Censorship restricts the flow of information among individuals and organizations, adversely affecting the market as a whole. Regulators, who tend to regard themselves as omniscient and infallible, may believe that they are upholding scientific truth by prohibiting critics from "maligning" food products, or by preventing dairies from informing customers whether or not their milk comes from cattle that were given a certain hormone. Yet the very notion of scientific truth depends on the open exchange of information, which is interrupted by the regulators' policy of censorship. While the regulators' belief in the safety of one product may indeed be valid, in the long run such suppression will inevitably deprive consumers of vital knowledge about real dangers in other products. Because censorship denies individuals access to all potentially relevant experience, their ability to arrive at objectively valid conclusions about market goods and services, life-style choices, political philosophies or candidates, and other aspects of reality is correspondingly limited (cf. pp. 1.3:56-9). The "blind spots" introduced by censorship eventually cause them to make poor decisions, to the detriment of their lives and welfare.

Furthermore, as censors become the final arbiters of truth who "protect" the general population from certain ideas, ordinary citizens are denied the opportunity to develop the capacity for independent judgment, which is also vital to the process of acquiring valid knowledge (cf. pp. 1.3:61-2). A more naive populace is especially vulnerable to misleading advertising, to ill-founded rumors, and to political propaganda.