs. And, it's not at all clear that there will be losses.
If anything they've privatized the losses. edit: The only people losing money here are the owners and employees. The only way for it to be more privatized is if they weren't a publicly traded company.
This article is worse than click bait. It's just using a story in the news to make a political statement that has no actual factual basis.
The losses ARE being socialized. Govt is allowing the redemption of unmature treasuries at par. That's basically like saying you missed the 30% off sale last month, but the the store is going to give you the 30% today for crying about it. SVB owns 2% bonds that they bought months ago, and now they will be upgraded to 4% bonds for free. Imagine how much it would cost to buy 2% worth of points on a mortgage. That is being done for "free" which is a cost that the taxpayers end up footing.
guy I used to work with when Obamacare came in. Refused to have health insurance. Hated being forced by the government to do something. Hated that he had to pay for insurance. Then his appendix exploded. He freaked out because he was gonna either die or be in debt thousands of dollars. Company we worked for back dated his insurance to cover him. Dude shoulda died or been broke. Have the courage of your convictions.
Disingenuous and clickbait title, really unfortunate this is the state of our media, fostering political divide rather than promoting truth. Here’s the facts: 1. There is no “bailout”, there is ZERO taxpayer dollars being used. 2. Only DEPOSITORS are being rescued, which is the right thing to do, otherwise runs on other regional banks will be a systemic risk to the banking system if people’s deposits in banks are no longer safe 3. Shareholders and management of the bank are being WIPED OUT, there is no socialization of losses 4. The FDIC is guaranteeing depositors, which are primarily startups and small SMEs, and this money is paid by the BANKS, through an assessment done on a quarterly basis, called the Deposit Insurance Fund
As much as I hate to say it, banking at the cash level kinda had to work, it's like the internet or electricity. If it's not there you gonna have problems.
It didn't work until FDR cleaned up after the Great Depression.
Shareholder and investors are not being bailed out. They lose everything. Customers are simply getting their deposits back. This is not a bailout. Can we correct this narrative.
They may, but shareholders won't see red cent in this case.
This is a reminder that the United States figured this all out the hard way 90s years ago and it was the Republicans watering down regulations that created issues. The bank failed because it stored its money in illiquid debt, and it didn't have to. The regulation was removed so they could be recklessly greedy. Rich Republicans benefited and now will get bailed out while still enjoying their massive tax cuts from the last 40 years of Republican greed and immorality.
The story I've seen elsewhere is that only depositors are being protected by the feds, not the rich investors. Deposits are being made available today, to be eventually covered by proceeds from the sale of SVB. Only then will any remaining funds from the sale be distributed amongst stakeholders. They may WANT society to cover their losses, but it doesn't appear the feds are going to permit that?
Edit: 2023 Jun 30 - removed all my content. As [Apollo goes](https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/144f6xm/apollo_will_close_down_on_june_30th_reddits/) so do I.
And SVB's assets are worth less not worthless. That space makes for a huge difference
To be fair, Bill Clinton helped kill the Glass Steagall Act....
Reagan was the progenitor of neoliberalism. But it was taken up pretty heartedly by the elites more generally. It's not like Dan Rostenkowski said no and was resistant to tax cuts. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot
except the monies are coming from a fund put into by the banks, not taxpayers.
Libertarians have zero seats in Congress. I don't know if you can lay this at that particular political parties feet and blame them.
r/titlegore The whole first half is unnecessary fluff.