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Censorship and trade barriers do not cover the same ground exactly. Censorship is the prohibition or suppression of information while trade barriers attenuate the transference of money for goods and services. Knowledge and money are two distinct things, though it can be argued that they are two distinct forms of information, or two different forms of intrinsic value.

The suppression of either one can be fairly described as impositions of degrees of ignorance and/or poverty on a subject population for political purposes. They are also similar in light of the proliferation of, on the one hand, information services of all kinds including the internet, and on the other hand of free markets worldwide, in that suppression of either are increasingly difficult. Free markets are notoriously impossible to control, and in the last few decades information exchange has undergone a transformation that is truly unprecedented in history.

Five hundred years ago, the cost of the written word plummeted by a factor of more than a hundred in a single generation due to the development of the printing press and has continued to drop ever since. So much for the dark ages. Today, the cost of information has essentially vanished and the implications can be difficult if not impossible to grasp. Information isn't just cheap, it's free. There is no heart to cut out of world communication; it repairs itself, circumventing damage, circumventing interference.

Is censorship the same as trade barriers? Not exactly. Censorship more closely resembles burying ones head in the sand, your constituents still have access to that information whether you like it or not. The recent growth in world free trade is growing and exhibiting similar increases in immunity from such things but has not made quite the same quantum leap; trade barriers still have the power to impose hardships, but now they no longer have the full advantages of propaganda they once enjoyed for their justification. I think that slight difference is important.

Learn more about this author, John Groeneman.
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