than another party. In the parlance of economists, such a case is known as an information asymmetry. We accept as a verity of capital- ism that someone (usually an expert) knows more than someone else (usually a consumer). But information asymmetries everywhere have in fact been mortally wounded by the Internet. Information is the currency of the Internet. As a medium, the In- ternet is brilliantly efficient at shifting information from the hands of those who have it into the hands of those who do not. Often, as in the case of term life insurance prices, the information existed but in a woefully scattered way. (In such instances, the Internet acts like a gigantic horseshoe magnet waved over an endless sea of haystacks, plucking the needle out of each one.) Just as Stetson Kennedy accom- plished what no journalist, do-gooder, or prosecutor could, the Inter- net has accomplished what no consumer advocate could: it has vastly shrunk the gap between the experts and the public. The Internet has proven particularly fruitful for situations in which a face-to-face encounter with an expert might actually exacer- bate the problem of asymmetrical information-situations in which an expert uses his informational advantage to make us feel stupid or rushed or cheap or ignoble. Consider a scenario in which your loved one has just died and now the funeral director-who knows that you know next to nothing about his business and are under emotional duress to boot-steers you to the $7,000 mahogany casket. Or con- sider the automobile dealership: the salesman does his best to obscure the cars base price under a mountain of add-ons and incentives. Later, however, in the cool-headed calm of your home, you can use the Internet to find out exactly how much the dealer paid the manufacturer for that car. Or you might just log on to www .TributeDirect.com and buy that mahogany casket yourself for just $3,200, delivered overnight. Unless you decide to spend $2,995 for