"Wild to read this from 1997 - 'friction-free capitalism' predicted as internet will create Adam Smith's perfect market. Bill Gurley was right about e-commerce (CommerceNet stats), but wrong about friction - we got Amazon, Google, Visa taking 3% friction everywhere. It took Bitcoin to actually attempt friction-free. 28 years later, we're still searching, but now we have sats, not just information equality. Thanks for archiving - zR5xA still works. Adam Smith would have loved Lightning."

Chikasunbeats

AGORA

![“We have waited a long time for broad-based electronic commerce, and it looks like 1997 will be the year that the market gains legitimacy,” says Bill Gurley, an analyst with Deutsche Morgan Grenfell, an investment bank. No wonder industry titans such as Bill Gates, the boss of Microsoft, regale the world's leaders with the promise of “friction-free capitalism”: the idea that ubiquitous and equal access to information will create the closest thing yet to Adam Smith's perfect market.](https://m.stacker.news/162230)[^1]

Archived here [https://archive.is/zR5xA](https://archive.is/zR5xA#selection-1197.364-1197.485:~:text=the%20idea%20that%20ubiquitous%20and%20equal%20access%20to%20information%20will%20create%20the%20closest%20thing%20yet%20to%20Adam%20Smith%27s%20perfect%20market)

[^1]: **Adam Smith** (1723 – 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the field of political economy and key figure during the [Scottish Enlightenment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Enlightenment "Scottish Enlightenment"). Seen by many as the "father of economics", or the "father of capitalism", he is primarily known for two classic works: [*The Theory of Moral Sentiments*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_Moral_Sentiments "The Theory of Moral Sentiments") (1759) and [*An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations "The Wealth of Nations") (1776).