yet PayPal was (is still?) notorious for freezing accounts for monts without any communication, and since they had no branch offices, all anyone could do was wait or sue them (which is a very expensive form of waiting).

Laws and regulations should exist to make efficient markets. But obviously there are serious problems today in housing and transportation (and banking too), and in large part due to very suboptimal laws and regulations.

PayPal is not a bank, AirBnb is not a hotel and plenty of drivers will freely serve rides from Uber, Lyft and a variety of other ride sharing services; they aren't "employees" of any single firm. (Of course they must serve a single ride at a time for sensible policy reasons, but aside from that they're quite free to pick their favorite ones.) These things actually make sense, even though they might not be what you're directly used to.