opening line of argument is incorrect: police helicopters do fly patrol, for uses as mundane as targetting highway speeding, and are profitable in that respect.

WHOA WHOA WHOA

look here, pal, when i make a counterpoint around on the internet, i expect a stiffly ideological rebuttal, not any of this earnest bullshit

srs though, i agree with you on this to a certain point. i also think that every business should be allowed to do most any retarded thing with their budgets that they want to, for their own reward and their own risks.

where we diverge, i think, from reading your other posts, is that you might believe that businesses should be able to get as large as they want, and then also fail. there is truth to the phrase, "too large to fail." the truth is, that if these banks had failed, this would have (directly) lead to the banks and other institutions that they owed money, to also fail. this would have meant that the institutions that held most of america's money (both businesses and private citizens) would fail, and not have enough money to pay out to citizens withdrawing their funds. then a run on the banks, which leads to many more banks failing as all of their capital is being withdrawn by scared citizens, increasing the problem to the point of, well, great depression.

this isn't an exaggeration. in two days in sept 2008, WaMu (largest savings and loan), and wachovia (4th largest financial institution) had a combined $21 billion bank run: businesses and citizens withdrawing their money and stashing it. if the government hadn't taken swift action, we'd be having a very different conversation right now. there aren't many things i thank the bush administration for, but this is one of them. since i'm made of point of my distaste for bush just now, i should make very clear i don't blame his admin for the crisis. the 2008 situation was the result of very hard work by banking execs, and nearly thirty years of hodgepodge financial regulations by every congress and president that sat.

i'm not saying the bailout was a good thing all over. i wished that the concept of the economy being strong enough to withstand a run on the banks without a lost decade (or three) was a realistic one, but it wasn't.

i think i'm getting chatty and off-topic. where i think you're right: the bailout laid the framework for businesses to repeat the same mistakes with the notion that they can forever get away with it, profiting when their luck is good, bailed out by the taxpayer when it isn't.

the solution, though, wasn't to deny a bailout, instead, it was to use regulation to limit the size of businesses in an industry (in this case, finance industry) to stop them from growing so large that their failure could destabilize the national economy. to catchphrase it, "don't say there isn't too large to fail, prevent there from being too large to fail.

not sure if trolling, or just revisionist

fannie+freddie were not forced by law to to give subprime loans. they were compelled by the market forces, as propelled by de/unregulated banks (2004 lowered Debt Capital Rule, unregulated derivatives and CDO market, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, DIDMCA, adjustable-rate mortages), which allowed the major institutions to over-leverage themselves while dealing out predatory ARMs.

if fannie+freddie had not existed the 2008 FC would have still happened in the private sector alone. northern rock, countrywide, bear stearns, lehman brothers, merril lynch would have still all collapsed/required government takeover. the (de)regulatory framework simply allowed them astronomic profits at substantial risk, with the knowledge that any failure would cause systemic collapse, thus requiring government action, thus mitigating any risk to the personal wealth of the execs and traders.

yes, fannie+freddie were headed by some fuckups that made decisions very similar to the large banks. but they were the decisions of private executives; these organizations were not compelled by law to seek inappropriate mortgages and then leverage them on the CDO market. they were compelled by high profits and low effective risk, just like the other speculative lenders.

/r/relevant_username

what? no.

in any areas where population density is a problem, the cable has already been laid for decades now. any equipment upgrades that needed done were also completed many years ago.

in areas where population density is not a problem, "laying cable" is incredibly cheap work, and often subsidized.

the "expense" is that the large telecoms have lobbied their way into regional monopolies, and legally prevent competitors from supplying better products (unlimited packages).

in louisiana, i was getting Cox's 8Mbps connection with no cap for $55 a month. i typically used about 170GB/month

in quebec, Videotron's 8Mbps connection cost $45 a month, but only had a 50GB cap. unusable.
Videotron's 60Mbps connection costs $83 a month with a 150GB cap. unreasonable price for the cap, still, and absurd speed - what kind of residence would need that? i can't find any slowdowns in anything i do with 15Mbps

i settled for videotron's 15Mbps connection: $55 a month, 90GB cap. toe the line every month and am getting sick of watching the (6-12 hours behind) meter on their website. hunted for an alternative two weeks ago, came up short considering the home phone/basic cable bundle.

getting fed up with this.

right, that is what the website is. slashcode.com isn't a statement, it's consistency.

yes, i agree, slashdot did (and to a lesser extent, does) have an agenda, which is why we read the "news" here we do.

in the vein of this conversation as the GP phrased it, though, slashdot does not participate in movements at large, a la the GP's question, "What about... SLASHDOT?

What the hell guys? Do we not care about these bills to even change the color scheme?"

the answer to that is, slashdot is not a site that participates in these sort of editorial statements. i'm not saying that the editors should, or that it would be a better thing to do. i'm just saying that they don't do anything to progress the causes they believe in. if you have some links that tell me otherwise, i will be glad to read.

did they do anything to express this, besides linking to echo-chamber articles that (actual) journalists write?

i'm not saying they didn't favor linking that type of news and coverage, of course they did (still mostly do). i'm saying they didn't do anything about it.

similar to what i replied to xtracto, you're talking about users talking about things they themselves believed in, in relation to the news articles of the day. slashdot as a website, business, and editorial platform doesn't seem to take stands on topics or causes.

i think we're talking about two different things.

slashdot mods just posted echo-chamber news articles from different websites, and the users patted each other's backs with long posts and +5 scores to everything that agreed with their outrage

slashdot, as a website or a platform, hasn't done anything (i can think of) participating in any cause, like the event being held today on sites like wikipedia, reddit, etc).

i haven't been reading slashdot consistently forever, but i've never known the site at large to get behind a cause

around here, editorializing is for timothy's article summaries, only BOOM