Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Bunde Veblen (30 July 1857 – 3 August 1929) was an American economist and sociologist, who during his lifetime emerged as a well-known critic of capitalism.
In his best-known book, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Veblen coined the concept of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. Historians of economics regard Veblen as the founding father of the institutional economics school. Contemporary economists still theorize Veblen's distinction between "institutions" and "technology", known as the Veblenian dichotomy.
As a leading intellectual of the Progressive Era in the United States of America, Veblen attacked production for profit. His emphasis on conspicuous consumption greatly influenced economists who engaged in non-Marxist critiques of capitalism and of technological determinism.
Conspicuous consumption
In his most famous work, The Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen writes critically of the leisure class for its role in fostering wasteful consumption. In this first work Veblen coined the term "conspicuous consumption", which he defined as spending more money on goods than they are worth. The term originated during the Second Industrial Revolution when a nouveau riche social class emerged as a result of the accumulation of capital wealth. He explains that members of the leisure class, often associated with business, are those who also engage in conspicuous consumption in order to impress the rest of society through the manifestation of their social power and prestige, be it real or perceived. In other words, social status, Veblen explained, becomes earned and displayed by patterns of consumption rather than what the individual makes financially. Subsequently, people in other social classes are influenced by this behavior and, as Veblen argued, strive to emulate the leisure class. What results from this behavior, is a society characterized by the waste of time and money. Unlike other sociological works of the time, The Theory of the Leisure Class focused on consumption, rather than production.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_..._Leisure_Class
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Robert M. Pirsig