Privacy and Freedom: An Economic (Re-)Evaluation of Privacy

Dominik Aaken, Andreas Ostermaier and Arnold Picot

Kyklos, 2014, vol. 67, issue 2, 133-155

Abstract: type="main">

Departing from the mostly skeptical view of privacy encountered in economics, we re-evaluate privacy from the perspective of economic liberalism. We argue that freedom is fundamental to economics and conceive privacy as a specific form of freedom. We then apply the principle that freedom cannot be ‘self-defeating’ (no one is free not to be free) to privacy. This principle requires that restrictions of freedom and, by extension, privacy be revocable. We thus develop a novel concept of privacy, which leads us to evaluate privacy favorably, and apply the revocability requirement to identify unacceptable restrictions of privacy.

Date: 2014
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