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Usually people don't care what the bank does because they consent to the government making them whole in case the bank fails to return the deposit.


You could use the same argument for the scammer employee who gambles with your money to make a personal gain. You implicitly consent because you consent to the government prosecuting injustice and returning your misappropriated funds.


Do you have any examples of the public being asked to consent before governments made banks whole after a failure?


Well, not really. Do people consent when politicians reallocate their taxes to bail out too "large to fail" institutions? Given the protests, I think not. What if you didn't vote for the candidate that voted in the bailout? What if you specifically didn't vote (or voted for an opponent of) that policymaker. That's actually anti-consent


The concept of voting includes the possibility that a plurality of voters reject your preference. You consent to this outcome by participating.

When half[1] the population refuses to participate (perhaps they're tired of being lied to, or the candidates are slime, or there are too many selectively-interpreted, arbitrarily-enforced "laws" to count[2], or the idea one person should represent 617,000 is absurd, or they just don't like bossing their neighbors around)...

Maybe the government doesn't have consent.

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/19/knight-non... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Code#Number_and_...




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