alt Hacker NewsYou’re falling for the broken window fallacy, it’s inefficient as demonstrated by automation reducing the percentage of the economy devoted to financial services without any negative effects.
Banking used to really suck. Walk into an old bank building and it looks empty with spaces for a dozen tellers never actually used, this is a good thing as nobody actually wants to stand in line at a bank. People have largely stopped using cash because swiping a card is just more pleasant.
Meanwhile payment networks (Visa, Mastercard) have over a 50% profit margin, that’s a huge loss for the US economy. Financial services dropping to 1% of the overall economy would represent a vast improvement over the current system.
Retail Banking =/= Finance. You cannot easily standardize let alone automate a corporate merger or raise capital from various sources due to unique individual characteristics of each company, that's why investment banks exist.
The Retail Bank's main function isn't providing cash either, it's keeping deposits which they loan out for profits. Whether you use cards or cash won't affect those margins.