My Weird Hobby of Taking Pictures of Signs

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://t.co/HbHaNh7or2 1/ pic.twitter.com/3fOajl95L1

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on https://t.co/iSBh8sqXw0, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:https://t.co/fPnfGKhkR9 2/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

I think you learn more about the world by delving into others' misconceptions than you learn from their factual understandings. 3/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

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. 4/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

Which brings me to #SiliconValleyBank's apologists, busily churning out 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. 5/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

Here's a terrible reason to support SVB's bailout: if we let the tech companies fail, you might not be able to get into your house anymore after your smart lock bricks itself because the cloud service it depends on cuts off the startup that made it:https://t.co/PMw2GF6SzO 6/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 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*. 7/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

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. 8/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 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. 9/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

Morganstanley will behave just as recklessly, but will never be allowed to go under precisely because they are so structurally important:https://t.co/TSZBzQIB2V 10/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 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. 11/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

It makes me want to 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://t.co/fUN3OBlHiQ 12/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 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. 13/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

They're just everyday folken with more than $250,000 in liquid cash in their checking accounts. Whomst amongst us can't relate to that?https://t.co/R5MZWDFdKN 14/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 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. 15/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

They're totally normal working people who took no risks and bear no responsibility for the failure of SVB.

But *come on*. 16/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

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* advocate for endless SVB billions because of the *janitors*?https://t.co/0SDV5gVjN6 17/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 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://t.co/UHiBdR7OCv 18/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 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… 19/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

…Americans' homes is about to join the Federal Reserve Board:https://t.co/kNtpyoL3tK 20/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 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://t.co/3WuYN9MWYx 21/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

Only to have the illegitimate dotards of the #SupremeCourt make even that symbolic gesture moot:https://t.co/ZqlEKfAV8B 22/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 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.) 23/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

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://t.co/telRhHxqI3 24/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 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 triggers years of brutal debt-collector armbreakers chasing you from phone number to phone number, it's just *crickets*. 25/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

There's no question that the SVB failure resulted from a series of highly technical phenomena that offer a fascinating peek into the behind-the-scenes forces of an economy built on private banking and home ownership as the sole means of intergenerational wealth transfer. 26/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

But the fact that this is *complicated* 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://t.co/QWEPoHXpTG 27/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

When finance "experts" tell you that you have no business opining on this 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://t.co/W5MTnUyMox 28/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

Those same experts were caught bribing government officials to help their top staff *cheat*...*on ethics exams* (!!!!!!!!!!!!):https://t.co/IQNTxF3Ihm 29/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 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://t.co/CZOMH87xtT 30/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

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://t.co/nT1u2mcGJ0 31/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 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://t.co/oizjER6Rqb 32/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

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, 33/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

* or that bailing out SVB is acceptable because it's to defend elite startup founders, not ultrawealthy bank owners,

they are *missing the fucking point*. 34/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

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. They think that we don't want the finance sector reformed. 35/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

They think that we're motivated by schadenfreude, which means that they also think we've forgotten about broken student debt promises, about #robosigning and the #ForeclosureEpidemic. 36/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

They think we are fully onboard with rugged individualism for the poor and socialism for the rich. 37/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

These bad takes reveal a *profoundly* out-of-touch elite, the spiritual descendants of the French aristos who went to the guillotine with sincerely baffled hearts, unable to imagine why anyone would be this angry at them. 38/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023

Upton Sinclair said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." 39/

— Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr) (@doctorow) March 15, 2023