Bylund’s Typology of Knowledge: Physical vs. Catallactic; General vs. Applied

by Stephan Kinsella on August 13, 2026

Excerpted from an update to my post Libertarian and Lockean Creationism: Creation As a Source of Wealth, not Property Rights; Hayek’s “Fund of Experience”; the Distinction Between Scarce Means and Knowledge as Guides to Action:

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Update: See Per Bylund’s taxonomy of types of information in Per L. Bylund, “Austrian Economics and Knowledge,” Q. J. Austrian Econ. 29, no. 2 (June 08, 2026): 1–24. Abstract:

This article develops a typology of knowledge in economics, drawing on the works of Carl Menger and F. A. Hayek, to clarify how different types of knowledge affect production, coordination, and entrepreneurial profit. It organizes economically relevant knowledge along two axes—the physical world versus the catallactic world, on the one hand, and general versus applied, on the other—and adds a temporal dimension to distinguish knowledge problems from uncertainty. The framework reveals that while physical-world knowledge sets the boundaries of what can be produced, catallactic-world knowledge guides what should be produced and how. The article applies this typology to Austrian theories of the market process, showing that uncertainty arises when value knowledge is unavailable at the time of action and that entrepreneurial profit stems from bearing this uncertainty rather than from superior knowledge. This conceptual separation advances the understanding of economic causality and the distinct functions of knowledge in market processes.

The problem of uncertainty is a matter of the value produced, which is the end point and goal in economic action as well as the basis for assessing choices made in economizing production. https://t.co/NM9ScPtqQe

— Per Bylund (@PerBylund) August 13, 2026

See also other tweets here:

I don’t disagree with any of what you say about knowledge, but I think it is too vague to make the point. Yes, property is necessary for prices and prices are necessary for economizing. But Mises and Hayek ultimately have different bases for the prices they see as necessary for…

— Per Bylund (@PerBylund) August 13, 2026

I think it is somewhat misleading to reference Mises’s “cannot know” as a knowledge problem in the same way as Hayek’s contribution and analysis. They refer to different types of problems, as I clarify here: https://t.co/LYXt7EiuJj

— Per Bylund (@PerBylund) August 13, 2026

Now my point in this post and in my writing about IP is more general: that action is necessarily guided by ideas, knowledge and information—knowledge of causal laws, and other knowledge such as contingent or factual knowledge about the world, and so on. The general point about the nature of action and the distinction between the roles of causally efficacious scarce means and their employment, on the one hand, and that of the knowledge that guides action, on the other, does not require a further breakdown of various types of knowledge that the actor considers relevant or useful in guiding his action.

So Bylund’s breakdown does not matter for the general point I am making—that causal and other knowledge is essential to and guides action—but it is interesting nonetheless. However, though it is depicted in a neat and apparently comprehensive 4-quadrant chart with sharp horizontal and vertical lines dividing the boxes, I am not sure it is 100% rigorous or exhaustive. This does not mean it is not conceptually useful for analysis nor that such distinctions are not useful to some actors. For example we find it useful to distinguish innovation from invention, or invention from discovery, even if these terms are not rigorously defined and the distinctions and divisions therebetween not sharp or clear. (( See Masnick on Innovation vs. Invention; on Irrelevant and Nonrigorous Distinctions: Innovation, Invention, Ideas, Knowledge, Data, Discovery… ))

As for exhaustiveness: when someone says here are the X categories of something, my hackles are raised: I always wonder if they can prove their breakdown is exhaustive and complete. You can do this in some cases, of course. For example, you can show that all action is jogging or non-jogging (or would that be jogging and “not-jogging”?), but you can’t say some liquid is either coffee or water, since there are other types of liquid.

For example “things” (what most people might call “property”)¹ may be classified as either movable or immovable by definition, since “movable” is defined as the residual category: “All things, corporeal or incorporeal, that the law does not consider as immovables, are movables.”²

But what about types of goods? Are all goods either present or future goods; or either producer (capital) or consumer goods? Or does the capital/consumer division just refer to two obvious or main types, with others being possible—just as contracts may be nominate or innominate, with the former being “those given a special designation such as sale, lease, loan, or insurance” and the latter being those³ Or are there other types of goods, e.g. “sui generis” goods that are neither capital nor consumer goods, e.g. money?⁴

And what about, similar to the goods categories of consumer and producer goods, the parallel concepts leisure and labor? Are they exhaustive? Is all action either labor or leisure, or might there be other types of action? Labor and leisure are subcategories of action based on how we classify the type of end of the action: it the thing pursued and end in itself (leisure, consumption) or some intermediate end (labor, production)? Or maybe not all action is 100% either one and is a mixture: if I enjoy my job is it labor or leisure? (Likewise, the public-private goods dichotomy is also not sharp.)⁵

So: is all “knowledge” either general or applied; or appertain the physical or “catallactic” world? And what about other distinctions as between concepts like knowledge, ideas, recipes, information, data, and so on, which all play a role in the guiding part of human action and which are all sometimes used more or less synonymously and sometimes not? I don’t know.