I don't understand your point. Those other items are government services that I receive in exchange for paying taxes. Banking is a private for-profit enterprise, except when they mess up, then I pay for it. How are they the same?
but you don't use medicare every day right? You only use it when there's a problem.
Just the same, not everyone "uses" bank bailouts, but when they do, it prevents other problems in society.
The only reason you'd be against it is because you think you will _never_ use a bank bailout, so in your mind, you're paying a tax for a benefit which you will never receive.
But then why isn't this the same argument used for regular welfare?
'Privatize profits, socialize losses beyond a certain threshold' wouldn't be as compelling of a slogan to rally behind.
It's unfortunate that a sizable fraction of HN comments veer into sloganeering nowadays but I don't blame the parent, there are simply not that many interesting one-liners left to say that hasn't been said dozens of times already after 35 million comments.
System is working out nicely actually.