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ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

davidoks.blog

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Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#111

Post by runarberg »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #107
alex_sf wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If goods aren't being sold, then the price will drop.

Cool concept, but this isn't 1980. We've been sold these sorts of concepts for 40+ years now and things have only gotten worse. We have a K shaped economy. Top earners take the majority. The top 20% make up 63% of all spending, and the top 10% accounted for more than 49%. The highest on record. Businesses adapt to reality and target the best market, in this case the top 10 to 20%, and the rest just get ignored, like…

Irrelevant aside: But I hold grudge against the economists who picked the letter K to represent increased inequality. They missed the perfect opportunity to use the less-then inequality symbol (“less-then economy”.

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#112

Post by RHSeeger »

paxys wrote: post #67
aurareturn wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're already seeing large software companies figure out that they don't need 5,000 developers. They probably only need 1,000 or maybe even fewer. However, the number of software companies being started is booming which should result in net neutral or net positive in software developer employment. Today: 100 software companies employ 1,000 developers each[0] Tomorrow: 10,000 software companies employ 10 developers ea…

Why will we need 1000 companies tomorrow to do the same thing that 100 companies are doing today? If they are really so efficient because of AI then won't 10 companies be able to solve the same problems?

What makes you think they'll be doing the same thing?

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#113

Post by danielbln »

havaloc wrote: post #101
danielbln wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to bet that you are a millennial or older? We need our big screens for $IMPORTANT work (buying big things, money stuff, etc.). GenZ tends to be less bothered by it and just does it all on the tiny screen in their pocket. It's time to schedule a colonoscopy.

My boomer dad does more things on his phone than I do and I'm Gen X. It's actually astonishing how much he does on his iPhone. I'm dragging out the laptop and he's on his iPhone happy as a clam.

I've heard that GenX/Millenials are in a sort of PC goldilocks zone. People older than that cohort don't know computers and therefore use phones for everything, people younger don't know computers and also use phones for everything.

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#114

Post by danielbln »

twelve40 wrote: post #96
danielbln wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to bet that you are a millennial or older? We need our big screens for $IMPORTANT work (buying big things, money stuff, etc.). GenZ tends to be less bothered by it and just does it all on the tiny screen in their pocket. It's time to schedule a colonoscopy.

that's kind of an ad hominem, but also beside the point: most bank apps (and websites) are actually absolute garbage, especially the top ones, just one example: the Citi app (on different phones) for a very long time refused to allow me to make a payment or change my password, so i had no choice but to use desktop. Somehow still, top banks' ugly websites seem to allow more functionality/fewer bugs than their mobile a…

You may have missed that I've included myself in that cohort, being an older millennial. So it's less ad hominem, and more self-deprecating.

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#115

Post by idiotsecant »

alex_sf wrote: post #98
cjbgkagh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think it's likely that this is the first major productivity boom that won't be followed with a consumption boom, quite the opposite. It'll result in a far greater income inequality. Things will be cheaper but the poor will have fewer ways to make money to afford even the cheaper goods.

If goods aren't being sold, then the price will drop.

This and other fairytales.

The only solution here is to stop tying people's value to their productivity. That makes a lot of sense in the 1900s but it makes a lot less sense when the primary faucet of productivity is automation. If you insist on tying a person's fundamental right to a decent and secure life to their productivity and then take away their ability to be productive you're left with a permenant and growing underclass of undesirables and an increasingly slim pantheon of demigods at the top.

We have written like, an ocean of scifi about this very subject and somehow we still fail to properly consider this as a likely outcome.

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#117

Post by zerotolerance »

alex_sf wrote: post #98
cjbgkagh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think it's likely that this is the first major productivity boom that won't be followed with a consumption boom, quite the opposite. It'll result in a far greater income inequality. Things will be cheaper but the poor will have fewer ways to make money to afford even the cheaper goods.

If goods aren't being sold, then the price will drop.

"will" being the operative word here. High school level Econ makes no promises about WHEN prices adjust. Price setting is a whole science highly susceptible to collusion pressure. Prices generally drop only when the main competition point is price (commodities). In this case the main issue is that AI is commoditizing many if not all types of labor AND product. In a world where nothing has value how does anything get done?

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#118

Post by idiotsecant »

danielbln wrote: post #55
dehrmann wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is true, but for serious tasks, I need the screen real estate. I'm amazed at what some people can do from a phone, but also wonder if they're missing things, of if it's actually inefficient.

I'm going to bet that you are a millennial or older? We need our big screens for $IMPORTANT work (buying big things, money stuff, etc.). GenZ tends to be less bothered by it and just does it all on the tiny screen in their pocket. It's time to schedule a colonoscopy.

I used to be with ‘it’, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ anymore and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary. It’ll happen to you!

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#119

Post by collingreen »

irjustin wrote: post #88
paxys wrote: post #35

One key line about ATMs is buried deep in the article: > the number of tellers per branch fell by more than a third between 1988 and 2004, but the number of urban bank branches (also encouraged by a wave of bank deregulation allowing more branches) rose by more than 40 percent So, ATMs did impact bank teller jobs by a significant amount. A third of them were made redundant. It's just that the decrease at individual b…

> But will it? No, because if you think about Startrek the endgame is replicators. Well the concept that 100% of basic needs are met. At some point work becomes unnecessary for a society to function.

Why is that the endgame with people though? Maybe I'm just jaded but several different human nature elements came to mind when I read your comment:

Greed/Change Avoidance:

If someone invented replicators right now, even if they gave it completely away to the world, what would happen? I can't imagine the finance and military grind just coming to an end to make sure everyone has a working replicator and enough power to run it so nobody has to work anymore. Who gives up their slice of society to make that change and who risks losing their social status? This is like openai pretending "your investment should be considered a gift because money will have no value soon". That mask came off really quickly.

Status/Hate:

There are huge swaths of the US population that would detest the idea that people they see as "below" them don't have to work. I can imagine political movements doing well on the back of "don't let the lazy outgroup ruin society by having replicators".

Fuck the Poor:

We don't do the easy things to eliminate or reduce suffering now, even when it has real world positive effects. Malaria, tuberculosis, even boring old hunger are rampant and causing horrible, unnecessary suffering all over the world.

Dont tread on me:

I shudder when I think of the damage someone could do with a chip on their shoulder and a replicator.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions:

What happens when everyone can try their own version of bio engineering or climate engineering or building a nuclear power plant or anything else. Invasive species are a problem now and I worry already when companies like Google decide to just release bioengineered mosquitos and see what happens. I -really- worry when the average person decides a big complicated problem is actually really simple and they can just replicate their particular idea and see what happens. Whoops, ivermectin in the water supply didn't cure autism!

Someone give me some hope for a more positive version here because I bummed myself out.

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#120

Post by layer8 »

alex_sf wrote: post #98
cjbgkagh wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think it's likely that this is the first major productivity boom that won't be followed with a consumption boom, quite the opposite. It'll result in a far greater income inequality. Things will be cheaper but the poor will have fewer ways to make money to afford even the cheaper goods.

If goods aren't being sold, then the price will drop.

Or the goods will just go away if too few people are willing to pay their price, and only the lower-quality cheaper-to-make goods will remain.
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