Mastodawn

My weird hobby is taking pictures of #signs, especially "vernacular" signs, handwritten and odd. The best kinds of signs tell you what *other* people think *you* are thinking, or what you don't understand. I've nabbed over 4,600 of 'em:

https://www.flickr.com/search/?user_id=37996580417%40N01&sort=date-taken-desc&text=sign&view_all=1

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-une-guillotine/#ceci-nes-pas-une-bailout

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Flickr Search — “sign”

Flickr

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

I think you learn more about the world by delving into others' misconceptions than you learn from their factual understandings. Facts are out there for anyone to discover, but when someone inadvertently affords you a glimpse into their wrong beliefs, well, that's something that can't be learned in any other way.

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Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

Which brings me to the apologists for #SiliconValleyBank, who are busily churning out incredibly revealing bad takes about why bailing out #SVB was the right thing to do, and why you're wrong to call it a bailout, and why all of this is Very Regrettable but nevertheless The Right Thing To Do.

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Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

Here's a terrible reason to support the SVB bailout: because if we let all the tech companies who did business with it fail, you might not be able to get into your house anymore after your smart-lock fails because the cloud service it depends on cuts off the startup that made it because their bank account went up in a puff of smoke:

https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-bank-collapse-fallout/

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The Silicon Valley Bank Contagion Is Just Beginning

The collapse of SVB isn’t just a tech industry problem—as the rest of the world is about to find out.

WIRED

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

Look, if you think the fact that my #InternetOfShit door-lock failed because the company that designed it made no plan to let me into my house if they went out of business would make me sympathetic to that company, you are out of your fucking *mind*. If that happened to me, it would make me want to tear the lock out of my door, hunt down the CEO of the company that made it, set the lock on fire, and throw it through their front window.

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Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

Here's another terrible reason to support the bailout: if SVB's depositors lose their money, every other large depositor will flock to #Morganstanley, on the theory that Morganstanley is #TooBigToFail, and will behave just as recklessly, but will never be allowed to go under precisely because they are so structurally important:

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2023/03/can-the-svb-crisis-be-solved-in-the-longer-run.html

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Can the SVB crisis be solved in the longer run? - Marginal REVOLUTION

The failure and closure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) raise immediate issues as to how policymakers should react. I’d like to step back and consider what this implies for banking regulation more generally in the longer run. The main lesson is that successful bank regulation is an ongoing, dynamic problem, unintended secondary consequences are rife, […]

Marginal REVOLUTION

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

I'm pretty sure this is true! It doesn't make me want to support an SVB bailout though - it makes me want to break up Morganstanley, regulate the everlasting shit out of the resulting fragments, and create massive *public* banks that are run by and for their depositors, insulated from the reckless, speculative conduct of these maniacs who keep crashing the world economy:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-03-15-federal-reserve-banking-public-option/

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The Case for a Banking Public Option

Every individual and business should get the same Federal Reserve account benefits that banks enjoy.

The American Prospect

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

One more very bad reason to support the bailout: "it's not a bailout." The Biden administration wants us to know that SVB's creditors and shareholders aren't being bailout here, just the depositors - everyday folken with more than $250,000 in liquid cash in their checking accounts. Whomst amongst us can't relate to that?

https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/first-read/biden-administrations-message-dont-call-bailout-rcna74628

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Biden administration's message: Don’t call it a bailout

Move to step into banking crisis is an extraordinary move by the Biden administration that which will create ripples across the economy and our politics.

NBC News

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

There are a lot of totally normal people who would suffer if not for this bailout - the people who clean the toilets or answer the customer-service calls for tech companies aren't stock-option-fattened bros in Patagoinia vests. They're totally normal working people who took no risks and bear no responsibility for the failure of SVB.

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Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

But *come on*. Does anyone seriously believe that the absolute fucking *ghouls* who came out against a barely-there student debt cancellation as a precursor to *literal Stalinist gulags* are advocating for endless billions for SVB's depositors because of the *janitors*?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/03/12/larry-summers-says-now-is-not-the-time-for-moral-hazard-lectures-about-bailouts/

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Larry Summers Says Now Is Not The Time For ‘Moral Hazard Lectures’ About Bailouts

Lawrence Summers, an economist who worked in both the Clinton and Obama administrations, has been tweeting up a storm this weekend, advocating for a complete bailout of Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed on Friday after a bank run reportedly led by billionaire Peter Thiel.

Forbes

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

Listen: people aren't pissed off about the bailout because they want startups to fail. They're pissed off because they are living in the century of "socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor":

https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/iaqdrl/as_martin_luther_king_jr_said_in_1968_this/

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As Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1968: This country has socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor.

Posted in r/LateStageCapitalism by u/theheliumkid • 270 points and 8 comments

reddit

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

They're pissed off because the Treasury official who presided over the theft of millions of houses by corrupt, bailed-out banks after the 2008 Great Financial Crisis and then wrote academic articles defending the decision to "#FoamTheRunways" for the banks with everyday Americans' homes is about to join the Federal Reserve Board:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/06/personnel-are-policy/#janice-eberly

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Pluralistic: Biden set to appoint mass foreclosure cheerleader to the Fed (06 Mar 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

They're pissed off because Biden reneged on his promise for muscular, sweeping StudentDebtCancellation in favor of a self-immolating weaksauce version that would barely dent the crushing financial devastation faced by millions of young people:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/03/utopia-of-rules/#in-triplicate

Only to have the illegitimate dotards of the #SupremeCourt make even that symbolic gesture moot:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/28/1159606491/student-loan-forgiveness-supreme-court

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Pluralistic: 03 May 2022 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

(As to what Biden should do about it? The same thing Trump would: #PackTheCourt. Pack the fucking court. Pack it. Just do it. The court's legitimacy could not sink any lower. There is no downside. Do it.)

The rage at well-capitalized startups being rescued from unearned distress isn't motivated by a free-floating techlash rage at "bros." It's rage born of the fact that young Americans are being put on the hook for *their dead parents' debts*:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation

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Pluralistic: 19 May 2021 – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

There is infinite political will and bottomless appetite for money creation when VC-backed companies face distress, but when the death of your parents is followed by years of brutal debt-collector armbreakers chasing you from phone number to phone number, it's just *crickets*.

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Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

There's no question that the SVB failure resulted from a series of extremely technical phenomena that offer a fascinating peek into the behind-the-scenes forces that power an economy built on private banking and home ownership as the sole means of intergenerational wealth transfer.

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Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

But the fact that this is a *complicated* circumstance doesn't mean that laypeople don't have a right to be furious about it. We should all be suspicious of the inevitabilist narratives of the "experts" who claim that none of this could have been avoided:

https://prospect.org/economy/2023-03-15-qa-daniel-davies-venture-capitalist-bailout/

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Behind the Venture Capitalist Bailout

Financial expert Daniel Davies explains why Silicon Valley Bank imploded.

The American Prospect

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

When finance "experts" tell you that you have no business opining on this highly technical matter, just remember that these are the same experts who were paid fantastic gobs of cash to certify that all these failing banks are just *groovy*, mere weeks ago:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/kpmg-faces-scrutiny-for-audits-of-svb-and-signature-bank-42dc49dd

Those same experts were caught bribing government officials to help their top staff *cheat*...*on ethics exams* (!!!!!!!!!!!!):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/04/aaronsw/#crooked-ref

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KPMG Gave SVB, Signature Bank Clean Bill of Health Weeks Before Collapse

Accounting firm faces scrutiny for audits of failed banks

WSJ

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

Even if it turns out to be true that the kind of risk that SVB was exposed to is an inevitable consequence of an economy built on private banking and housing as an asset, rather than a human right:

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/banking-in-very-uncertain-times/

Remember that those choices are *not* inevitable. The decision to make housing the primary driver of intergenerational wealth transfer is both recent and very, very stupid:

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

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Banking in very uncertain times

We may be in the early stages of a banking crisis: why, what we're doing to avoid it, and what we may not get about it.

Bits about Money

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

Private banking doesn't need to be an unregulated free-for-all, nor does it have to be the only game in town:

https://publicbankla.com/

As SVB's apologists insist that tech startups should be preserved lest our #IoT gadgets brick themselves, or that SVB should be preserved so that the Morganstanley cancer doesn't creep into more of our social organs.

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Home

Public Bank Los Angeles - The People's Bank.

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

When they say that bailing out SVB is acceptable because it's to defend elite startup founders, not ultrawealthy bank owners, they are *missing the fucking point*.

But they're missing it in a useful way. Like any weird sign, these bad takes teach us a lot about how the people who utter them model our own beliefs. They think that people *like* smart gadgets.

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Steffan Ziegler Mar 15, 2023

@pluralistic great point, tired of the whole Clinton Era machine pining away for some glorious “reaching across the aisle” era of centrist compromise that’s as dead as Tip O’Neill. Pack the court, pass the ERA, start impeaching justices, etc.

JSON Mar 16, 2023

@saint_monkey Why would they do that? Then how would the Democrats fundraise based on panic? Then how would they pay their cronies to electioneer for them? Actually doing something and drive change would destroy the entire political outrage->grift flywheel!

Nomi Mar 15, 2023

@pluralistic there are "public banks" which are called credit unions and while many are small, there are some big ones too

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

@nomi CUs are great, but they're not public banks. Public banks are owned by state agencies.

Nomi Mar 15, 2023

@pluralistic i see what you mean now. I got thrown off by the "by and for depositors" which knee jerks my thinking back to credit unions

Tony Mar 15, 2023

@pluralistic At least we don't have to listen to people ask if the tech industry in in a bubble. Pretty clear it has popped.

My main concern is smaller banks. I've been a a credit union for 8+ years now. I've already seen policies change before SVB imploding. I've lived the life the underbanked. Living between misc. rechargeable debt cards and Western Union to pay bills. Hate to see if small banks and credit unions start dying or are absorbed by bigger banks. Can't afford it.

Chris L Mar 15, 2023

@Mtony75 @pluralistic seems credit unions also lend a lot to the same folks making deposits, that should make them safer. I get my salary into my credit union and also have a car note and a home mortgage with them. They lack the compulsion to grow that publically traded banks suffer from.

lizzard Mar 15, 2023

@pluralistic I also love signs, especially caution signs! Community spaces that accrete layers of signs are also great

lizzard Mar 15, 2023

@pluralistic I mean I know you're going somewhere else with this but I do freaking love signs

Mr. Completely Mar 15, 2023

@lizzard @pluralistic I can no longer find the photo but once we were strolling through one of those cut-rate travelling carnivals with the amusement park rides, and on the back of one of the rides there was a big black and yellow caution sign reading ELECTRISTICAL PANEL

Tindra Mar 15, 2023

@lizzard @pluralistic yes! Signs are very fun!

Especially the ones that convey useful info even when you don’t speak the language they’re in.

(Image hidden for cartoon butt)

lizzard Mar 16, 2023

@TindrasGrove @pluralistic amazing!!!

lizzard Mar 16, 2023

@TindrasGrove @pluralistic and so informative

Adam Rofer Mar 15, 2023

@pluralistic link changed from une guillotine to les guillotines I think: https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/15/mon-dieu-les-guillotines/

Pluralistic: Learning from Silicon Valley Bank’s apologists (15 Mar 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow Mar 15, 2023

@adamrofer Fixed!! Thanks.

Dan Ancona Mar 15, 2023

@pluralistic I mentioned this one to my family the other day and got some lols. They'd never heard of it, but I think there was an actual one hanging in one of my EE labs. (many, many moons ago)

Dr Craig Dalȝell Mar 15, 2023

@danancona @pluralistic Ah, Rule Two of every laser lab I've ever worked in.

Dan Ancona Mar 15, 2023

@thecommongreen @pluralistic what's rule 1??

Dr Craig Dalȝell Mar 15, 2023

@danancona @pluralistic Similar, but breaking it is why Rule 2 is about your *remaining* eye.

Piers Cawley Mar 15, 2023

@danancona @pluralistic I'm told ther's one at UCL, but I've not seen it myself.

Mr. Completely Mar 15, 2023

@danancona @pluralistic one of the all time greats

MrCopilot Mar 15, 2023

@danancona @pluralistic At a printer mfg, there were hundreds of these per floor. Even though the whole building was firmware and software development, every door that had a possibly open laser printer on the other side was thus labeled. The variations propagated along the normal nerd curvature mean.

Taylor R Campbell Mar 15, 2023

@danancona @pluralistic That one's missing half the semiotic joke!

What I recall is that the standard danger sign format read:

DANG
DO NOT LOOK INTO LASER WITH REMAINING EYE

CautionWIP 🎃+🇨🇦+🏳️‍🌈=

@danancona @pluralistic Somewhere in a box, I have a sign I acquired from a McGill University lab that says “warning lasers in use” then in a huge font below “NO STUDENTS”. I just love the attitude of that “I know this a university, but seriously you’re all animals, so go away” tone.

Joe Beam Mar 15, 2023

@cautionwip @danancona @pluralistic
Hey @funranium , don’t you have something like this?

furranium Mar 15, 2023

@JoeBeam @cautionwip @danancona @pluralistic The particularly unfunny to people with laser eye injuries Caution sign is one that I tear down semi-regularly on campus.

CautionWIP 🎃+🇨🇦+🏳️‍🌈=

@funranium @JoeBeam @danancona @pluralistic I’ve never seen that one and I support your work.

furranium Mar 15, 2023

@cautionwip @JoeBeam @danancona @pluralistic But I am happy to share this one that I made I while back.

Dan Ancona Mar 16, 2023

@funranium @JoeBeam @cautionwip @pluralistic I am terribly sorry about your injury

furranium Mar 16, 2023

@danancona @JoeBeam @cautionwip @pluralistic You didn't cause it but fuck that sign in particular.

CautionWIP 🎃+🇨🇦+🏳️‍🌈=

@funranium @JoeBeam @danancona @pluralistic That’s horrible, I’m sorry, in a commiserative fashion. :(

Kevin Archie Mar 15, 2023

@cautionwip @danancona @pluralistic on the other end of the scale, my alma mater had a huge tank of LN2 behind a gate that everyone had the key for, with a clipboard where you would write your student account number to be charged. It’s a wonder any of us survived

CautionWIP 🎃+🇨🇦+🏳️‍🌈=

@karchie @danancona @pluralistic Yah, but you had the crunchiest food possible, and if y’all didn’t clobber together high-speed beer chillers, what the hell were you thinking even?

Kevin Archie Mar 15, 2023

@cautionwip @danancona @pluralistic there was a burger place one town over with an A-Frame roof and a tradition where you’d remove the pickles and flip them back over your shoulder to stick to the roof. But if you dip them in LN2 first, the pickles shatter on impact. Science!

CautionWIP 🎃+🇨🇦+🏳️‍🌈=

@karchie @danancona @pluralistic I object to this disrespect and wasteful treatment of the noble pickle. I mean, sure, cool and all, but those are pickles…PICKLES! Couldn’t you have just frozen the tomato slice?

Nonya Bidniss 🥥🌴Mar 15, 2023

@danancona @pluralistic A classic!

alfora Mar 15, 2023

@pluralistic My favorite signs:
😉

ideaPDish Mar 15, 2023

@alfora @pluralistic
All hail Eris… long live Markov Cheney

CaptAWStarr (⌐■_■)Mar 15, 2023

@alfora @pluralistic the signs are from a Terry Pratchett novel The Thief of time, right?