Who's Your Paypal?
"The Paypal Wars" is more than a brief history of a dot.com company that survived. It's "a wonderful exposition of Austrian Economics .... We see entrepreneurship, government regulation, and the boom-and-bust business cycles in action, presented in a manner in which the author not only sees the immediate 'small' picture, but the larger picture at the same time."
Something about Paypal makes people like me reflexively uneasy. But I can't imagine doing business now without it. With Paypal, I've bought and sold and donated and received to and from people in Siberia and Slovakia and Staten Island.
The next challenge came from Russian mafiosos, who were tapping the PayPal accounts on a regular basis, creating large fraud losses. Again, the nimble corporate culture came to the rescue, as the PayPal teams found ways to circumvent the criminals without largely inconveniencing their customers.
(Contrast this with the way the Transportation Security Administration largely inconveniences airline passengers to conduct what clearly are ineffectual methods to prevent terrorist hijackings. A gaggle of lawyers soon appeared to sue PayPal because some customers had trouble accessing their accounts; no one sues the TSA just like no one sued the FAA or other U.S. Government agencies after the 9/11 attacks. Only the airlines found themselves in court.)
Something about Paypal makes people like me reflexively uneasy. But I can't imagine doing business now without it. With Paypal, I've bought and sold and donated and received to and from people in Siberia and Slovakia and Staten Island.
