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Reminds me of Roger Koppl's idea of knowledge as SELECT (Synecological, EvoLutionary, Exosomatic, Constitutive, and Tacit) which, if correct, means in some ways knowledge does exist out there in the ether. My favorites here are "exosomatic," meaning contained inside of something outside of the human mind (Koppl's example is an egg timer containing the knowledge of how long an egg should be cooked) and "synecological," meaning knowledge is inseparable from elements in the environment.

With this in mind, we might look at all transactions as knowledge transactions--not only the price side (à la Hayek), but also the side of the economic good. I buy a certain car, say a Subaru Outback, because I think the engineers, manufacturers, and distributers--and the production process as a whole--contain the knowledge of how to get me from A to B best. This knowledge is embodied in the car. In other words, the "ideas" part of human action is bundled inseparably from the "means." How did I come up with the idea that the Outback was the best? Perhaps this is where entrepreneurial judgement comes in--the one aspect of knowledge that can't be transferred.

Perhaps also, this idea is a reciprocal of Hayek's. For Hayek, prices contain valuable knowledge about production allocation. Maybe the goods contain valuable knowledge about means-ends allocation.

I'm not sure if any of this is on track or how helpful it is for economic models, though...

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