Augustus became emperor in 27 bc, the crisis of the 3rd century started in 235 ac. That’s a 262 year run before shit really hit the fan. The empire reunited again towards the of the 3rd century, but more authoritarian, corrupt, unstable, … than before. The reforms that would lead to medieval serfdom were introduced then as well.

A non exhaustive list of what makes them awful: https://expertbeacon.com/why-is-paypal-so-bad/

Afaik, the issue that was making the most victims, was that they were facilitating scammers that targeted sellers:
5. Good Luck Recouping Losses as a Seller in Disputes.
89% of sellers experienced dispute resolution problems with PayPal in 2021 surveys. Despite providing evidence the item shipped or service rendered, they lost cases and sums averaging $622.
This is driven by PayPal‘s buyer-favored review round taking 1-2 weeks. This favors scamming buyers at the expense of legitimate businesses.

Iirc, there was a time when Paypal always sided with the buyer, irregardless of evidence or past track record, the review process was useless. Once scammers picked up on this and began scamming sellers en masse, Paypal still kept their policy unchanged for years and sellers started to raise their prices on platforms that forced them to accept Paypal (ebay used to do this). Ebay has since tossed Paypal off their platform. I don’t know if Paypal ever improved.

The setup of this movie reminds me of Locke with Tom Hardy. That’s also basically a movie where you watch 1 person in a static situation (in a car in Locke) conducting remote project management. I’d have never expected a full movie to work with that setup, but Locke pulls it off imo.

In my region, it seems that expensive stolen bikes mostly go to eastern Europe, Ukraine and Romania in particular.

Locks will only ever be a minor deterrent imo. The problem is that police in most places don’t even try to go after bicycle thefts and the would be criminals know that.

If governments took bicycle theft as seriously as they did horse theft in the 19th century, then few criminals would even attempt to steal a bicycle if it had some basic protection like a cheap lock + a camera pointed at the bicycle rack.