[ExI] Banks

[The Avantguardian]

---- Original Message -----
> From: Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com>
> To: The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com>; ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Wednesday, March 7, 2012 1:14 PM
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Banks (was Re: Doomsday Oil Price: (was RIP: Peak Oil))
> 
> On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 12:24 PM, The Avantguardian
> <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> In a day and age when everyone is having to deal with the prospect of 
> losing their jobs to automation, aren't bankers at all worried? I mean other 
> than the right to ownership, which software doesn't have but that 
> corporations do, what exactly do bankers *do* that a machine can't do 
> better? I for one almost always use my bank's ATM. Does the CEO of my bank 
> do any more for me than that ATM machine? I mean other than give himself fat 
> bonuses for screwing up the economy?
> 
> Bank CEOs' pay is - or, at least, is widely perceived to be - not
> connected to the value they give, but instead to the amount of
> assets their organization controls.

This perception might be a huge part of the problem when those assetts can be things like millions of foreclosed homes that the shareholder's of the banks can't actually use or sell. If the goal of the banks is to increase its assetts in an open-ended fashion, the end result of an institution that both creates money and increases its own assets is that it ends up owning everything yet controlling nothing because very little of what it owns is part of the actual banking process.  

> Said CEOs would gladly replace their entire teller staff with ATMs
> if they could.  Opening accounts, making cashiers' checks, and
> other such services are currently done manually, but in theory
> they could be done by ATMs.  (Yes, some people prefer dealing
> with a human face, so tellers are retained to get those peoples'
> money invested in the banks.)

Fine, then contract with some young beautiful people to walk around your ATM kiosk helping the elderly to use the ATM. There are already cameras on all ATMs so you won't have to worry about too much hanky panky.

> Where banks make their money - and where the CEOs are mainly
> interested - is in loans.  If you could replace the entire loan making
> process with software (or as much of it as possible), then you might
> possibly start threatening the CEOs - though they have been trying
> this on their own.  (Indeed, some banks tried replacing a certain part
> of the process that legally can't - yet - be replaced by machines.
> This is the "robo-signing" scandal.)

As usual for the state, the act that is being punished is actually slightly removed from the ethical violation that warrants punshment. The ethical violation was not that they used a machine to authorize sales by signing in place of the signatory. The ethical violation is that they so used a machine to commit a super human level of fraud in single trading day, selling garbage they knew was worthless to suckers.  
 
Stuart LaForge


"The state that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards, and its fighting by fools." -Thucydides.