Utilities in general even. Nobody wants municipal water supplies failing quickly.

But for core commercial actives it seems like a fair observation.

No... but having them spend two decades failing slowly isn't the answer, either.

I agree that utilities are a special case. The main point is that you don't want them to fail at all, ever. If they do fail, well, there aren't any good ways for that to happen.

Agree. I think there's a distinction between infrastructure that must be reliable, and first-order commercial enterprises that must be agile and risky.

Banks are squarely on the infrastructure side. They're a foundation that people rely on to do the really interesting stuff, and as such should be 1) low risk, and therefore 2) not profit-maximizing.

We could let utilities fail if we had a special receivership and continuity process for infrastructure. Think FDIC takeover teams.

The bank argument is usually that banks cause a lot of collateral damage. If Peter loses his deposit at bank A then he can’t pay his landlord Peter who needs it to pay the mortgage with bank B, and his friend Bob might panic and pull his money at bank C.