• The much-discussed "right to privacy" involves a number of asserted rights, often appearing on the surface to conflict with one another. These conflicts can be resolved by recognizing that privacy rights are merely an aspect of property rights, including the right to participate in voluntary contracts. For example, consider a contemporary controversy regarding privacy in phone systems. Some claim that the right to privacy entitles us to scan and/or block incoming calls, implying that we have the right to preview an incoming caller's phone number. Others, however, assert that the callers' right to privacy entitles them to maintain the confidentiality of their phone numbers. How is this paradox resolved in a free society? First, the contract for telephone services can be structured in any manner agreed upon by both provider and customer. Since providers are not licensed, regulated monopolies (unlike in today's world), any type of contract for which the market demand is sufficient to offset implementation costs becomes available to consumers. Conceivably, for example, some providers might allow their customers to screen all incoming calls, some of which might be identified as "unlisted." (This approach is only one possibility, for we cannot precisely predict what solutions will become predominant in a free market—a theoretical restriction to be discussed in more detail later.) The various providers may choose to link their systems in any manner mutually agreed upon, so long as all rights, including the contracted rights of customers, are observed. Thus the apparent political conflict between the privacy rights of different parties is an artifact of a system based on regulated legal monopolies, an artifact which is eliminated in a system based on property rights.     

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