ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors address Philip Mirowski’s analysis of the adverse social repercussions of the institutionalization of a globalized privatization regime. They provide an integration between the contributions of Karl William Kapp and Mirowski on the dark places of business enterprise and the profiling of an institutional economics of information and knowledge. If properly understood, Kapp’s theory of social costs occupies a central significance for the development of an institutional economics of knowledge, useful for the analysis of market model failure. Indispensable explanation of the crucial conceptual distinction existing between information and knowledge, a topic kept in the dark by mainstream economists’ recalcitrance to openly address it. Note, however, that Austrians are faced with an insuperable conceptual problem affecting their closed system view of the economy. Accordingly, despite representing different aspects strictly connected to market functioning and coordination, calculation and knowledge cannot be strictly separated from a conceptual point of view.
