E-zines.

In the 1770s, English tea and Adam Smith's concepts of the market helped begin a revolution. But they took weeks to cross the ocean in sailing ships.

In the 1990s, thanks to the microprocessor and the Internet, an information revolution is allowing ideas to sweep around the globe in an instant.

Were Smith alive today, he would see the Internet as the ultimate frictionless flow of goods and services, his "obvious and simple system of natural liberty."

This rapid expansion of electronic communication has given birth to new journalistic creatures called "e-zines," electronic magazines that are to today's technology what Newsweek, Forbes, and The New Yorker are to print.

Thanks to technology, these e-zines can reach the corners of the globe instantly. So, for the first time, all the entries in a field of communication are competing on a level playing field. Which means, in the words of Michael Bloomberg, that "content is king; you've got to have good quality content."

Intellectual Capital (www.intellectualcapital.com) was created in June of 1996 to bring high-quality public-policy content to a global audience. IC is an original-content, weekly public-policy e-zine, available only on the Internet, and featuring analysis, opinion, and thought about a full range of public-policy issues. It is free to the user, and will be financially supported by advertisers. IC's objective is to present each week a bi-partisan mix of articles that will leave its readers either applauding or seething, but in either case engaged in the debate.

IC's first year of publication saw more than 1,300 articles by guest editors and commentators ranging from NATIONAL REVIEW'S Kate O'Beirne to the ACLU's Nadine Strossen; they have included Richard Pipes, former U.S. Senator Paul Simon, James Glassman, John Fund, and Hong Kong Councilwoman Emily Lau.

So what do Intellectual Capital and other online magazines bring to the reader that is different from what can be found in Time or a newspaper's Sunday supplement? First, the unique features of Internet technology give an e-zine a distinct advantage. There are direct "hot links" to source materials and research sites, audio and video features, and the entire year's issues of IC archived online, available with a mouse-click for reading or searching.

E-zine start-up and operating costs are low, and since the marginal cost of an additional column is virtually zero, content change can be nearly instantaneous. Even better, since there is no ink, paper, or postage to limit creativity or delivery, e-zine editors can concentrate all their energies on content.

Second, the medium allows e-zines a broad reach that puts information once available only to media, political, and intellectual elites into the kitchens of ordinary people all across America and around the globe. This will slowly change the balance of power in the policy debate, and ultimately the political economy of the world's nations. For Gresham's Law, the economic principle that bad money drives out good, has a reverse corollary on the Net: true information will drive out false.

The flow of information will also open previously locked cabinets, in government, industry, and academe. Decision-makers will have fewer places to hide; they will become more accountable for their decisions. And open decisions will be better decisions.

For example, Communism could not have taken root and survived for seventy years if even a small percentage of Russians had had access to the Internet and realized what was going on in the Gulag --and conversely what was going on in market economies around the world. Just as the fax machine drove the democratic upsurge of Tiananmen Square, the Internet will make government oppression even more difficult to enforce in the future. While Intellectual Capital's interview of Russian General Aleksandr Lebed in November was interesting to our U.S. readership, it was very interesting to Russian Internet users.

Third, the Internet will speed the Americanization of the world. I am not speaking of McDonalds, Madonna, or Nike, but of the ideals and ideas of the American Revolution: the concepts of freedom, individual rights derived from our Creator, and the empowerment of people. These ideas are currently antithetical to much of the world--Belarus and China, for example--and countercultural in other nations in the Arab and Oriental worlds. But once unleashed they are powerful forces not easily contained.

For example, IC's February 27 issue on the future of China following Deng's death provoked several thousand pages of views from Chinese readers both inside and outside China, and a furious ideological assault in Internet letters to the editor. For an American print magazine or newspaper to reach into the interior of China would present an almost insuperable challenge.

Finally, and most important, e-zines can create virtual magazines each week, largely written by their readers. In recent issues of IC, for example, nearly half our content had been written by our readers. Live, direct-to-the-Internet "bulletin boards" at the end of each article and opinion piece bring readers into the policy debate, so that our writers are as much a catalyst as a participant. This phenomenon is unique to online publications, and is already building whole new policy communities, which will begin to influence the public-policy debate and ultimately the policy-makers.

It is unlikely that e-zines and online publications will displace existing information sources any time soon. But as Bill Gates said at the 1996 COMDEX conference in Las Vegas, while "there is no substitution effect yet, ... it will come."

In fact, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau and Price Waterhouse, roughly one-third of home web users say it has displaced watching television and reading books, newspapers, or magazines. No wonder that much of the negative news about the "dangers" of the Internet comes from TV anchors and the mainstream press.

One thousand people a day are leaving high-tax states to live in lower-tax ones--voting with their feet. At least an equal number are voting with their fingers, and leaving the traditional media for the Net. Of course, New York and the District of Columbia are still here; just as CBS and the Washington Post will still be there. But as they follow readers and move much of their content online, their news policies will change. There is simply no need on the Internet for media filters like Dan Rather or Ben Bradlee.

Once upon a time, when walls surrounded nations and governments could rule all within, liberty could be restrained. But information technology has caused the walls to come tumbling down.

This new liberty is an opportunity for online publications like e-zines. Nearly two hundred years after the publication of The Wealth of Nations, scientist Gordon Moore correctly predicted that the capacity of a microchip would double and its cost halve every 18 months. In other words, it continually becomes cheaper and easier to publish online, which will open huge new worldwide markets.

To paraphrase Adam Smith, e-zines are leading us to a world where every man may understand whatever part of other men's ideas he has occasion for.