I remember going to the bank as a kid. It was an austere place – because money was serious. Banks designed themselves a bit like confessionals. The teller was your private priest of poverty or prosperity. Everyone spoke in hushed tones, so when you withdrew $2.50 from your passbook your fiscal sins were private. I liked having my bank balance written in pen, dated and stamped. It felt like money. I found banks intimidating. If bank employees were chickens, this was a battery farm. All the tellers locked up in their little cages pecking at the glass. I never thought I’d miss it, but I do.
Recently I visited one of those ‘redesigned’ banks. I couldn’t be sure I was even at a bank. I thought I’d wandered into a branch cafe. For a start, the chickens weren’t locked up. They were wandering around. They have legs. I wasn’t comfortable seeing them moving around the bank, giving the impression people had come here for a social chat. This is commerce. We need you locked up so we can do our serious money business. I do not want to sit on your fancy ottoman.
As I scan the room I notice there are fancy ottomans everywhere. Not queuing in straight lines as you would expect in a bank – but laid out as if people came here for community. Some sort of bank-based encounter group. We don’t. We come to launder our cash. Or ask an actual human, with a face, questions we can’t get answered on the app. We just want to line up, see a teller behind glass, do our business and leave. Like a money toilet.
When I arrive at the bank of the future one thing is clear to me. They don’t have any money. But they do have funky furniture. And a concierge. When I arrive, she greets me with a broad smile and welcomes me like I’m checking into a hotel. She asks why I’ve come here today. I’m at the bloody bank. Why do you think I’ve come here? To do my business and leave. I want to say ‘to line up and then see someone at a counter’. But there are no counters. Because there is nothing to count. This is the digital age. And her job I realise is to make me leave, or if I don’t, make me sit on an ottoman. They need photos of confused customers sitting on branch ottomans to show their shareholders. Start investing in ottomans now.
I want customer service so I sit on aforementioned backless furniture. Someone offers me a coffee. No. That’s not hygienic. This is a bank. Not Starbucks. I don’t go to a coffee shop to pay my mortgage. I notice the concierge’s main job is to tackle old people before they get inside. As soon as they enter they’re headed off and redirected outside to a machine. I get the feeling they came here to avoid machines, but that’s not how it works now. I watch the concierge run an impromptu training session on the ATM. So now the bank is running tech support, or a kind of University for the third age? Just let the old lady in the bank. It’s taken her three hours to get out of the house, stop running interference!
I never thought I’d feel nostalgic about lining up. But I liked it when the chickens were in their cages. When the bank was serious, and the money was locked up with the tellers. Now the tellers are up and walking, it makes you think the grand plan, one day, is that branches close and they just walk away. If all you are doing is serving free coffee to confused old people on ottomans, it’s hardly worth the expense of keeping the doors open.
I realise as banks transition to this friendly format, that bank robbery may become too difficult. A crime rendered obsolete by the digital age. How could you even rob a place like this? There isn’t any money dude. If you want money you have to ask Debbie and come back on Wednesday. Or use the ATM. You might need to take your balaclava off. Put your gun down. Sit on an ottoman. Have a coffee. Money is just numbers on a screen now. If you want to hold up the bank you’ll have to become an executive.
Collapsing social structures.
You have to deconstruct the old, to make way for the new. Programmable digital currency, in accounts at the reserve bank, allows complete control of the population. It’s the west’s version of the Chinese Social Credit system. The worse the current system is made, the greater the acceptance of the new.
if we believe recent articles in the soapbox, the central bank digital currencies (CBDC) are a conspiracy theory, even though every central bank on earth is piloting them and rolling them out, right now.
They think ‘The Great Reset’ is a conspiracy theory. When you point out that it is the name of the WEF President’s bestseller book that outlines the WEF’s goals, they don’t bother to check, and you still get censored for quoting from it. Pfizer docs, Moderna docs, APHARA directive, etc… all Aust Govt published conspiracy theories, apparently.
So true I’m afraid.
Oh gawd, so this is the brave new world? I rarely set foot in an actual bank branch these days. Feels like foreign territory. How times change. Not sure I like it.
People allow themselves to be enslaved when you make it an easy option, and tell them it’s for the greater good, while making every other option difficult, or down right dangerous. Why did people allow themselves to become feudal serfs for a thousand years? Because after the Roman Empire collapsed, it was the safest and easiest option. After a few generations, it became normalised to the point that no one could imagine the world functioning any other way. The elites figure we have given them enough technology, so the counter-Renascence has begun.