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: 2) by dmc on Monday February 24 2014, @02:49PM
Umm... I bet the girls that didn't get promoted by the good-old-boy-ism of the system can consider it unjust. And I'd agree with them. I suppose they should be grateful they are even allowed to vote.(sarcasm)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 24 2014, @03:26PM
Good-old-boy-ism means only hiring those with degrees, and freezing out the highschool graduate from pharmaceutical research, engineering jobs, etc.
That women were given short shrift is not a problem of the college/university system. Its a problem of society in general.
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 2) by dmc on Monday February 24 2014, @03:35PM
Sorry, I guess I watched too much Dukes of Hazard when I was a kid, with the Good ol' Boys rad orange car with a confederate flag painted on it. I'm pretty sure Good-old-boy-ism has a long history of including racism against blacks, and sexism against women.