Checks and balances
One
thing that Finland really excels in is the way banking works from the
point of view of an individual customer, as long as you don't need to
actually go to a bank to handle business with an actual teller.
Back in the day before the depression at the late 1980's, all banks had an extensive network of offices so that even in every small village, the four corners of State and Main would house four banks. A few years before the depression started, the bank that later collapsed the worst had renovated one building in the town where I gew up to work as a bank, high marble columns and all, for the cost of about 50 million marks, back when that actually was a lot of money. I remember even then, as a pimply-faced punkass teen, wondering how any of this makes any economic sense, even though I didn't actually know any big words such as "return on investment". I recall that particular bank eventually ended up costing the Finnish taxpayers something like 50 billion marks, which would be per capita roughly equivalent to presenting a bill of $500 billion to the American taxpayers.
After the crash, the banks collapsed and merged and closed many of their offices and cut down heavily on tellers and other personnel, so that these days if you want to go the bank and do business with an actual human teller, you might actually have to wait for your turn for half an hour or even an hour, patiently waiting behind a horde of grannies and great-grannies. This of course never mattered to me, since as long as I can remember, everything could be done electronically.
Whenever I had to pay any bills in my adulthood, I simply made an electronic transfer, first with an advanced ATM machine designed for this purpose, and later of course with a web browser and Internet banking. All Finnish banks are electronically connected in the same system, so you could easily transfer money from your account to the recipient's account even if it was in some totally different bank. Similarly, you could freely withdraw cash from your account using any bank's ATM without incurring any additional fees.
In fact, the only time that I ever actually had to handle cheques was when I got some birthday or graduation gift. Here in Canada, cheques are significantly more common, but fortunately Internet banking is gradually making them unnecessary. I have understood that using cheques is still quite common in USA. As far as I am concerned, bits are bits and moving information around by physically moving paper over great distances is so very 1970's. I have often joked to my wife that perhaps I should be wearing bell bottom trousers while I handle cheques, and take them to the bank with a car that has faux-wooden side paneling. There is also this activity of "balancing your checkbook" that I have often seen mentioned and is supposedly something complicated, but I actually don't even know what it means. It certainly sounds like something that a computer ought to automatically do instead of requiring the inefficient use of human brain. Perhaps I shall leave the whole topic to the dustbin of history the same way as learning to use a slide rule.
In a way, I regret that I crossed the Atlantic ocean in 2001, since there are so many pieces of culture that were before my time and of which I get to experience only faint echoes. For example, I am vaguely aware of some kind of a beer commercial where a guy says "Wassuuup?" or something like that while making a stupid face with the tongue hanging out, but I have never actually seen any of these commercials. Perhaps this one is for the best, since I can easily imagine how annoying this would eventually get.
But we have to look into the future, not the past. I would actually be happy to watch physical banks wither and die completely, especially TD Canada, whose constant totally idiotic screwups with us are perhaps a topic for a long separate post in the future. Here in Canada, we these days get all our banking services from the President's Choice brand, which operates physically only as a small corner inside each Loblaw's supermarket and otherwise does everything with ATM machines and Internet. I can't even try to imagine the massive savings that this gives them compared to "real" banks in form of real estate and personnel. When Wal-Mart eventually gets to enter the banking business, watch out, since many things are going to change.
Back in the day before the depression at the late 1980's, all banks had an extensive network of offices so that even in every small village, the four corners of State and Main would house four banks. A few years before the depression started, the bank that later collapsed the worst had renovated one building in the town where I gew up to work as a bank, high marble columns and all, for the cost of about 50 million marks, back when that actually was a lot of money. I remember even then, as a pimply-faced punkass teen, wondering how any of this makes any economic sense, even though I didn't actually know any big words such as "return on investment". I recall that particular bank eventually ended up costing the Finnish taxpayers something like 50 billion marks, which would be per capita roughly equivalent to presenting a bill of $500 billion to the American taxpayers.
After the crash, the banks collapsed and merged and closed many of their offices and cut down heavily on tellers and other personnel, so that these days if you want to go the bank and do business with an actual human teller, you might actually have to wait for your turn for half an hour or even an hour, patiently waiting behind a horde of grannies and great-grannies. This of course never mattered to me, since as long as I can remember, everything could be done electronically.
Whenever I had to pay any bills in my adulthood, I simply made an electronic transfer, first with an advanced ATM machine designed for this purpose, and later of course with a web browser and Internet banking. All Finnish banks are electronically connected in the same system, so you could easily transfer money from your account to the recipient's account even if it was in some totally different bank. Similarly, you could freely withdraw cash from your account using any bank's ATM without incurring any additional fees.
In fact, the only time that I ever actually had to handle cheques was when I got some birthday or graduation gift. Here in Canada, cheques are significantly more common, but fortunately Internet banking is gradually making them unnecessary. I have understood that using cheques is still quite common in USA. As far as I am concerned, bits are bits and moving information around by physically moving paper over great distances is so very 1970's. I have often joked to my wife that perhaps I should be wearing bell bottom trousers while I handle cheques, and take them to the bank with a car that has faux-wooden side paneling. There is also this activity of "balancing your checkbook" that I have often seen mentioned and is supposedly something complicated, but I actually don't even know what it means. It certainly sounds like something that a computer ought to automatically do instead of requiring the inefficient use of human brain. Perhaps I shall leave the whole topic to the dustbin of history the same way as learning to use a slide rule.
In a way, I regret that I crossed the Atlantic ocean in 2001, since there are so many pieces of culture that were before my time and of which I get to experience only faint echoes. For example, I am vaguely aware of some kind of a beer commercial where a guy says "Wassuuup?" or something like that while making a stupid face with the tongue hanging out, but I have never actually seen any of these commercials. Perhaps this one is for the best, since I can easily imagine how annoying this would eventually get.
But we have to look into the future, not the past. I would actually be happy to watch physical banks wither and die completely, especially TD Canada, whose constant totally idiotic screwups with us are perhaps a topic for a long separate post in the future. Here in Canada, we these days get all our banking services from the President's Choice brand, which operates physically only as a small corner inside each Loblaw's supermarket and otherwise does everything with ATM machines and Internet. I can't even try to imagine the massive savings that this gives them compared to "real" banks in form of real estate and personnel. When Wal-Mart eventually gets to enter the banking business, watch out, since many things are going to change.
The United States banking system seems to me to be fairly antiquated. Even when you sign up for electronic payment, much of the time that simply means that the bank mails a check to the merchant. Wiring money from one account to another at a different bank is costly, requires faxes or even notary signatures, etc. This is why Paypal is so popular. I can't imagine Paypal being needed in Europe, except to transfer money between citizens of different countries.
It's amazing to me that each money, I need to write so many checks, or at least have my bank write them and mail them. It just seems so inefficient. But then, the US retail banking system has never been that efficient.
After the great depression in the 1930s, banks were severely restricted. They couldn't operate across state lines until the 1990s (banks existed in more than one state, but each state had a separate corporation with separate books, officers, etc). In Illinois, until the 1970s or 1980s, BRANCH BANKING WAS ILLEGAL. Banks could only operate in only one location, and couldn't even farm out their backoffice operations to another location. A Chicago bank tried to buy a parking garage for its employees, but was prevented from doing so because the garage was across the street, which would have resulted in the bank having two locations.
Because of this, the US had way too many banks, many of them very small. In the last 10-15 years, there has been a wave of consolidation as these laws have been repealed or weakened, but there's still a long way to go.
We can usually get our payroll direct deposited, and the big utilities can take money directly out of our account. But if you want to pay a small business, it's best to use a paper check or a credit card. But it is sort of stunning that while in most things, the US is very technologically advanced, but in retail banking, we're not.
Posted by Anonymous | 3:04 PM
In Europe we have EU Bank Transfer, which nowadays doesn't even have transaction fees in some Finnish banks, if you have a proper banking contract. And anyways you can get the EU Bank Transfer for modest fee of 6-15 euros in most banks. With it you can transfer money up to 50 000 EUR per transaction.
Posted by Dih | 4:26 PM
Hmm, I wonder what holophonic sounds will do to the movie and gaming industry. Requires headphones.
Posted by Anonymous | 1:05 PM
This post has been removed by the author.
Posted by H-Baari | 2:56 PM
http://www.cato-unbound.org/
Apparently Theodore Dalrymple's writings are published there occasionally. Thought you might want to know since you've mentioned him quite a few times.
Posted by H-Baari | 3:00 PM
I have been looking for sites like this for a long time. Thank you!
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Posted by Anonymous | 9:30 AM