Diamond Age is an interesting idea, the original Primer was for the elite and used distributed encryption to farm out the qualified work to skilled artisans. In the end though, a cut-down primer (using some sort of AI? it’s been a long time since I read it) is used to educate and train the girl army used by one of the faction in the final battle.
It’s not really explained but I suspect the OG Primer had a robust payment model that ensured that the service oculd be kept solvent.
You are right, the OG Primer was a bit bespoke yes. So I doubt that could have failed without large parts of the whole financial system falling down. It was more a reference than a real 1 to 1 comparison, and it certainly doesn’t fit neatly. Prob should have just made it a reference to the girl army thing, but I coudln’t recall enough of that.