Not really. It's not about efficiency. It's about being able to beat the friction more effectively than your customers could on their own, whether it's friction they could beat on their own (ie it's easier to eat out than to cook), or friction they could not beat on their own (like they can't manufacture a CPU at home).

But "beat the friction more effectively" is just the definition of efficiency. If it takes an individual an hour to make dinner at home but a chef in a restaurant can make dinner for 10 people in the same hour then they're 10 times more efficient (but offset by the efficiency loss of needing a separate building etc.) That might allow the restaurant to break even.

If the chef can make dinner for 30 people in an hour at the same price per person, now the restaurant is more profitable because there is less friction -- 30 people eat in one restaurant instead of 10, so for 30 people you need one chef instead of three, one building instead of three, etc. Less friction, more profit.

What you need for profit isn't for you to have friction, it's for someone else to have more than you -- relative advantage. The more you eliminate the more profit you make. Or the more surplus ("consumer profit" if you will) you create for the customer, if you have similarly efficient competitors engaged in price competition.

And that's where regulatory capture comes in. In competitive markets a large fraction of the total surplus goes to the consumer because otherwise a competitor could gain market share by charging lower prices. 100 times $6 is more than 50 times $10. But if you exclude competitors with regulations then you can charge $10 margins and still have 100% of the customers. Then there is more "profit" but not more total surplus -- there is less total surplus because the artificial friction consumes some of it. So you're shrinking the pie in order to get a bigger piece of it for yourself, at the expense of everyone else. Which is effectively stealing.