Veblen’s System of Conspicuous Waste

John Watkins ()

Journal of Economic Issues, 2019, vol. 53, issue 4, 914-927

Abstract: The touchstone by which Thorstein Veblen evaluated an expenditure was “whether it furthers the life process taken impersonally.” For Veblen, the economic problem involved the problem of social provisioning, the way a community provides for itself. To a large degree, social provisioning has been impeded by the system of conspicuous waste, a “scheme of properties, decencies, and standards of living, the economic motive of which is competitive spending.” The system of conspicuous waste represents a cultural unfolding of conspicuous waste, prompted by the introduction of continuous-mass production in the late nineteenth, early twentieth centuries. Conspicuous waste refers to the allocation of resources, time, and effort that detract from the life process. Veblen rejected the idea that the system of conspicuous waste benefits society. For Veblen, the standard of living refers to that level of consumption at which people are expected to consume. Products that prove serviceable, however, may also serve as symbols of invidiousness. Veblen used the system of conspicuous waste to compare the diverse cultural responses of England and Germany to the same technology in the early twentieth century. The system, however, plays a central role in absorbing increases in output and maintaining profits. Whether it can continue to do so remains questionable.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00213624.2019.1657745 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mes:jeciss:v:53:y:2019:i:4:p:914-927

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/MJEI20

DOI: 10.1080/00213624.2019.1657745

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Economic Issues from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().