Privacy as a Kantian-Misesian a priori condition for the preservation of property rights

Abstract

This article analyzes the relation between the philosophical notion of privacy, its practical implementation in the domain of cryptocurrencies, and the Western regulatory financial environment. A libertarian (anarchocapitalist, agorist) perspective is adopted. The main question concerns what kind of notion privacy is. Utilitarianism, privacy as a natural right, and privacy as a Kantian-Misesian a priori condition for the preservation of property rights are analyzed. First, it is shown that utilitarian approaches do not work because they let the government define privacy, thus corrupting its practical implementation. The cases of Tornado Cash and of Privacy Pools, two privacy-preserving cryptocurrency protocols, are discussed to prove the point. Second, the theory of privacy as a natural right is discarded because it is not compatible with libertarian reductionism. Third, the main proposal of this article is to define privacy as a Kantian-Misesian a priori condition for the preservation of property. This proposal is coherent with libertarian reductionism because privacy is not understood as a natural right; moreover, it is superior to utilitarianism because the a priori status of privacy protects it from the arbitrary wishes of politicians and bureaucrats. The origin of a priori notions is not empirical, but their use is: privacy cannot but impact how the acting man protects real-world property and interacts with fellow human beings.