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

davidoks.blog

321–330 of 607 posts

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

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should one child get an LLM teacher or doctor while others get individualized attention by a skilled human being? Is the value in the outcome of receiving medical advice and care, and becoming educated, or is the value just in the co-opting of another human being's attention? If the value is in the outcome, the means to achieving that aren't of much consequence.

The premise of your argument is that "the outcome" can be separated from the process. This is true enough for manufacturing bricks: I don't much care what processes was used to create a brick if it has certain a compressive strength, mass, etc. But Baumol's argument, which you introduced to the conversation, is that outcome and process cannot actually be distinguished, even if a distinction in thought is possible amo…

> But Baumol's argument, which you introduced to the conversation, is that outcome and process cannot actually be distinguished

How is that Baumol's argument? How is 'outcome' vs 'process' relevant to his argument at all?

'Cost disease' is just the foundational truth that the cost of the output from industries with stagnant productivity will increase due to the fact that the workers in that industry can be more valuable in other industries, reducing the number of relative workers in the stagnant industry.

If you want to make the output from a stagnant industry available to a broader spectrum of the population then you have to improve the productivity of that industry.

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

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But will it? My prediction is no, because productivity gains must benefit the lower classes to see a multiplier in the economy. For example, ATMs being automated did cause a negative drop in teller jobs, but fast money any time does increase the velocity of money in the economy. It decreases savings rate and encourages spending among the class of people whose money imparts the highest multiplier. AI does not. All t…

I would argue we've even already seen this play out with productivity gains across the economy over the last 40 years. The American middle class has been gradually declining since the '80s. AI seems likely to accelerate that trend for the exact reasons you point out. A lot of people recognize this pattern even if they can't articulate it, and that's why they hate AI so much. To them, it doesn't matter if AI lives up…

Well, I see I've thoroughly angered the billionaire wannabes. Funny how they never offer any solutions to these problems and just make a stink about them being acknowledged in the first place.

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

#323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1990? We were solid lower-middle class, and I got a computer for Christmas in 1983. I bought my own, from $$ saved by working in 1987.

Computers were roughly ~ $1000 in 1990. How did your lower-middle class family justify a $1000 expenditure inflation adjusted to $2565 today? Average minimum wage in the US is $11.30 so that's 29 days working at minimum wage. My family was on the border of upper-lower and lower-middle and we bought a computer once and used it for 10+ years. I dumpster dove later to scavenge parts for upgrading until the mid 2000s whe…

Yes and also keep in mind that low-income in US is high income in most of the world!

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

#324
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is garbage hypercapitalist/libertarian ideology. Go on then, how do you decide what people deserve? How do you negotiate with others who disagree with you? > examples above like public libraries I agree! The nice part about all these mechanisms is that they’re voluntary. If you’re suggesting that The Engineer’s actions should be constrained entirely by his own conscience and social pressure, then we agree. No…

We decide via a hopefully elected government. These examples aren’t generally voluntary once implemented. I can’t get a refund from my public library or parks department if I decide not to use it. The social pressure placed on The Engineer is the manifestation of law. That’s all law is: a set of agreed-upon social contracts, enforced by various means. Obviously, many dictators and governments get away with badly mist…

Slavery was (is) also an agreed upon social contract, enforced by various means. What makes it wrong? You clearly have morally prescriptive beliefs. Why are you so sure that your moral prescriptions are the right ones? And that being in the majority gives you the right to impose your beliefs on others?

What if you are in the minority? Do you just accept the hypercapitalist dictates of the majority? Why not?

Law is more than convention. What distinguishes legitimate from illegitimate law?

The only way for people who disagree axiomatically to get along is to impose on each other minimally.

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

#325
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These exact arguments could have been made 50 years ago about why laptops are impossible. But now, we not only have laptops, we run horribly inefficient GUIs in horribly inefficient VMs on them. The dollar-per-compute trend goes ever downward.

It will never ever be as cheap as as cron job and a shell script. There is a certain limit to how efficient using an LLM to do a job vs using an LLM to create a job is. There is a large distinction in compute and power resources between the two. Don't mistake one for the other.

> It will never ever be as cheap as as cron job and a shell script.

Yes. That's precisely why my company runs dBase 7 on a fleet of old 286DX machine from Compaq. /s

Running obsolete software will be cheaper, but the value provided by the newer technology will make the difference insignificant.

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

#326
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…

> A third of them were made redundant.

More like something closer to 100%. The ATM was notable for enabling a complete change in mission. The historical job of teller largely disappeared, but a brand new job never done before was created in its wake. That is why there was little change in the number of people employed.

> because of deregulation and a booming economy and whatever else.

The deregulation largely happened in the 1970s, while you're talking about 1988 onward. The reality is that ATM actually was the primary catalyst for the specific branch expansion you are talking about. Like above, the ATM made the job of teller redundant, but it introduced a brand new job. A job that was most effective when the workers were closer to the customer, hence why workers were relocated.

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

#327
I don't feel the phone conclusion is quite correct, because it's not just the need to use an ATM that has dropped. The need to use a banking app or website has also dropped.

The behavior of companies has changed dramatically. Checks have almost vanished, you can often set up automatic payments, and you can get bank balance notification emails/messages. A large portion of banking interactions are fully automated.

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

#328

I'm based in the rich Western world. Whenever I travel elsewhere, I'm amazed by the cheapness of labor. Humans would attend a gas station or fetch items in a store. Why? They're completely unneeded, I can do (and WANT to do) that myself. I always feel sad about these people, trapped in an economic system that forces them into useless labour when they could spend their time learning actually useful skills.

It is a different mindset and they are happy with what they are doing. I come from India where there is a ton of that labor. When I lived there, I had a couple of full time house help, supplemented by cook etc as needed. They had plenty of time by themselves. They would genuinely just zone out when they had free time, even significantly long. THey liked the easiness of the job, and the fact that once it is over, it is just over. No need to think about tomorrow, take your work in your head etc. A lot of the world's people are like that, maybe even a significant majority.

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

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My prediction is no, because productivity gains must benefit the lower classes to see a multiplier in the economy. Baumol's cost disease hurts the lower classes by restricting their access to services like health care and education, and LLMs/agents make it possible to increase productivity in these areas in ways which were once unimaginable. The problem with services is that they're typically resistant to productiv…

"Baumol's cost disease hurts the lower classes by restricting their access to services like health care and education, and LLMs/agents make it possible to increase productivity in these areas in ways which were once unimaginable." You've expressed very clearly what LLMs would have to do in order to be economically transformative. "If you can get high quality medical advice for effectively nothing, if you can get high…

If I described my symptoms to an AI and it suggested a diagnosis, I would defintely get a second opinion.

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

#330
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…

It’s not just the economy, the US population increased 20% over that period while the number of tellers dropped by around 16%.

Net result ATM’s likely cost ~30-40% of bank teller jobs.

Population is really important to adjust for in employment statistics. Compare farmers in the USA in 2025 vs 1800, and yes the absolute number is up but the percentage is way down.

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