[This article originally appeared in Studies in Logic, Grammer and Rhetoric 57, no. 1 (2019): 145–160. Reprinted with permission.]

Abstract. The aim of the article is to examine the legacy of Menger’s theory of social institutions. We argue that Menger’s insights about the origin of social structures inspired later contributions in three main areas: theory of spontaneous order, theory of money, and theory of law.

According to new data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis, the personal saving rate in the US in September 2019 was 8.3 percent. That puts it near a six-year high, and comparable to the saving rate we saw during the early 1990s.

Indeed, the personal saving rate has been heading upward steadily for the past eighteen months. And that’s a bit of an unusual thing. For at least the past fifty years, the saving rate has tended to increase when the economy is doing poorly, and decrease when the economy is doing well.

This week marks the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Decades later, the wall remains a symbol of the violence employed by socialist states, and a reminder that the egalitarian workers’ paradise of East Germany was so hated by its residents that the state had to build a wall to keep residents in.

The standard justification for intellectual property — i.e., patents and copyrights and trademarks — is that the creative process would be significantly reduced if such protection did not exist. The underlying assumption is that the financial reward must be augmented by a grant of exclusivity enforced by the coercive power of government. Because we can freely copy an invention, innovation or other creative ideas, a financial reward is viewed as necessary for these intangible ideas unlike a tangible object sold in the marketplace.

For most experts, deflation is considered bad news since it generates expectations of a decline in prices. As a result, they believe, consumers are likely to postpone their buying of goods at present since they expect to buy these goods at lower prices in the future.

This weakens the overall flow of spending and in turn weakens the economy. Hence, such commentators hold that policies that counter deflation will also counter the slump.

It has become nearly commonplace for pundits and politicians to claim that Americans are working more than ever before; that they’re working more jobs, and working longer hours — all for a lower income.

[This article originally appeared in Studies in Logic, Grammer and Rhetoric 57, no. 1 (2019): 65–74. Reprinted with permission.]