In developing his famous theory of social costs, K. William Kapp claimed to draw inspiration from the theory of open systems. The present paper reconstructs the notion of social costs from the perspective of the Luhmannian theory of autopoietic social systems, an alternative systems-theoretic...

The paper reconstructs the Veblenian critique of the pecuniary economy from the perspective of Niklas Luhmann's theory of autopoietic social systems. Luhmann argued that social systems relieve people from the overwhelming civilizational complexity, but develop autopoietic properties hindering...