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mrbluze writes:
"An interesting blog post by Charles Hugh Smith on Why Banks Are Doomed: Technology and Risk.:
The funny thing about technology is that those threatened by fundamental improvements in technology attempt to harness it to save their industry from extinction. For example, overpriced colleges now charge thousands of dollars for nearly costless massively open online courses (MOOCs) because they retain a monopoly on accreditation (diplomas). Once students are accredited directly--an advancement enabled by technology--colleges' monopoly disappears and so does their raison d'etre.
The same is true of banks. Now that accounting and risk assessment are automated, and borrowers and owners of capital can exchange funds in transparent digital marketplaces, there is no need for banks. But according to banks, only they have the expertise to create riskless debt.
...
One last happy thought: technology cannot be put back in the bottle. The financial/banking sector wants to use technology to increase its middleman skim, but the technology that is already out of the bottle will dismantle the sector as a function of what technology enables: faster, better, cheaper, with greater transparency, fairness and the proper distribution of risk.
There may well be a place for credit unions and community banks in the spectrum of exchanges, but these localized, decentralized enterprises would be unable to amass dangerous concentrations of risk and political influence in a truly transparent and decentralized system of exchanges.
It's still early days, but can new electronic currencies such as Bitcoin become mainstream without the assent of governments?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by gishzida on Monday February 24 2014, @01:18PM
What is with these "anarchist libertarian" fabulists?
The assumption that a private, unregulated transaction will be better / safer / cheaper than a public, regulated one is incorrect. The problem with the current system is that it is not regulated enough. The problem here is that the "libertarian fabulists" [Koch Brothers anyone?] are in fact social Darwinists. They fail to understand the idea that civilization is built on a social commons. They refuse to accept they have an obligation to maintain the social commons for when you destroy the commons you are destroy the civilization.
The fabulists say that when you eliminate this or that or the other someone will step forward-- Nobody is going to step forward to take up the slack except an opportunist to charge you through the nose or a public institution being forced to raise tuition and service fees or a "religious charity" that will refuse to serve certain people because they are "sinners against God's Word".
The cost of a four year degree in California 50 years ago was something like $10,000. Not so anymore, eh?
The question you should ask is: why? Who financed the deregulation of various industries? Who bought your elected representatives? Where did the money go? Why are you stuck in peonage? Simple: The very people that are selling this "Anarchist-Libertarian-Capitalist" fantasy are the ones that have profited by your peonage. By supporting them you are supporting a Cyberpunk Future of techno-peons.
good-luck with that.