The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before.
Thorstein VeblenRead
Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The display of luxury items serves as a way for wealthy individuals to assert their status and reputation.
In this quote, Thorstein Veblen highlights how the ostentatious display of luxury goods is not just about material possession, but rather a reflection of social status and a means to achieve respectability among peers. This behavior of conspicuously consuming valuable items is often associated with individuals who have leisure time and wealth, emphasizing the intersection of economics, social class, and culture.
Themes
ConsumptionLuxuryStatusWealthSocietyReputation
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion on consumer behavior at a business seminar.
More from Thorstein Veblen
All quotes βIn 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.
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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.
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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.
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In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
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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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