The bailouts simply prove that the banks have more negotiating power than either the government or We The People: the banks were willing to let the economy tank

The bailouts simply prove that the banks have more negotiating power than either the government or We The People: the banks were willing to let the economy tank, we weren't, and so they won. It's why I think the right kind of social safety net would be a boon for the free market: We need things to be able to fail. As progress marches forward, products need to be made obsolete, whole industries need to vanish, and government institutions need to be voted out of existence, to make room for new growth. And we have very poor means for doing so gracefully; no one wants to start over, go back to school, and learn a new career, all on their own dime. So we get bureaucrats, unions, corporations, and citizens themselves protecting obsolete institutions which are a drain on real economic activity. If we don't have mechanisms for absorbing failure on a vast scale, to re-inject capital and redirect human talent to productive output, we're going to continue incentivizing people to put up with broken systems, whether it's BofA or TSA. I frankly don't care whether it comes from top-down or bottom-up: our society needs to feel comfortable with regularly firing organizations and finding other ways for its employees to feed their families. It's easy to focus on the rich assholes who pulled the strings and robbed the public treasury. But there will always be jerks who game the system; what really matters is identifying what they hold over us that allows them to get away with it.