This free-market alternative, however, is unacceptable to the most determined proponents of involuntary regulation. Those proponents are unwilling to leave ultimate choices in the hands of the consumers, presumably because the latter are regarded as incapable of making even the most basic decisions intelligently. Implicitly, they regard consumers as ignorant, not only about specific market products, but even about their own ignorance. In order to realize Edenic bliss in this innocent state, consumers need only obey the commandment of omniscient "authorities" not to consume the tempting fruit of the free marketplace. We can therefore state the real purpose of consumer regulation more candidly: to "protect consumers from themselves" by prohibiting the sale or purchase of products deemed inferior by governmental "authorities," who are presumed to be better informed than those consumers. One irony should be noted. These governmental authorities are generally appointed (directly or indirectly) by officials democratically elected by the voters. The voters, however, are by and large the same persons as the consumers, who are adjudged incapable of making proper, informed choices.

The fundamental consequence of consumer regulation is that the judgments and values of the political "authority" are imposed over those of the consumer. For this reason, such regulation is interventionist and anti-market. It should be sharply distinguished from the prohibitions against fraud, manslaughter, and criminal damage, which are included in the structure of the free market and which protect the voluntary character of market interaction. Unlike those restrictions, which preserve market order, consumer regulation seeks to replace that order with a structure of a quite opposite sort.