The Praxeology of Privacy - Max Hillebrand - Softcover (engl.)

The Praxeology of Privacy by Max Hillebrand is the synthesis of Austrian economics and the Cypherpunk movement – a treatise on why privacy matters, and at the same time a working field guide to the engineering that defends it.

About the Book

Two intellectual traditions that arrived at the same conclusion from different starting points: Austrian economics deduces, from the fact that human beings act, that privacy is structural to deliberation and exchange, that sound money is the basis of coordination, and that observation is the precondition of state predation. The Cypherpunks wrote the running code that proves these systems can be defended.

The argument rests on three axioms: Mises on action, Hoppe on argumentation, and Voskuil on resistance – and why each one collapses once surveillance becomes cheap. Theory turns into a concrete field guide: Bitcoin's privacy model and the layers that defeat chain analysis (CoinJoin, PayJoin, Lightning, Spark, Ark, ecash, Chaumian mints), anonymous communication and decentralized social infrastructure (Tor, mixnets, MLS-encrypted messaging), as well as operational security and the parallel economy (threat modeling, compartmentalization, and the institutions that raise the cost of surveillance until it no longer pays off).

Author Max Hillebrand has spent over a decade building and advocating for privacy infrastructure at the intersection of Austrian economics and cypherpunk cryptography. With a foreword by Paul Rosenberg and praise from Eric Voskuil, Stephan Kinsella, Knut Svanholm, and Luke de Wolf.

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