The Further Enshitification of PayPal vs The Great Resignation
Let's Get Innovative & Create Workers-in-Residence Zoning!
The further enshitification of PayPal
PayPal's new no backup funding policy is even shittier than that. Paypal also places limits on how much of our PayPal funds we can spend per day. This is the message PayPal sends after denying access to PayPal funds:
"We understand the inconvenience of a transaction decline – and want to provide some additional information that may help reduce the likelihood of it happening again.
Debit cards – which draw from available funds you have with PayPal – have daily spend limits to help minimize risk to cardholders. Daily limits reset at midnight local time."
We are living in a dystopian science fiction drama of our own creation. Even inaction is action as it docilly accepts the power that the ownership class holds over everyone else.
The explanation is written with such vagary that it is unclear if PayPal is only limiting the amount of funds we can withdraw or if it is also limiting the amount of funds one can spend each day since debit cards are likewise used to make online purchases. Imagine how damaging it would be to the overall economy if this message actually means what it says, that to protect us from ourselves and the risk that we might make a bad decision, PayPal is limiting our spending ability daily. That would mean one could not make a purchase over the daily limit allotted to the account by PayPal, masquerading as our guardian angel.
Of course, there is a way to do so- for a small fee one can transfer funds to a different bank where one can withdraw one’s own funds, and for that contribution to PayPal’s profits, PayPal will forget about managing our wellbeing by controlling our financial decisions!
The recipient of this message had the expectation that they could withdraw funds that they have on PayPal. It is a shock to discover that one cannot do so and then comes a message from PayPal telling us that it is withholding access to our own funds for our own good. Does PayPal expect its customers to take that explanation seriously?
PayPal’s new policy is based on wealth accumulated through extracting small sums of money from many users many times over. Nothing beneficial is produced as an outcome of these actions, unless you count the extraction of wealth from the many to the few as a benefit to society.
A large portion of those funds are in PayPal as a result of transactions made between small entrepreneurs selling to the public. PayPal’s new policies can be very damaging to that grass roots economy, which is a productive contributor to the economy, distributing wealth more equitably. PayPal’s new policies will make it more difficult for the Great Resignation and the gig economy.
The wealth divide has been advanced to the degree that two separate markets emerge- the market that serves the feudalistic economy and the market that serves the Great Resignation, the workers movement that is quitting the corporate hierarchy and striking out on their own “to create a better world”, to borrow a frequently used phrase from corporate culture.
What is the risk from which our dear Saviour PayPal protects us? Paypal doesn’t say. It is just political spin, like the critics of this newsletter who habitually repeat “there are inaccuracies in it”, without ever identifying a specific inaccuracy. I wonder what kind of reader takes such unexplained, unsubstantiated, unverified statements as if they have an iota of truth value?
And there is another new financialization policy change coming up in October where in if a business makes a refund to a customer, PayPal will no longer refund the 2.9% transaction fee back to the business- it will just refund the flat 30 cents fee. source
Either PayPal doesn't think it needs the small entrepreneurs who have been using their system for years and now find roadblocks to accessing their funds every which way, or PayPal knows there is no alternative due to industry-wide co-ordination.
The obvious reaction is for small vendors to look for a different service provider, which is what I will be doing, but I cannot help but ask why would PayPal do this and chase away the small entrepreneurs unless the policy changes are being implemented industry-wide?
How would one know that there are coordinated industry-wide changes without spending a great deal of time and effort to figure it out?
This is a job for big data. If such an application doesn’t already exist it should be created. If my readers have any knowledge of such an app as I describe next, please post it in the comments!
There needs to be a database of financial service providers with a uniform code for every sort of transaction and policy. It should have one category for financialization tracking and another for benefits and it could have a point system and score cards. This would help the small, affected target group to fight back against exploitative policies coordinated by those who pull the strings of concentrated wealth. By creating this knowledge base. it would encourage competition in the financial services industry as some would see that there is a competitive opportunity in beneficially targeting the small entrepreneurial market.
Otherwise, we do not really know until we start doing our own searches if alternatives exist and that is the job that I am about to commence upon and will report back on. This takes time and effort so please consider becoming a paid subscriber to this newsletter!
Today I need to raise 600.00 in immediately transferable funds. The way I can do that is through sales made on Andersen Design. 25% off coupon Code CREATE CUSHION is extended and still active!
Payments are still processed by PayPal because I haven’t had time yet to do the research. $600.00 is the minimum I need to raise for today, but more will be needed. I am willing to bargain for a sum that will get me through this transitional moment. The high prices you see on some of the vintage works were established when I was in conversation with 1stdibs and are consistent with their prices. I left it that way because I was not in a hurry to sell these works. I felt that I needed to save them for an exchange that help me to get to where I am going or for moments such as I find myself today so this is a good negotiating moment and if you want to make an offer you can email me with CREATE CUSHION as the subject line
Everywhere I go locally everyone I meet is reading this newsletter. While my subscribers have grown to over 2200 my paid subscribers are stuck at 7. I have only two local supporters that I am aware of, and they are in my largest financial supporter category, either through a foundational subscription or a donation to my project on The Field. Otherwise, I do not feel supported by my local community but am glad to have the influence that this newsletter is generating. I know that all my readers do not wish me well but still they read. That says something. The local conversation is no longer controlled by a single authority writing spin like the sort that PayPal is dishing out. Many voices are joining in.
There are counter-movements forming. The revolution must be thought-provoking. When the public docilely accepts the mindless spin dished out by politicians, then the public has no voice but when the public voices their own opinions that stirs things up and opens up new pathways that might redirect the persistent and incremental wealth redistribution from the masses to the few that has been taking place since the seventies turning the contemporary world into an ownership-class serf-class society.
The Well
All my life I have consulted the I Ching as my trusted advisor and it has always served me well, never failing in its advice though sometimes one does not understand it until later in the day, as it also has a predictive ability. Today the I Ching gave me these two lines in The Well, which always makes me think of the present plight of Andersen Design, which is indeed an unused well.
The 2nd line marked means:
At the well hole one shoots fishes.The jug is broken and leaks.
The 3rd line marked means:
The well is cleaned, but no one drinks from it. This is my heart's sorrow, For one might draw from it. If the king were clear-minded, Good fortune might be enjoyed in common.
These two lines evolve the Well into the Hexagram of Union, which says to ask again if one possesses the sublimity, constancy, and perseverance, that led to the Caldron, which links to the Well, as both the well and the Caldron have to do with providing nourishment. The Well is the inner meaning and also the social foundation shared by all the people. The caldron is the cultural construct (as in a workers-in-residence zone) needed to bring about “the fostering and nourishing of able men, which redounded to the benefit of the state.”
PSYCAP is your ability to innovate, it is your personal capital, so guard it well!
Innovation” is a property that corporations seek to impart in their workforce. The same ability can be implemented in service of the Great Resignation.
My idea for workers-in-residence zoning is an innovation of the “priority zone” mandates issued in HP 1489- LD 2003. The legislature named the “priority zone” but they clearly designed it with a housing concentration zone in mind serving a singular priority of a working person employed by another who works at a facility owned by another, usually an institution or corporation.
The small size and overcrowded density of the housing concentration zone being planned for the Boothbay Peninsula by The Boothbay Regional Development Corporation serves the interests of the ownership class which sees the employee class as needing no more than the bare minimum of space. The concentrated housing zone is planned in conjunction with demolishing of the midcentury high school building and replacing it with a building resembling a business entity, from what the public has been able to see, which is mainly the power lobby and not the classrooms or “maker spaces”.
By design, if the occupants of concentrated housing zones are to have a creative outlet, they can do so in the public school system which is increasingly being linked to the State with the University of Maine at the core of the State-managed public educational system.
As I wrote about in my last post, the University of Maine Statement of Policy Governing Patents and Copyrights : relegates all ownership of intellectual property rights taking place within its facilities to be split between the University and the faculty/developer. One cannot know what deals are being struck in the conditional gifts, which the local boards chose as the funding method for the school, and so one cannot rule out that similar deals as negotiated at the University of Maine over the ownership of intellectual property of any projects taking place within the school facilities may be part of the condition negotiations.
However, in naming the concentrated housing zones “priority zones”, the Legislature opened the door for other priority zones, such as a priority zone that serves the interests of the Great Resignation, the remote workers, the businesses in a home, and small free-enterprise entrepreneurs of all types, that is to say that part of “the work force” that is self-employed, which requires space where work can happen, which is to not be found in a concentrated housing zone.
And so, I am “innovating” the concept of the workers-in-residence zone, which is a version of an industrial park, except that it is a cottage industry industrial park.
I am simultaneously putting forth that Andersen Design, in being a very complex small business, is particularly well-suited to being an anchor business for a workers-in-residence zone. If large corporations are seen as a means of populating uninhabited Chinese Ghost Cities, as the model that Mr. Coulombe and his anonymous developer’s group are trying to implement on the Boothbay Peninsula, then a small but complex business can be a cluster industry attraction for a workers-in residence zone. Just within Andersen Design, alone, there is a potential for at least five or more separate businesses, a mold-making business, a ceramic glaze and body creative business, a gallery or a museum, a photography, video, and graphic studio, and of course slip casters and decorators. and those activities can branch out into other industries in a zone planned for small independently owned free enterprises.
This is my job. It has to be my job because I am left holding and caring for the future of the Andersen Design assets which were created through an independent work process over the course of almost seventy years. That is the only way such assets can come into being. The designs for the hundreds of slip-cast original molds were created on the kitchen table in our house. It is a wonderful lifestyle and others should be able to engage in it for the betterment of mankind! It is a rewarding lifestyle with a wonderful work-life balance!
I need to develop a source of funding to pay myself and others to accomplish the job. Today I need some ready cash but I will keep on needing funding so kindly consider making a generous donation to my project:
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Thank You,
Mackenzie