The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
Thorstein VeblenRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that social status in an industrial society is tied to wealth and the visible display of consumption.
Thorstein Veblen argues that in a highly organized industrial society, a person's reputation is heavily dependent on their financial strength. To establish and maintain a good name, individuals often engage in conspicuous consumption, whereby they showcase their wealth through luxury goods and leisure activities, reflecting their economic power and social standing.
Themes
ReputationWealthConsumptionStatusLeisure
In practice
Example use cases
During a business workshop, to illustrate the importance of personal branding and wealth, one might quote Veblen.
More from Thorstein Veblen
All quotes →Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.
Thorstein VeblenRead
In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth.
Thorstein VeblenRead
With the exception of the instinct of self-preservation, the propensity for emulation is probably the strongest and most alert and persistent of the economic motives proper.
Thorstein VeblenRead
In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
Thorstein VeblenRead
Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress.
Thorstein VeblenRead
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