The premise of "too big to fail" is that a thing is depended on by too many other things, innocent people, to allow it to suddenly become rubble. It's an insurance company and its policyholders did nothing wrong. It's a bank and its depositors did nothing wrong. It's Boeing and they're the sole supplier of some critical things.
The "easiest" way to fix this is to bail them out, because then the company itself can carry on fulfilling its obligations and you don't need all the people relying on them to individually apply to get bailed out or otherwise have to rearrange their affairs when the institution is instantly vaporized. But that, as they say, is a moral hazard.
What you really want to do is to destroy them in slow motion. Step one, the existing owners get nothing, they chose their executives poorly and suffer the consequences. Step two, those executives are out too, and the company gets new leadership and a bailout with the condition that the company will soon cease to exist and be sold off for parts, but first it's going carry on operating for a bit to satisfy its obligations to innocent third parties.
Instead of bailing them out while keeping it private do the right thing: public money bailed them out, so it's a public company now, nationalise, save the innocents from harm, and sell its parts to recoup the bailout after it's been properly managed through the crisis.
Leaving it to private investors to ride on the public saving a company is just another slap on the face. Yes, I know that the bailouts from 2008 have recouped the public money invested but it's a moral hazard to allow private investors to use this mechanism. Over time private investors will just find loopholes on how to leverage public bailouts for their own gain, they have a massive incentive for gaming it.
This isn't how class systems work in the US. The moral hazard is the point. The tails I win, heads you lose policies for these giant companies and their owners is not an accident. It is deliberate and crafted. What you are suggesting is no less than to change the entire social hierarchy of the country.
Isn't that what this thread is about? The GP started talking about how this social hierarchy is ruining the country.
> What you really want...
This is pure fantasy. What you have described is sets of people not doing what is in their best (short term selfish) interest.
It is not in a politicians best interest to hold Boeing accountable because then Boeing can withdrawal funding and fund their opposition, or more importantly economically harm constituents.
It is not in Boeing exec's interests because by the time Boeing experiences the long term consequences of short term thinking the people responsible will have already made bank, diversified, or invested in competitors. Some other company that wants to cash out their future will probably hire them.
Problems only get solved when those most harmed are the enact-ers of the solution. So if you're thinking about "what you really want to do", then you have to start with how you personally can add your feather onto the scales of justice rather than using hope as a strategy by fantasizing about some powerful responsible government.
Sounds good but it is still vulnerable - one part of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse that was interesting to me was the money deposited in the bank was appeared to be money controlled by the same people who owned the bank.
IE, I suspect the decision makers behind the bank cared much more about bailing out the depositors of the bank - who were effectively complicit because they weren't shopping around - than the nominal shareholders of the bank. There were apparently specific requirements that startups used SVB if they received funding from certain VCs which suggests something was happening.