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

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.