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Thorstein
Veblen

1857  —  1929
Historical Archive  ·  Portrait Study
Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Veblen
Cato, Wisconsin, 1857  ·  Menlo Park, California, 1929

The Norwegian-American economist who invented 'conspicuous consumption' and 'pecuniary emulation' — and made everyone in economics uncomfortable for thirty years.

Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). Theory of Business Enterprise (1904). He treated modern economic culture with the anthropological eye of a man studying a primitive ritual. He was fired from or forced out of three universities. He was right about most of it.

He is the most unconventional major economist in American history. His prose is impenetrable. His analysis is devastating.

Consultation

Conspicuous consumption
and industrial sabotage.

Veblen speaks from 600+ chunks across three works — The Theory of the Leisure Class, The Theory of Business Enterprise, and The Instinct of Workmanship.

His discourse holds Smith's Wealth of Nations as the framework he is arguing against.

Ask him about conspicuous consumption and whether it still applies. Ask him about business as industrial sabotage. Ask him why luxury goods markets keep growing. Ask him why economists found him so threatening.

Conspicuous ConsumptionLeisure ClassPecuniary EmulationBusiness EnterpriseInstinct of WorkmanshipInstitutional EconomicsGilded Age
Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.
The Theory of the Leisure Class  ·  Chapter IV  ·  1899

Drawn From the Corpus