why would you use bitcoin below that though? requiring a both vendor and customer have an account at some paypal like site just makes it paypal. it will have the same problems. so what does bitcoin add? nothing
Right. People tend to forget that bitcoin is just the base layer, the first step. Like the kernel would be to an OS. Its goal is to support sending value from A to B reliably. All kinds of functionality needed to run a full-fledged economy can be built on-top without affecting the core system too much. For example using Open Transactions.