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Good post. The internet really brought that efficiency everywhere. My example is ski mountaineering. The internet ruined it.
Even just 10-15 years ago, this was a niche hobby and an extreme sport. To plan a winter ascend, you had to buy guide books and stacks of paper terrain maps. The first few times you needed a good mentor or a hired mountain guide, just for judging the weather and the current avalanche risk (also for route finding and for teaching the techniques). But if you left the ski resorts behind, the mountains where empty and quiet, and full of untracked powder (that tried to kill you when you least expected it).
Then the internet told that every single resort skier on the planet, and it turns out they really already have 95% of the skills necessary to go touring. Now the back country is swarming with people. Mountains that used to be empty now have 10 different tracks leading to the summit the morning after a fresh snow fall. I can't even remember when I've had to break a fresh track the last time.
Decades worth of experience judging the weather? The daily forecast is much better than that, and it comes with live precipitation radar maps showing you where the snow storm is and where it's going to be, and when. The local guy tracking the layer composition of the snow pack all through the season? Professional avalanche reports online give everybody that information for every single valley. Route finding? Just load a GPX track someone else planned onto your smart watch. Want do check that guys work? Here's an app that shows slope angles and rates your track for avalanche risks. Local knowledge about a difficult couloir that has powder in late spring? It's all over Instagram, and there's 10 touring portal posts about its conditions this moth. Also, here's a 3D render of that entire mountain, in case you where wondering if there's any other skiable gullies.
There's upside, too, of course. All the information available actually is much better (especially if you buy guide books in addition anyway). It generally is so much safer now (but many more people die - because many more people are out there). The larger market hugely improved the gear - everything is lighter, more reliable, less finicky, more comfortable. The avalanche beacons now actually work.
I also have a counter example: the used market for commodity consumer products still works. All the kids here ride the same plastic bob sledge through the snow. It's a bomb proof design, tried and tested through the decades. They all get it from the same big box store, and it costs 140. Yes, for 4 pieces of injection molded plastic from China, made millions of times. Anyway, they go for 10 bucks on the local equivalent of Craigslist, and chances are the family selling theirs is about as far away as that big box store.
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