It used to be that once upon a time, in return for us depositing our money with a bank that they would let us get it back when we wanted to but that when we didn't want it back, they would keep a record of it and lend it out to other people. The cost of someone else borrowing the money would be paid back to the bank as interest and maybe they might give us a little bit to entice us to keep it there.
In pocketing the difference between the money that they collected in interest and they amount that they paid back to us as interest, banks became ridiculously profitable; to the point where of the ASX 200, the ten biggest companies were four banks, three mining companies, two supermarkets, and a telco - Dirt farming, Data farming, Actual farming, and most profitable of all Money farming.
The banks used to have great stone faced premises which faced the communities in which they stood. I think that these buildings were supposed to project a message of permanence, of solidity, of remaining firm against the storms of life. We should of course now realised that these facades were nothing more than that. They were messages of permanence, backed up with nothing more than the wind which sailed through behind them.
But sometime over the past three years, when the banks only started to suffer as result of everyone else in the world suffering, they all collectively decided to go full on knavish and start taking away the premises and machinery that allowed us to get some of out money back. In addition to closing the physical premises left right and centre, because apparently out money is good enough but all of out faces are scum, banks have decided to start closing all of the automatic teller machines as well, because out money is good enough but paying the electricity costs and the relatively small insurance costs in letting us get back some of our own money, isn't good enough.
At my local shopping centre in the wilds of suburbia, in the scum scum scum western suburbs, the banks have not only collectively closed branches, but the automatic teller machines have now been replaced by one operated by independent private firms. Where once there were seperate machines which were operated by the big four banks all independent of each other, they are all gone. The one black machine which simultaneously stands for none of them and yet simultaneously stands for all of the banks' collective disdain for us, stands lonely. The free marketeers who trumpeted the benefits of competition must surely realise that they choice that they kept on blasting away at, is no more. There is no choice. Or rather, there's Hobbes' choice, Buckley's or none.
Of course I realise that there will always be a class of companies which exist in the spaces left behind, who do nothing more than charge usury but this is a space which should actually exist. The banks already make money hand over fist without having to do very much, and there is a good argument to be made that the entire financial system is purely made up of knaves who just make their money taking the cream of the top, as they moves piles of money from one place to another.
Practically all of these third party automatic teller machines are trimmed in black and have generic names like ATMX, ATM+, Premier Cash, and other assorted scumbucketry names. They know that they don't have to try and put any effort into branding themselves because they aren't really selling a product for which brand differentiation makes any sense. The banks themselves already went to the effort of establishing brands and in some cases for more than a century, but the third party automatic teller machine people are dispensing a service which most of us would rather they didn't.
It's not like the product that these third party automatic teller machines is selling is particularly revolutionary. The money changers in the temple in Jerusalem in the first century were examples of this 'service'; which for the same reason that these exist, is because the people who should have been providing the service, through inactivity and laziness, either gave up or sold the space to them.
As a consumer the worst thing about this is that there's not exactly anyone you can complain to about it. There's no point blowing your lid at your local bank branch because that likely doesn't exist any more; if you phone the bank you're just as likely to get some call centre in Greater Ethnia and Foreign Overseasus where the staff are completely powerless to help; the banks themselves are run by people who are increasingly unanswerable to even their own shareholders; and the amount of responsibility which exists is spread so far and thin that to pierce it is like popping a soap bubble.
As I hammer away on my laptop, the place where I am currently sat sitting stands as a mausoleum to what was once Australia's central bank. I am currently in a very trendy coffee shop in Wollongong, which was once a branch of the Commonwealth Bank. This bank was the central bank for the nation, before it became just a government owned banking corporation, before it became a privately owned banking corporation, before this branch was sold off and is now just a coffee shop (I did not want to go to a chain place).
Across the street there is an electronic billboard with adverts for fashion companies, fizzy drinks, petrol stations and most ironic of all, the very bank which used to occupy the premises which I am currently sitting in. Their slogan is one word "Can"; which I also take to be in irony because I can not. I also realise that this is very much like being an old man yelling at a cloud for all the good that it will do. The people who have done this to us, are taking fees and profits away; so they are unlikely to stop.
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