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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

#131
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 growin…

Speaking of fairytales, you're living in your own.

Disconnecting value from productivity sounds good if you don't examine any of the consequences.

Can you build a society from scratch using that principle? If you can't then why would it work on an already built society?

Like if we're in an airplane flying, what you're saying is the equivalent getting rid of the wings because they're blocking your view. We're so high in the sky we'd have a lot of altitude to work with, right?

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

#132
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not that simple. If a poor person makes zero dollars how much of the reduced cost item could they now afford? We have a massively distorted economy driven by debt financialization and legalised banking cartels. It leads to weird inversions. For example as long as housing gets increasingly expensive at a predictable rate the housing becomes more affordable instead of less as banks are more able to lend money. The…

> Housing won't drop below cost of materials and labor

Only if every person born needs to have a brand new house constructed for them.

Not if - you know - people die and don't need a house to live in anymore.

But considering how it's been the past 20 years, I'm starting to expect that a lot of the current elder generation will opt to have their houses burnt down to the ground when they die. Or maybe the banker owned politicians will make that decision for them with a new policy to burn all property at death to "combat injustice". Who knows what great ideas they have?

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

#133
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 growin…

It's already completely disconnected, don't worry about it. Most people who own any real estate earn more in price appreciation per year than they earn in take-home salary from their real full-time jobs.

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

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Solving unlimited power before solving unlimited greed invites unlimited tragedy.

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

#135
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, so that explains why job growth is at a steady pace and the software industry hasn’t been experiencing net negative job growth the past year or so. How silly of me to rely on reality when it’s so obvious that AI is benefiting us all.

I think you're being sarcastic? I'm not sure. Anyways, this is the start. Companies are adjusting. You hear a lot about layoffs but unemployments. But we're in a high interest environment with disruptions left and right. Companies are trying to figure out what their strategy is going forward. I don't expect to see a boom in software developer hiring. I think it'll just be flat or small growth.

I was being sarcastic.

We are in negative growth, and the current leadership class keeps talking about all the people they can get rid of.

Look at the Atlassian layoff notice yesterday for example where they lied to our faces by saying they were laying off people to invest more in AI but they totally aren’t replacing people with AI.

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

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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” .

Using an inequality symbol to highlight inequality is elegant, I wish they'd gone with that!

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

#137
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 growin…

They key is to do it by setting up the right structure or end up with it naturally, not by laws and control, because then you end up in a oppressive nanny state at the very best.

You couldn't set up a lemonade stand using that principle let alone an entire society.

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

#138

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…

> 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. Long-term, they will need none. I believe that software will be made obsolete by AI. Why use AI to build software for automating specific tasks, when you can just have the AI automate those tasks directly? Why have AI build a Microsoft Excel clone, when you can just wave…

> Long-term, they will need none. I believe that software will be made obsolete by AI.

I think this is a bit hyperbolic. Someone still needs to review and test the code, and if the code is for embedded systems I find it unlikely.

For SaaS platforms you’ll see a dramatic reduction, maybe like 80% but it’ll still have a handful of devs.

Factories didn’t completely eliminate assembly line workers, you just need a far fewer number to make sure the cogs turn the way it should.

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

#139

I do not get what's special about banking apps as opposed to online banking. I've been doing online banking in the browser on a PC since before apps and I'm still doing it because dealing with data on a phone is painful compared to a PC. Is an app really that much easier to use?

No, the article is wrong about the iPhone.

It's the Internet that killed bank tellers.

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

#140
post #98

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.

to the point of where the cost of bringing the goods to market or its opportunity cost exceed the price the market will bear. Its why people living in areas of material poverty don't just get everything on discount.
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