POLS 3790 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Conspicuous Consumption, Social Capital
17 Feb 2018
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Thorstein veblen : bounced around in his career, but ended up producing scholarships for institutional economics. Important time to be an economist: rockefeller and the vanderbilt era, conspicuous consumption, not about just the actual money, but the prestige, having much more than you needed. This idea of consuming conspicuously, you can see this in the 21st century. Today the mass consuming public wants to emulate products. If its about the stuff, lets emulate the stuff which leads to knock-offs. The idea of appearing wealthy is almost as important of actually being wealthy: economic sabotage, now were not talking about consumers, were just talking about business, what businesses do to maintain profitability. If we start to max out demand, prices will drop, so we need to actually produce less! This is the sabotaging of productivity: theory of the leisure class, consuming household help; ie. chauffeurs, servants, cooks etc.
