Buyer Beware: Today's Web Frontier is Like Deadwood in the 1860s

by Tom DeMarco

When Adam Smith wrote about the "invisible hand" of the market in The Wealth of Nations, he was referring to strictly legal actions by individuals, which in their aggregate contributed to market efficiency. What he didn't talk about was illegal tendencies that the invisible hand might bring about. That's because the England and Scotland of his time -- like most of the Western world today -- had strong governments that kept illegal action in check. These governments acted quickly to criminalize antisocial actions and enforced their laws stringently.