Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Bunde Veblenwas an American economist and sociologist. He was famous as a witty critic of capitalism...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEconomist
Date of Birth30 July 1857
CityCato, WI
CountryUnited States of America
business cost net rest sound
It is always sound business to take any obtainable net gain, at any cost and at any risk to the rest of the community.
grew grow outcome questions research serious
The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
beautiful brother dignity good joy labor pride respect sister treated useful wants
Labor wants also pride and joy in doing good work, a sense of making or doing something beautiful or useful - to be treated with dignity and respect as brother and sister
canons conformity imperative quite servants trained
Servants should not only show a servile disposition, but it is quite as imperative that they should show a trained conformity to the canons of conspicuous subservience.
fashion clothes people
Loud dress becomes offensive to people of taste, as evincing an undue desire to reach and impress the untrained sensibilities of the vulgar.
class leisure transition
The institution of a leisure class has emerged gradually during the transition from primitive savagery to barbarism; or more precisely, during the transition from a peaceable to a consistently warlike habit of life.
mean work-out analysis
It is a matter of course and of absolute necessity to the conduct of business, that any discretionary businessman must be free to deal or not to deal in any given case; to limit or withhold the equipment under his control, without reservation. Business discretion and business strategy, in fact, has no other means by to work out its aims. So that, in effect, all business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.
purpose mutilation rendering
The corset is?a mutilation, undergone for the purpose of lowering the subject's vitalityand rendering her permanentlyand obviously unfit for work.
law effort requirements
English orthography satisfies all the requirements of the canons of reputability under the law of conspicuous waste. It is archaic, cumbrous, and ineffective; its acquisition consumes much time and effort; failure to acquire it is easy of detection.
self complacency possession
So soon as the possession of property becomes the basis of popular esteem, therefore, it becomes also a requisite to that complacency which we call self-respect.
mean names community
The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.
lasts analysis use
All business sagacity reduces itself in the last analysis to judicious use of sabotage.
life beautiful eye
In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
respect revulsion decorum
There are few things that so touch us with instinctive revulsion as a breach of decorum.