T Veblen Quotes

Invention is the mother of necessity.

The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.

By clearly emphasizing all that was lacking in others, by mapping and raising to an art form the catalog of their flaws, Veblen’s mother had inversely punched out a template for an ideal human being, and it was the unspoken assumption that Veblen would aspire to this template with all her might.

The quasi-peaceable gentleman of leisure, then, not only consumes of the staff of life beyond the minimum required for subsistence and physical efficiency, but his consumption also undergoes a specialisation as regards the quality of the goods consumed. He consumes freely and of the best, in food, drink, narcotics, shelter, services, ornaments, apparel, weapons and accoutrements, amusements, amulets, and idols or divinities.

Athletics have an obvious advantage over the classics for the purpose of leisure-class learning, since success as an athlete presumes, not only a waste of time, but also a waste of money, as well as the possession of certain highly unindustrial archaic traits of character and temperament.

A life could be spent like an apology—to prove you had been worth it.

Thorstein Veblen would say people hate squirrels, she called up to him, "because that's the only way to motivate expenditure on them - such as buying traps or guns. It's the same with stirring up patriotic emotionalism, because it justifies expenditures for defense.

Going seventy miles an hour but not going anywhere—not enough imagination to want to go anywhere! Getting their music by turning a dial. Getting their phrases from the comic strips instead of from Shakespeare and the Bible and Veblen and Old Bill Sumner. Pap-fed flabs!

It is necessary to realize that the most sacrosanct article of sexual politics in the period, the Victorian doctrine of chivalrous protection and its familiar protestations of respect, rests upon the tacit assumption, a cleverly expeditious bit of humbug, that all women were "ladies"—namely members of that fraction of the upper classes and bourgeoisie which treated women to expressions of elaborate concern, while permitting them no legal or personal freedom. The psycho-political tacit here is a pretense that the indolence and luxury of the upper-class woman’s role in what Veblen called “vicarious consumption” was the happy lot of all women. The efficacy of this maneuver depends on dividing women by class and persuading the privileged that they live in an indulgence they scarcely deserve... To succeed, both the sexual revolution and the Woman's Movement which led it would have to unmask chivalry and expose its courtesies as subtle manipulation.

The abjectly poor, and all those persons whose energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance, are conservative because they cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day after tomorrow; just as the highly prosperous are conservative because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands today.

You see, it's like I'm two people. One of me is an educated man. I been in some of the biggest libraries in the country. I read. I read all the time. I read books that tell the pure honest truth. Over there in my suitcase I have books by Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen and such writers as them. I read them over and over, and the more I study the madder I get.

Art is despair with dignity.

Do you think wishful thinking is a psychiatric condition?

Depicting rational economic man as an isolated individual – unaffected by the choices of others – proved highly convenient for modelling the economy, but it was long questioned even from within the discipline. At the end of the nineteenth century, the sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen berated economic theory for depicting man as a ‘self-contained globule of desire’, while the French polymath Henri Poincaré pointed out that it overlooked ‘people’s tendency to act like sheep’.31 He was right: we are not so different from herds as we might like to imagine. We follow social norms, typically preferring to do what we expect others will do and, especially if filled with fear or doubt, we tend to go with the crowd. One

As a matter of selective necessity, man is an agent. He is, in his own apprehension, a centre of unfolding impulsive activity—“teleological” activity. He is an agent seeking in every act the accomplishment of some concrete, objective, impersonal end. By force of his being such an agent he is possessed of a taste for effective work, and a distaste for futile effort.

Well, one of the best ways to control people in terms of attitudes is by what the great political economist Thorstein Veblen called “fabricating consumers.” If you can fabricate wants, make obtaining things that are just about within your reach the essence of life, they’re going to be trapped into becoming consumers. You read the business press in the 1920s and it talks about the need to direct people to the superficial things of life, like “fashionable consumption,” and that’ll keep them out of our hair.

Many great scientists and philosophers, among them René Descartes, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Immanuel Kant, Thorstein Veblen, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein, have had similarly strange and solitary personalities.

When you entered the cavern of another language, you could leave certain people behind, for they had no interest in following you in. You could, by way of translation, emerge from the cavern and share your adventures with them. You didn’t have to be an intellectual in a black beret smoking clove cigarettes to be a translator, not at all. You could become one in your blue flannel pajamas, your face smeared with Clearsil. You did.

Based loosely on NASA monkey research, Soviet paranormal studies, chaos theory and the lost experimental writings of Thorstein Veblen, the Faking Smart! Six-Week Program is one of the most advanced six-week programs of its kind.

The Flying squirrel flies, and the Irksome squirrel irks. The Spinning squirrel spins and the Smirking squirrel smirks. The Crapulous craps and the Lurking lurks; But when the Talking squirrel talks, none but a Listening Human works.

The hedonistic conception of man is that of a lightning calculator of pleasures and pains, who oscillates like a homogeneous globule of desire of happiness under the impulse of stimuli that shift him about the area but leave him intact... He is an isolated, definitive human datum, in stable equilibrium except for the buffets of the impinging forces that displace him in one direction or another. Self-poised in elemental space, he spins symmetrically about his own spiritual axis until the parallelogram of forces bears down on him, whereupon he follows he line of the resultant

As Thorstein Veblen correctly surmised over a century ago, the failure of economics to become an evolutionary science is the product of the optimizing framework of the underlying paradigm, which is inherently antithetical to the process of evolutionary change. This is the primary reason why the neoclassical mantra that the economy must be perceived as the outcome of the decisions of utility-maximizing individuals must be squarely rejected.

It bothered Veblen’s mother that most people were lazy and had given up original thought a long time ago, stealing stale phrases from the media like magpies.

If you love it enough, anything will talk with you.” —G. W. CARVER

She had a lot of practice standing things because she had to stand them, which was a hard habit to break.

And yet - with those well-marked whiskers, and that topcoat, and the notable scruff, a squirrel who cared and followed you everywhere - wouldn't that be nice?

And from a branch in the tall tree, a small gray squirrel released a mighty roar.

The upper classes are by custom exempt or excluded from industrial occupations, and are reserved for certain employments to which a degree of honour attaches.

He says marriage is a continuous inevitable confrontation that can be resolved only through death.

The institution of a leisure class is found in its best development at the higher stages of the barbarian culture; as, for instance, in feudal Europe or feudal Japan.

This town is infested with squirrels, have you noticed?" "I'd rather say it's rich with squirrels.

Are you committed to having a really strange life?" She laughed. "Probably. What do you mean?

She counted on herself to withstand everything. And yet, who said she had to? What would happen if she broke down now and then?

That until now she was a Christmas tree that had been decorated by someone who hated Christmas.

See? You're using the stoic glacier method." "Remind me, what's the stoic glacier method?" "It's the slow process of shaping someone's behavior by force of one's own personal stoicism.

The ceremonial differentiation of the dietary is best seen in the use of intoxicating beverages and narcotics. If these articles of consumption are costly, they are felt to be noble and honorific. Therefore the base classes, primarily the women, practice an enforced continence with respect to these stimulants, except in countries where they are obtainable at a very low cost. From archaic times down through all the length of the patriarchal regime it has been the office of the women to prepare and administer these luxuries, and it has been the perquisite of the men of gentle birth and breeding to consume them. Drunkenness and the other pathological consequences of the free use of stimulants therefore tend in their turn to become honorific, as being a mark, at the second remove, of the superior status of those who are able to afford the indulgence. Infirmities induced by over-indulgence are among some peoples freely recognised as manly attributes. It has even happened that the name for certain diseased conditions of the body arising from such an origin has passed into everyday speech as a synonym for "noble" or "gentle". It is only at a relatively early stage of culture that the symptoms of expensive vice are conventionally accepted as marks of a superior status, and so tend to become virtues and command the deference of the community; but the reputability that attaches to certain expensive vices long retains so much of its force as to appreciably lesson the disapprobation visited upon the men of the wealthy or noble class for any excessive indulgence. The same invidious distinction adds force to the current disapproval of any indulgence of this kind on the part of women, minors, and inferiors. This invidious traditional distinction has not lost its force even among the more advanced peoples of today. Where the example set by the leisure class retains its imperative force in the regulation of the conventionalities, it is observable that the women still in great measure practise the same traditional continence with regard to stimulants.

Veblen, you may not know it now, but marriage affects everything that happens to you. Your mate becomes the mirror in which you see yourself. If he doesn't see you as a beautiful pearl, you'll wither.

She had once concluded everyone on earth was a servant to the previous generation—born from the body’s factory for entertainment and use. A life could be spent like an apology—to prove you had been worth it.

Veblen called it the price-system. Mills called it the Power Elite. It's probably no more than ninety-nine people who don't know what they are doing. They're involved in high finance. Fascinating form of gambling.

It is one kind of trouble to kiss your fiancé good-bye in the morning and immediately turn your thoughts to another man. But it's another kind altogether if the other man has been dead for nine decades, or is of the genus Sciurus.

HER OWN VISION of the future was of happiness in the air. Something was baking. Children were playing games. There were flowers and substantial trees, and birds were singing in their nests. She was living with someone who was laughing.

She lives with man on terms of equality, knows nothing of that relation of status which is the ancient basis of all distinctions of worth, honor, and repute, and she does not lend herself with facility to an invidious comparison between her owner and his neighbors.

In all premodern societies, the upper classes were chiefly distinguished from the rest of the population by their ability to live without working.11 The cultural historian Thorstein Veblen explains that in such societies, “labor comes to be associated . . . with weakness and subjection.

She'd let her eyes water so the view was blurry, which gave certain qualities of the world neglected by clear eyesight the chance to come forth, such as the shocking beauty of color, and she remembered this with compassion for that silly young self, which had deserved to have her hand held.

Conspicuous abstention from labour therefore becomes the conventional mark of superior pecuniary achievement and the conventional index of reputability; and conversely, since application to productive labour is a mark of poverty and subjection, it becomes inconsistent with a reputable standing in the community.

Veblen argues that the existing social hierarchy is actively maintained by competitive consumption among all classes of society. Thus, consumerism, far from being something that is inflicted upon the working classes by the scheming bourgeoisi, is something that the working classes actively participate in maintaining - even though it is not in their collective interest to do so. If the working classes had wanted to buy out the capitalists, they could easily have done so by now, simply by saving a fraction of the wage increases that they have received over the years. But instead they have chosen to max out their spending on consumer goods.

...it is also true that the classics have scarcely lost in absolute value as a voucher of scholastic respectability, since for this purpose it is only necessary that the scholar should be able to put in evidence some learning which is conventionally recognized as evidence of wasted time; and the classics lend themselves with great facility to this use.

second related pressure stems from organizational biases—whereby employees become captured by the institutional culture that they experience daily and adopt the personal preferences of their bosses and workplaces more generally. Over a century ago, the brilliant economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen illustrated how our minds become shaped and narrowed by our daily occupations:

The lesson: Once our minds slip into default mode, it takes a great deal of flexibility to override this state. This is why specialists are often the last ones to notice commonsense solutions to simple problems, a limitation economist Thorstein Veblen called the “trained incapacity” of experts. Inflated confidence leads old hands to ignore contextual information, and the more familiar an expert is with a particular kind of problem, the more likely he is to pull a prefabricated solution out of his memory bank rather than respond to the specific case at hand.

In his attack on marginal productivity theory, Veblen observed that many people on the top rungs of the business world forgo leisure for unremitting work; yet they are not productive, because they strive after self-serving pecuniary goals that add nothing in serviceability to the community at large. Inversely, given favorable institutional conditions, scientists with the leisure to follow the play of their idle curiosity may - fortuitously - make contributions that are productive. With no eye to practicality, they do create, now and then at least, socially beneficial knowledge. Such ideal institutional conditions were not, however, something every academic man or woman could count on, as Veblen knew.

The youngsters today—Oh, the aviators have plenty of nerve. The physicists, these twenty-five-year-old Ph. D.'s that violate the inviolable atom, they're pioneers. But most of the wishy-washy young people today—Going seventy miles an hour but not going anywhere—not enough imagination to want to go anywhere! Getting their music by turning a dial. Getting their phrases from the comic strips instead of from Shakespeare and the Bible and Veblen and Old Bill Sumner. Pap-fed flabs! Like this smug pup Malcolm Tasbrough, hanging around Sissy! Aah! "Wouldn't it be hell if that stuffed shirt, Edgeways, and that political Mae West, Gimmitch, were right, and we need all these military monkeyshines and maybe a fool war (to conquer some sticky-hot country we don't want on a bet!) to put some starch and git into these marionettes we call our children? Aah!

Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update by Rob Henderson The chief purpose of luxury beliefs is to indicate evidence of the believer’s social class and education. ... When an affluent person advocates for drug legalization, or anti-vaccination policies, or open borders, or loose sexual norms, or uses the term “white privilege,” they are engaging in a status display. They are trying to tell you, “I am a member of the upper class.” ... Affluent people promote open borders or the decriminalization of drugs because it advances their social standing, not least because they know that the adoption of those policies will cost them less than others. ... Unfortunately, the luxury beliefs of the upper class often trickle down and are adopted by people lower down the food chain, which means many of these beliefs end up causing social harm.

Henceforth, civilized society was divided roughly into two main classes: a majority condemned for life to hard labor, who worked not just for a sufficient living but to provide a surplus beyond their family or their immediate communal needs, and a 'noble' minority who despised manual work in any form, and whose life was devoted to the elaborate "performance of leisure," to use Thorstein Veblen's sardonic characterization. Part of the surplus went, to be just, to the support of public works that benefited all sections of the community; but far too large a share took the form of private display, luxurious material goods, and the ostentatious command of a large army of servants and retainers, concubines and mistresses. But in most societies perhaps the greatest portion of the surplus was drawn into the feeding, weaponing, and over-all operation of the military megamachine.

According to the liberal theory entrepreneurs earn profit because they combine productive factors in the most economic manner. By seeking profit for themselves they also increase the efficiency of the productive system. According to Veblen, however, entrepreneurs may also earn profit by thwarting production. They can do this in virtue of certain institutional devices. In a sense, Veblen’s theory is, of course diametrically opposed to liberal theory. Yet, his premises are the same: he, too, thinks of an ideal economy which would maximize production if there were no interventions, although ‘interventions’ in his model may be caused by entrepreneurs. Veblen’s criticism is of the kind which can easily be understood by a liberal economist. It is merely a question of deciding what is an ‘intervention’ and what is ‘free’ or ‘natural’. His criticism does not reject the general presuppositions of liberal theory. A liberal can remain inside the boundaries of his theory when he tries to refute Veblen.

The classics, and their position of prerogative in the scheme of education to which the higher seminaries of learning cling with such a fond predilection, serve to shape the intellectual attitude and lower the economic efficiency of the new learned generation. They do this not only by holding up an archaic ideal of manhood, but also by the discrimination which they inculcate with respect to the reputable and the disreputable in knowledge. This result is accomplished in two ways: (1) by inspiring an habitual aversion to what is merely useful, as contrasted with what is merely honorific in learning, and so shaping the tastes of the novice that he comes in good faith to find gratification of his tastes solely, or almost solely, in such exercise of the intellect as normally results in no industrial or social gain; and (2) by consuming the learner's time and effort in acquiring knowledge which is of no use, except in so far as this learning has by convention become incorporated into the sum of learning required of the scholar, and has thereby affected the terminology and diction employed in the useful branches of knowledge.

Singer. ‘I bet I’m the only man in this town that’s been mad—I’m talking about really mean mad—for ten solid long years. I damn near got in a fight just a little while ago. Sometimes it seems to me like I might even be crazy. I just don’t know.’ Singer pushed the wine toward his guest. Jake drank from the bottle and rubbed the top of his head. ‘You see, it’s like I’m two people. One of me is an educated man. I been in some of the biggest libraries in the country. I read. I read all the time. I read books that tell the pure honest truth. Over there in my suitcase I have books by Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen and such writers as them. I read them over and over, and the more I study the madder I get. I know every word printed on every page. To begin with I like words. Dialectic materialism—Jesuitical prevarication’— Jake rolled the syllables in his mouth with loving solemnity—‘teleological propensity.’ The mute wiped his forehead with a neatly folded handkerchief. ‘But what I’m getting at is this. When a person knows and can’t make the others understand, what does he do?’ Singer reached for a wineglass, filled it to the brim, and put it firmly into Jake’s bruised hand. ‘Get drunk, huh?

What is our Argentine tradition? I believe we can answer this question easily and that there is no problem here. I believe our tradition is all of Western culture, and I also believe we have a right to this tradition, greater than that which the inhabitants of one or another Western nation might have. I recall here an essay of Thorstein Veblen, the North American sociologist, on the pre-eminence of Jews in Western culture. He asks if this pre-eminence allows us to conjecture about the innate superiority of the Jews, and answers in the negative; he says that they are outstanding in Western culture because they act within that culture and, at the same time, do not feel tied to it by any special devotion; 'for that reason,' he says, 'a Jew will always find it easier than a non-Jew to make innovations in Western culture'; and we can say the same of the Irish in English culture. In the case of the Irish, we have no reason to suppose that the profusion of Irish names in British literature and philosophy is due to any racial pre-eminence, for many of those illustrious Irishmen (Shaw, Berkeley, Swift) were the descendants of Englishmen, were people who had no Celtic blood; however, it was sufficient for them to feel Irish, to feel different, in order to be innovators in English culture. I believe that we Argentines, we South Americans in general, are in an analogous situation; we can handle all European themes, handle them without superstition, with an irreverence which can have, and already does have, fortunate consequences.

CONTROLAR EL DESEO DE DEMOCRACIA Todo eso ocurrió hace ciento cincuenta años; en Inglaterra, antes. Se han dedicado esfuerzos enormes a inculcar el Nuevo Espíritu de la Época y hay industrias fundamentales consagradas a la labor: relaciones públicas, publicidad y márketing en general, todo lo cual suma una parte enorme del producto interior bruto. Esas industrias se aplican en lo que el gran economista político Thorstein Veblen llamó «fabricación de deseos».14 En palabras de los propios empresarios, la labor consiste en dirigir a la gente hacia «cosas superficiales» de la vida, como el «consumo en moda». De esa forma la gente puede atomizarse, se pueden separar unos de otros, ya que solo se busca el beneficio personal, y se aleja a las personas del peligroso esfuerzo de pensar por sí mismas y enfrentarse a la autoridad. Edward Bernays, uno de los fundadores de la industria moderna de las relaciones públicas, denominó «ingeniería del consentimiento» al proceso de modelar opiniones, actitudes y percepciones. Bernays era un respetado progresista, al estilo de Wilson, Roosevelt y Kennedy, igual que su coetáneo, el periodista Walter Lippmann, el intelectual público más destacado de Estados Unidos en el siglo XX y alabó «la ingeniería del consentimiento» como «un nuevo arte» en la práctica de la democracia. Ambos reconocieron que la ciudadanía debe ser «puesta en su lugar», marginada y controlada; por su propio interés, por supuesto. La gente era demasiado «estúpida e ignorante» para que se le permita gobernar sus propios asuntos. Esa tarea tenía que dejarse a una «minoría inteligente», a la que hay que proteger «de las trampas y el rugido [del] rebaño desorientado» los «independientes ignorantes y entrometidos»; la «multitud traviesa», como la llaman sus predecesores del siglo XVII. El papel de la población general en una sociedad democrática que funcionara como es debido consistía en ser «espectadores» no «participantes en la acción».15 Y a los espectadores no se les debe permitir ver demasiado. El presidente Obama ha impuesto nuevos criterios para salvaguardar este principio. De hecho, Obama ha castigado a más gente que tira de la manta que todos los presidentes anteriores juntos, todo un éxito para un gobierno que llegó al poder prometiendo transparencia. Entre los muchos temas que no son asunto del rebaño desorientado están las relaciones exteriores. Cualquiera que haya estudiado documentos secretos desclasificados habrá descubierto que, en gran medida, su clasificación se concibió para proteger a las autoridades del escrutinio público. A escala nacional, la plebe no tenía que oír el consejo de los tribunales a grandes empresas: que deberían consagrar algunos esfuerzos muy visibles a buenas obras, de manera que una «opinión pública excitada» no descubriera los enormes beneficios que el Estado niñera les proporcionaba.16

La universidad de los siglos XVI-XVIII proporcionó los cuadros de mando al aparato estatal de la corona y a los altos funcionarios que gobernaban las colonias, además de los propagandistas del statu quo por excelencia de entonces, el clero. Con el viraje liberal su función se amplió, formando a "la clase política", a los altos funcionarios del Estado, cuyo número creció vertiginosamente, a los escritores, periodistas y publicistas, a los sabios e ingenieros, a los pedagogos y, cómo no, a los filósofos. Todos ellos irán constituyendo el mayor aparato imaginable para la manipulación de la verdad y el moldeamiento de las mentes, hasta hoy. Su función fue crear y difundir teorías, o sistemas de ideas complejos herederos y continuadores de la teología que son óptimos para lograr el asentimiento irracional hacia el sistema de poder vigente, con algo de verdad o sin nada de ella. Hoy, además y principalmente, ha de "educar" a la juventud, valiéndose de teorías y asfixiando sus necesidades espirituales, en primer lugar la necesidad de verdad, que palpita en el fondo del espíritu de todo ser humano, la producción de hábitos, de ciertas costumbres ligadas a creencias inducidas básicas que moldean la conducta del sujeto sin que éste se aperciba de ello ni haya autorizado tal alteración. El sistema educativo y el régimen de trabajo asalariado son los dos modos de producción de hábitos más importantes en la hora presente. Las infaustas rutinas que inculca dicho amaestramiento planeado, a través del simple estar en el medio universitario y someterse a sus regulaciones, son muchas. Acostumbra a la suspensión del entendimiento, que es obligado a permanecer años absorbiendo, silenciosa y reverentemente, lo que expone el docente pero no reflexionando por sí mismo, mucho menos cuestionando o contradiciendo. Induce a la competitividad y al medro, por medio del sistema de exámenes. Fomenta el hábito psíquico del utilitarismo y el egotismo, al tener el estudio, mecánico y repetitivo, como meta el alcanzar unas credenciales o títulos para realizar brillantes carreras profesionales. Instaura la costumbre de la jerarquización y su correlativo, el servilismo, que son presentados como las formas naturales de existencia de toda comunidad humana. Estimula la pasividad de la voluntad, pues el educando es tratado como un objeto que no decide nada de importancia, que es traído y llevado sin contar con su albedrío. Arraiga el hábito del fideísmo y las actitudes reverentes hacia las autoridades académicas e intelectuales ilegítimas, que son expresiones particulares de un personaje arquetípico de la revolución liberal, el “sacerdote-maestro” del que trata T. Veblen. Instaura el menosprecio por la sensibilidad, el alejamiento de la experiencia y de la vida, así como de todo tipo de acción transformadora y de compromiso desinteresado, dando pábulo a la holgazanería, el nihilismo, la indisciplina, la desgana y el parasitismo. Surgen mentes de repetición, todas iguales, laminadas por la verborrea profesoral y la balumba de las teorías y los dogmatismos, sin confianza en sus propias capacidades (salvo para reproducir lo absorbido por mentalización). De ese medio emergen sujetos cada día más limitados y mezquinos, incapaces de pensar y obrar con grandeza y con verdad. De ahí la intelectualmente nulificada, sin inquietudes trascendentales ni empuje transformador, carente de creatividad, hiperindividualista y no-ética juventud actual, devastada por el aparato académico y por ello mismo resignada y dócil, sin otro interés que imitar a sus padres en el conformismo, el consumo y la ausencia de fines específicamente humanos. Todo lo expuesto otorga la razón a J. F. Revel cuando alega que la universidad “sustituye la cultura por la impostura”.

The Veblen effect comes into play when the function of consuming an object is to demonstrate the acquisitive power of the consumer so that - in open opposition to the utilitarian logic and the minimization of cost - the higher the cost of a product, the greater its display value.

Well, every one of the rich countries hit upon more or less the same method of getting out. They did it independently, but they more or less hit on the same method—namely, state spending, public spending of some kind, what’s called “Keynesian stimulation.” And that did finally get countries out of the Depression. In the Fascist countries, it worked very well—they got out pretty fast. And in fact, every country became sort of fascist; again, “fascism” doesn’t mean gas chambers, it means a special form of economic arrangement with state coordination of unions and corporations and a big role for big business. And this point about everyone being fascist was made by mainstream Veblenite-type economists [i.e. after the American economist Veblen] right at the time, actually—they said, everybody’s fascist, the only question is what form the fascism takes: it takes different forms depending on the country’s cultural patterns.6

More was expected of her, her usual engagement replete with queries and analysis and a kind of domestication of the topic so that it became like a furry pet with a life of its own, all of which he had come to depend on. The way a cat depends on your petting when it puts. The purring forces you to keep petting. Even after you’re tired. Even after you want to move on. Veblen has been detained countless hours in neighborhood walks, not sure when to break away, by purring cats.

I want to meet muckrakers, carousers, the sweet-toothed, and the lion-hearted, and you don't know if yet, but you are all of these.

VEBLEN HAD RISEN UP the ranks of the temp agency, and nowadays made eighteen dollars an hour, just enough for rent and food and a few small items of need. Keeping a low overhead was part of her mind-set. It made for an existence that was lean and challenging, like life on the frontier. She believed it was important to be fairly compensated for your time and work, but that it was also important not to earn a bunch of money just to play a predetermined role in the marketplace. When unforeseen expenses came up, such as when her 1982 Volvo 244 blew its head gasket, she discovered how vulnerable she was—and had to take a second job for a while, packing candles into boxes in a factory in Milpitas on the night shift. But for the most part, her life worked. She was getting better at Norwegian, and her translations came more easily. She’d accomplished things, hadn’t she? All kinds of things you couldn’t put on a résumé, such as deciphering the cryptic actions of family members, and taking care of them until the day they died.

My family.” “No! You never mentioned that.” She had noticed an endearing pattern: whenever Paul felt guilty or in need of affection, he’d tell a painful story about his past.

She nodded with earnest sympathy. How many times had she borne witness to her naked mother, running to the bedroom after a shower with a towel pressed to her front? But repeated viewings of her mother’s unclad emotions had been way worse, and had led Veblen to fear depressives. Back then she’d run for cover outside, where she would help frightened grasshoppers escape into the ravine, in danger of her mother’s shears. (When she was in a bad mood, and even when she was in a good mood, Melanie liked to hunt them down and cut them cleanly in half, which made Veblen scream.) She’d pretend she was part of the resistance during World War II, helping grasshopper comrades escape across the border.

All right. This might sound like a dumb question, but—what stage of life are you in? Are you young, middle-aged? I know you’re not old.” She checked him out, standing at the back of the cage, spinning an acorn. He was inarguably solid. She said, “I know already. You’re in your prime.” • • • PRIMES CAME in all sizes, and despite popular belief, could come around and around, like trees through the seasons.

If wine experts don’t use these things and can’t reliably differentiate between a Clos Pegase Merlot and a Cannonball Merlot, it seems likely that professional wine descriptions will continue to proliferate bullshit. Aside from reading the descriptions, people often assume that the quality of a wine is positively correlated with its price.6 This is why marketers only need to make a wine sound expensive. Like many commodities, wine is a Veblen good. Veblen goods are luxury goods whose prices do not follow the typical laws of supply and demand. They are in demand because they are expensive.

Public utilities, including issues relating to the valuation of utility property and the proper basis for rate regulation, were major areas of institutionalist research. Concepts of intangible property and of goodwill were developed within this discussion, again deriving from Veblen. Clark devoted several chapters in The Social Control of Business (1926) to the topic, whereas Commons devoted considerable space to the concept of intangible property, goodwill, and valuation issues in his Legal Foundations (Commons 1924a, pp. 157–215).

Veblen espoused the Veblenian opinion that wanting a big house full of cheaply produced versions of so-called luxury items was teh greatest soul-sucking trap of modern civilization, and that these copycat mansions away from the heart and soul of a city had ensnared their overmortgaged owners - yes, trapped and relocated them like pests.

Art is despait with dignity.

Paul made a show of choosing an appropriate wine from the list, and Edna Valley Chardonnay, and the waiter made a show of presenting him the bottle and decanting him a taste, and Paul made a show of tasting and approving, and the waiter made a show of pouring for everyone,...

Back in 1921 Veblen had predicted that engineers would one day rule the U.S. economy. He argued that since the economy was premised on technology and the engineers were the only ones who actually understood how the technology worked, they would inevitably use their superior knowledge to seize power from the financiers and captains of industry who wound up on top at the end of the first round of the Industrial Revolution.

She noticed real tension in Paul’s jaw, his mandibles pulled back like

She had an internal clock set to her mother’s hunger for news, but sometimes it felt good to ignore it.

These embedded differences were enough to wreck everything, but what eager young couple would ever believe it?

Part of her wanted to do all the normal bridely things and the other part wanted to embrace her disdain for everything of the sort.

It was roaring, sweeping, aching, bending, a torrent carrying her away.

That's good, to be in the habit of saying sure.

You can't wreck anything. You only make things great.

Was it arrogant to think a squirrel was following you around?

Thorstein Veblen, declara que para la mayoría de los ricos, el principal goce de las riquezas consiste en exhibirlas».

In some quarters, and particularly among those who comment on these matters in in political circles or in the media or the blogosphere or other forms of public discussion, there is, without question, a strain of hostility and resentment likely to be encountered by anyone who attempts to characterize and emphasize the value of the intellectual life carried on in universities. Clearly, a wider anti-intellectualism feeds into this, something well charted in the US from at least Richard Hofstadter onwards and brilliantly diagnosed by Thorstein Veblen and others before that. The narrower version of this response finds it pretty outrageous for academics to criticize or complain about anything to do with universities and their support and regulation by their host society. Along with more understandable and even perhaps justifiable sources of these reactions, we do have to recognize – and here is where I know I am particularly laying myself open to misunderstanding – the force of which Nietzche termed resentiment. There is a bitterness in these reactions, a combination of anger and sneering, together with a levelling intent, that far exceeds what might seem called for by any actual disagreement about the subject matter. And if I may be allowed to risk a little sally of speculative phenomenology, I think this reaction, for all its hostility and dismissiveness, encodes a twisted acknowledgement that there is something desirable, even enviable, about the role of the scholar or the scientist. Part of the reaction, of course, involves a resentment of the supposed security of tenure in a world with very little security of employment; some of it is a sense of how much autonomy, comparatively speaking, academics have in their working lives, how much flexibility in choosing their working hours and so on, in a world where, again, most people enjoy all too little autonomy. But some of it also may be a kind of grudging acknowledgement that the matters that scholars and scientists work on are in themselves more interesting, rewarding and perhaps humanly valuable than the matter most people have to devote their energies too in their working lives. Academics are the object of, simultaneously, envy and resentment because their roles seem to allow them to deal with intrinsically rewarding matters while being financially supported by the labour of others who are not privileged to work on such matters.

In his 1899 critique of upper-class values, The Theory of the Leisure Class, economist and philosopher Thorstein Veblen wrote, 'The dress of women goes even farther than that of men in the way of demonstrating the wearer's abstinence from productive employment. It needs no argument to enforce the generalization that the more elegant styles of feminine bonnets go even farther towards making work impossible than does the man's high hat. The woman's shoe add the so-called French heel to the evidence of enforced leisure afforded by its polish; because this high heel obviously makes any, even the simplest and most necessary manual work extremely difficult.' Women may no longer wear bonnets, and high-heeled shoes may no longer be seen as hindrances to employment, but the fact remains that 'the more elegant styles' are outside the reach of most working women. They require more money, more attention, and more leisure than the average working woman can afford. This is their point.

A considerable amount of American consumption spending is not for the enjoyment of consumption per se, but to show off wealth, status, or sexual allure. In the famous phrase of the economist and social critic Thorstein Veblen, this is “conspicuous consumption,” that is, consumption whose main purpose is to impress others rather than to be enjoyed by oneself.2

You see, the work of maintaining your life with your own skills was never counted in hours. The days were long and arduous, but there was no wishing them to go by.

The skin of the old year was crackling, coming apart, the sewers sweeping it away beneath the roads.

would have been worth it. Remember what Thorstein Veblen wrote about conspicuous consumption?

Discussing the wedding created a perplexing hollow in Veblen. She had picked up a copy of Brides magazine since the whole idea came into play; it wanted to fill her mind with wedding souvenirs and makeovers and cake toppers and what she would wear on her head, but none of that stuff captivated her the way she knew it was supposed to, and she wondered if she should make it an actual goal to start relating to all the bridal fanfare in a more happy-go-lucky way so she wouldn’t miss out on something important. How do you know if you’re stubbornly missing out, or if it’s just not for you and that’s perfectly okay?

After all, it was unrealistic to expect Paul to be her twin, to think they would react the same way in every situation, always be in the same mood, though there was no denying she craved that. She must withstand all differences, no matter how wrenching and painful. For instance, Paul didn’t like corn on the cob. Of all things! How could a person not like fresh, delicious corn on the cob? And how could she not care? “I don’t like biting the cob and the kernels taste pasty to me,” Paul had told her. “Pasty? Then you’ve had really bad corn. Good corn isn’t pasty.” “Don’t get mad. It’s not like corn is your personal invention.” “But it’s impossible. Everyone likes it.” “People with dentures don’t like it.” “What are you trying to say? Do you have dentures?” “No! I’m just saying they are a sizable slice of the population.” “Not anymore. These days most people get implants.” “Not in rural areas.” “Okay, fine, whatever! But eating corn together, we’ll never be able to do that?” “I like other vegetables!” Paul practically yelled. “Corn is more than a vegetable, it’s practically a national icon.

Who cares if she called you?” Veblen cried out. There was a time when abreacting to her mother was out of the question, untenable. The slightest ripple between them terrified her. She was aware that her mother had trained her to turn herself inside out, like a pocket to be inspected for pilfered change.

While she was by temperament very forgiving to others, she was not inclined to be generous to herself. Nothing offended her more than her own faults, which seemed to be revealing themselves lately with alarming frequency. She was muted and superstitious, stunted and weak, and if she spent much more time thinking about it, she’d have a list that rolled out the door on a scroll. There was no perfect being out there, accepting, intelligent, kind, creative, full of life and appetite. Muckraker, carouser, sweet-toothed, lion-hearted. Or was there? 23

William Morris, her mother’s hero, had blind spots. He was seen as effete and ridiculous by Professor Veblen after he paid Morris a visit in England. Veblen came home and blasted Morris’s Kelmscott Press and the whole Arts and Crafts movement for producing overly precious items for the wealthy, the only ones who could afford them—decadent aestheticism, he called it.

THE INSTITUTION of a leisure class is found in its best development at the higher stages of the barbarian culture; as, for instance, in feudal Europe or feudal Japan. In such communities the distinction between classes is very rigorously observed; and the feature of most striking economic significance in these class differences is the distinction maintained between the employments proper to the several classes.

The earlier and cruder method of advertisement held its ground so long as the public to which the exhibitor had to appeal comprised large portions of the community who were not trained to detect delicate variations in the evidences of wealth and leisure. The method of advertisement undergoes refinement when a sufficiently large wealthy class has developed, who have the leisure for acquiring skill in interpreting the subtler signs of expenditure. 'Loud' dress becomes offensive to people of taste, as evincing an undue desire to reach and impress the untrained sensibilities of the vulgar. To the individual of high breeding it is only the more honorific esteem accorded by the cultivated sense of the members of his own high class that is of material consequence. Since the wealthy leisure class has grown so large, or the contact of the leisure-class individual with members of his own class has grown so wide, as to constitute a human environment sufficient for the honorific purpose, there arises a tendency to exclude the baser elements of the population from the scheme even as spectators whose applause or mortification should be sought. The result of all this is a refinement of methods, a resort to subtler contrivances, and a spiritualisation of the scheme of symbolism in dress. And as this upper leisure class sets the pace in all matters of decency, the result for the rest of society also is a gradual amelioration of the scheme of dress. As the community advances in wealth and culture, the ability to pay is put in evidence by means which require a progressively nicer discrimination in the beholder. This nicer discrimination between advertising media is in fact a very large element of the higher pecuniary culture.

The effect of the pecuniary interest and the pecuniary habit of mind upon the growth of institutions is seen in those enactments and conventions that make for security of property, enforcement of contracts, facility of pecuniary transactions, vested interests. Of such bearing are changes affecting bankruptcy and receiverships, limited liability, banking and currency, coalitions of labourers or employers, trusts and pools. The community's institutional furniture of this kind is of immediate consequence only to the propertied classes, and in proportion as they are propertied; that is to say, in proportion as they are to be ranked with the leisure class. But indirectly these conventions of business life are of the gravest consequence for the industrial process and for the life of the community. And in guiding the institutional growth in this respect, the pecuniary classes, therefore, serve a purpose of the most serious importance to the community, not only in the conservation of the accepted social scheme, but also in shaping the industrial process proper. The immediate end of this pecuniary institutional structure and of its amelioration is the greater facility of peaceable and orderly exploitation; but its remoter effects far outrun this immediate object. Not only does the more facile conduct of business permit industry and extra-industrial life to go on with less perturbation; but the resulting elimination of disturbances and complications calling for an exercise of astute discrimination in everyday affairs acts to make the pecuniary class itself superfluous. As fact as pecuniary transactions are reduced to routine, the captain of industry can be dispensed with. This consummation, it is needless to say, lies yet in the indefinite future. The ameliorations wrought in favour of the pecuniary interest in modern institutions tend, in another field, to substitute the 'soulless' joint-stock corporation for the captain, and so they make also for the dispensability of the great leisure-class function of ownership. Indirectly, therefore, the bent given to the growth of economic institutions by the leisure-class influence is of very considerable industrial consequence.

You see, it's like I'm two people. One of me is an educated man. I been in some of the biggest libraries in the country. I read. I read all the time. I read books that tell the pure honest truth. Over there in my suitcase I have books by Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen and such writes as them. I read them over and over, and the more I study the madder I get. I know every word printed on every page.

McMahon made use of Veblen’s conception of emulation in consumption, whereas Kyrk adopted Mitchell’s view that notions of rationality derived from business calculation of profit cannot be applied to households controlled by other standards (1923, p. 144).

As felicitous an instance of futile classicism as can well be found, outside of the Far East, is the conventional spelling of the English language. A breach of the proprieties in spelling is extremely annoying and will discredit any writer in the eyes of all persons who are possessed of a developed sense of the true and beautiful. English orthography satisfies all the requirements of conspicuous waste. It is archaic, cumbrous, and ineffective; it’s acquisition consumes much time and effort; failure to acquire it is easy of detection. Therefore it is the first and readiest test of reputability in learning, and conformity to its ritual is indispensable to a blameless scholastic life.

There is also what author and academic Elizabeth Currid-Halkett recently identified, in her book The Sum of Small Things, as “inconspicuous consumption”: things like private education, health care, and childcare, which bolster the upper classes but are less “visible” than a Birkin. Wealthy people in the Gilded Age, when Veblen was writing about status anxiety, had squadrons of servants; now they have French-speaking nannies, concierge doctors, and prep schools.