PayPal is no Friend of Mine

The Highly Profitable Destruction of a Revolutionary Legacy

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PayPal. Almost as world wide web as Wikipedia and Google. A core element of many digital lives. A nearly-priceless staple for small businesses and content creators on this western continent and beyond. Combined in concert, PayPal is but one highly desired element in a comprehensive and far-reaching amalgam of what we define as the modern internet. With a workforce measured in the tens of thousands, which generates some $25 Billion a year in revenue, PayPal's business model can be best summarized as a bridge between the analog and the digital — as it relates to money and the transfer of value.
The problem PayPal is attempting to solve is an analog and legacy financial systems conflict against modern developments and needs. Our existing systems of credit and money are so old as to be literally 'stupid' in the digital age. As a result, small businesses, individuals, and even large businesses are increasingly forced into PayPal's restrictive pipeline in the vacuum of legislatively appropriate and mass-marketable solutions. PayPal is designed to do what all companies that exist and thrive within regulatory frameworks and failures are intended to do – ensure compliance with the higher order at the expense of innovation and users.

I'm not against regulations and national protectionism, nor will I be addressing the issues with FINCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) in this particular article. Instead, the problem with PayPal is fourfold:
1) PayPal is a reactionary corporate response to decades of political incompetence and failures to redress and innovate, especially at our "beloved" central bank - The Federal Reserve. The result is a dire devolving situation of sporadic and poorly timed reactionary policies and digital developments by that institution and its counterparts worldwide, leading to inefficiencies now being met by otherwise worthless entities such as PayPal.
See Further – "Federal Reserve Board - Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) paper published January 2022, or the previous "Digital Dollar Project" research paper two years prior. The Retail Payments Research paper by IBM Corporation. Or any of the dozen or more published articles by Central Bank institutions and the IMF circulating as we speak in the developed and developing world. (Included Below)
2) PayPal's business model is technologically outdated in the global marketplace and has been for over a decade. Moreover, their entrenchment in our highly regulated markets, excellent marketing, and seemingly friendly-enough customer-facing image and logo lend them no permanence or security. As a result, PayPal faces the same problems that most entrenched companies face – the inevitable and entirely earned eventual collapse in favor of systems and processes of greater efficiency, lower cost, higher political neutrality, and less user friction.
3) PayPal is too compliant with existing government and structure and willing to throw thousands or even millions of its users under the proverbial bus to save their dying corporate interests from inevitable extinction. Their recent back-and-forth regarding fining users $2,500 for public speech violations and claiming the right to withhold funds inside private accounts for upwards of six months or more is just another example of entrenchment and corporate complacency. PayPal makes so much money they don't care if they lose your business – or that you lose your business, which is a problem for you, not them. To wit, it isn't this writer implying such, but the actions of PayPal itself.
Remember – Actions speak louder than words in almost all regards.
4) PayPal has a 'two masters problem' – They are increasingly no longer the masters of their domain, which is a natural response by a free market to entrenchment by any company. While critically, they seek to position themselves as a secondary Master of Money, which is entirely outside their capabilities and power to achieve without extensive and detrimental new regulatory frameworks enacted by congress to the detriment of every actor involved, specifically – You.
Where once PayPal's value was nearly incalculable to small businesses and creators, the ink has already dried on the CBDC trade publications that will undoubtedly become their demise, which is more a reaction to the private and near-constant innovations by Private Money: namely cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin.
It's one thing to owe allegiance to One Master, but as the adage goes — you cannot effectively serve two. As our dollar faces its (too little too late) evolution, which is currently a reactionary evolution as opposed to a natural one, the almighty greenback is becoming a domestic political t