I'm reading Max Hillebrand's Praxeology of Privacy (#1489281) and would very much enjoy the Stackers' opinions about the things inside. Your commentary is welcome even if you don't have time to read the book. You can find Part I here - #1501602

Part II: AxiomsPart II: Axioms

Call me shallow, but I dislike a theoretical approach that attempts to establish axioms and then build up an understanding of the whole world through logical steps based on a few "unarguable" points. The problem I see is that no matter how unassailable your logic is, extending universal claims about the world from one or two root facts can lead to a pretty extreme magnification of errors. Like a precomputed trajectory of a space probe, if you're off by even a little, you end up very far from where you want to be. And the thing with errors is that often we don't notice them.

Hillebrand hits us across the face with two chapters of this kind of theory. He starts out with the action axiom (human action is purposeful and you can't deny it without taking purposeful action) and then introduces Hoppe's argumentation axiom (making an argument implies ownership of self, and in order to disagree you must own yourself enough to make the argument). I'm sure either one of these is a very sound basis on which to build a worldview, but so much reductionism makes me nervous.

I wasn't familiar with "argumentation ethics" and while it's cool and all, I don't think I'd trust my conscience to it. Hillebrand says that the book will adopt Hoppe's argument as "the normative foundation for privacy." I'm happy for him, but really, I would have been content with saying don't poke your nose into other people's business.

For privacy, the consequences are specific. Mental privacy is protected because thoughts and preferences fall under self-ownership. Communication privacy is protected because choosing what to reveal and to whom is an exercise of self-ownership over one’s own expressive output. Data privacy is protected because information about oneself, stored on one’s own media or shared under terms one set, falls under property rights over the media and selfownership over the information’s origin. And coerced surveillance, whether forced disclosure or monitoring without consent, violates self-ownership at the root, regardless of what is learned.

Hillebrand also develops a cute little theory that the argumentation axiom places state authorities in a logically contradictory position whenever they try to violate an individual's property rights:

Sadly, I don't think the government or its henchmen much care for logic. The Brute Squad dishes out beat downs not debates.

The footnotes for Chapter 4 are good, though: a mini education in libertarian ethics.

Privacy and the subjective theory of valuePrivacy and the subjective theory of value

There is also this very cool observation, though: the subjective theory of value is also a private theory of value.

Menger identified this insight, and Mises later developed it further: value is subjective. It originates in the evaluating mind, not in the evaluated object. No “objective value” exists independent of someone’s valuation. Prices emerge from the interaction of subjective valuations; they do not measure pre-existing objective values.

For privacy, this has immediate implications. An actor’s valuations exist in their mind. No external observer can access another’s value rankings directly. They can infer preferences from observed choices, but the underlying subjective experience of valuing remains internal and private.

I had not before considered the ideas in that second paragraph. My subjective valuations of a thing are subjective because they are my own and not immediately obvious to anyone else.

The privacy implication is direct: preference rankings exist only in individual minds. No external process can access or aggregate individual preferences without losing what preferences are. Collective decisions that claim to represent “social preferences” are metaphorical at best.

Hillebrand doesn't get into the Voskuil's Axiom of Resistance (#1292558) until Chapter 5, and I must say, it felt a little bolted on. The previous two chapters are a whole load of theory and rigorous axioms which involve logical contradictions if you try to deny them, and then here's Voskuil going, "Well, it seems like if you use Bitcoin it means that you think it may be possible to resist total government domination." Which is much closer to the sort of way I understand understanding.

A system resists to the degree that circumventing its protections requires resources exceeding what adversaries are willing or able to expend. Resistance is not binary but exists on a spectrum: a system may resist casual attackers but not nation-states, or resist all known attacks but remain vulnerable to advances in mathematics or computing.

As with the first part, the footnotes are the best pages. Here's my reading list from these chapters (although these are not as high on my list as some of the things from Part I):

• Tadeusz Kotarbinski, Praxiology: An Introduction to the Sciences of Efficient Action
• Israel Krizner, Competition and Entrepreneurship
• Stephan Kinsella, Estoppel: A New Justification for Individual Rights