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Theory of the Leisure [chat]
Jacobkosh
Gamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderator mod
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Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen (July 30, 1857 – August 3, 1929) was an American economist and sociologist, and a leader of the so-called institutional economics movement. Besides his technical work he was a popular and witty critic of capitalism, as shown by his best known book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).
Veblen is famous in the history of economic thought for combining a Darwinian evolutionary perspective with his new institutionalist approach to economic analysis. He combined sociology with economics in his masterpiece, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), arguing there was a basic distinction between the productiveness of "industry," run by engineers, which manufactures goods, and the parasitism of "business," which exists only to make profits for a leisure class. The chief activity of the leisure class was "conspicuous consumption", and their economic contribution is "waste," activity that contributes nothing to productivity. The American economy was therefore made inefficient and corrupt by the businessmen, though he never made that claim explicit. Veblen believed that technological advances were the driving force behind cultural change, but, unlike many contemporaries, he refused to connect change with progress.
Although Veblen was sympathetic to state ownership of industry, he had a low opinion of workers and the labor movement and there is disagreement about the extent to which his views are compatible with Marxism 1. As a leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, his sweeping attack on production for profit and his stress on the wasteful role of consumption for status greatly influenced socialist thinkers and engineers seeking a non-Marxist critique of capitalism. Fine (1994) reports that economists at the time complained that his ideas, while brilliantly presented, were crude, gross, fuzzy, and imprecise; others complained he was a wacky eccentric. Scholars continue to debate exactly what he meant in his convoluted, ironic and satiric essays; he made heavy use of examples of primitive societies, but many examples were pure invention.[2]
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Veblen and other American institutionalists were indebted to the German Historical School, especially Gustav von Schmoller, for the emphasis on historical fact, their empiricism and especially a broad, evolutionary framework of study.[20][21] Veblen admired Schmoller but criticized some other leaders of the German school because of their over-reliance on descriptions, long displays of numerical data and narratives of industrial development came with no underlying economic theory. Veblen tried to use the same approach with his own theory added.[22]
Veblen developed a 20th century evolutionary economics based upon Darwinian principles and new ideas emerging from anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Unlike the neoclassical economics that was emerging at the same time, Veblen described economic behavior as socially determined and saw economic organization as a process of ongoing evolution. Veblen strongly rejected any theory based on individual action or any theory highlighting any factor of an inner personal motivation. Such theories were according to him "unscientific." This evolution was driven by the human instincts of emulation, predation, workmanship, parental bent, and idle curiosity. Veblen wanted economists to grasp the effects of social and cultural change on economic changes. In The Theory of the Leisure Class, the instincts of emulation and predation play a major role. People, rich and poor alike, attempt to impress others and seek to gain advantage through what Veblen coined "conspicuous consumption" and the ability to engage in “conspicuous leisure.” In this work Veblen argued that consumption is used as a way to gain and signal status. Through "conspicuous consumption" often came "conspicuous waste," which Veblen detested.
In The Theory of Business Enterprise, which was published in 1904 during the height of American concern with the growth of business combinations and trusts, Veblen employed his evolutionary analysis to explain these new forms. He saw them as a consequence of the growth of industrial processes in a context of small business firms that had evolved earlier to organize craft production. The new industrial processes impelled integration and provided lucrative opportunities for those who managed it. What resulted was, as Veblen saw it, a conflict between businessmen and engineers, with businessmen representing the older order and engineers as the innovators of new ways of doing things. In combination with the tendencies described in The Theory of the Leisure Class, this conflict resulted in waste and “predation” that served to enhance the social status of those who could benefit from predatory claims to goods and services.
Veblen generalized the conflict between businessmen and engineers by saying that human society would always involve conflict between existing norms with vested interests and new norms developed out of an innate human tendency to manipulate and learn about the physical world in which we exist. He also generalized his model to include his theory of instincts, processes of evolution as absorbed from Sumner, as enhanced by his own reading of evolutionary science, and Pragmatic philosophy first learned from Peirce. The instinct of idle curiosity led humans to manipulate nature in new ways and this led to changes in what he called the material means of life. Because, as per the Pragmatists, our ideas about the world are a human construct rather than mirrors of reality, changing ways of manipulating nature lead to changing constructs and to changing notions of truth and authority as well as patterns of behavior (institutions). Societies and economies evolve as a consequence, but do so via a process of conflict between vested interests and older forms and the new. Veblen never wrote with any confidence that the new ways were better ways, but he was sure in the last three decades of his life that the American economy could have, in the absence of vested interests, produced more for more people. In the years just after World War I he looked to engineers to make the American economy more efficient.
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Nah.
it is debilitatingly painful! (:P)
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Don't sell out to the elites bro
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
should have been
"Your favorite [chat] that starts with "S" "
?
mine is shiny.
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i have things to do
like not play ss2
i never played that, actually.
I am not good at PC games, so many buttons on the controller!
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One inherent flaw in the argument is best seen in observing that what earlier thinkers regarded as wasteful could change rather rapidly with later thinkers: we are not terribly good at judging what is insufficiently legitimate consumption. Apple spends a lot of resources on unifying design, for instance; the chrome it takes much inspiration from was heavily derided in the 60s.
Let him go, Eddy
You need to learn to move on, there are other economists in the sea yeah?
Take that, unproductive non-engineers. You are vampires, all of you.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I am sucking the blood of your industriousness right now.
pft, what do nerds know about running things
On the black screen
Running things? Not a lot. Engineers are for building things. Technicians are for running things.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Check out my site, the Bismuth Heart | My Twitter
did my first 30 minute session, gonna do my second 30 minute session after I'm done eating this delicious soup.
Check out my site, the Bismuth Heart | My Twitter
He's a very funny, literate, discursive writer who was in touch with his times. I think you'd enjoy him.
A thief broke into my parent's house a couple years back, when they were (thankfully) out. Part of a crime wave in the region, since suppressed. Somehow the thie(ves?) jumped a two-meter-high spiked fence, used some kind of blowtorch to dismantle the kitchen's metal window grilles, smashed the solid hardwood bedroom doors and pried out the push-knob door locks, and forced a lot of locked drawers for valuables. Apparently they forced open one of the drawers I had in my old bedroom. I hope they found my toys of yesteryear amusing.
Still, better than what happened a couple of doors down: some robbers armed with knives waited for a neighbor to open a gate to drive their car out, then blocked the car and tried to force the driver out by taking their kid hostage. A passing (unarmed!) neighborhood volunteer patrol managed to intimidate them into leaving. Since the patrol was unarmed, the patrol decided not to try and detain them... so the robbers came back a few hours later with friends, broke in, and beat the neighbor with sticks. They couldn't open the gate to take the car, so they beat up the car too.
Bleh.
Like a burger from the kitchen to my table am I right.
You say that like they can get a job in this market
thanks a lot for taking down wiki, SOAPbama
The gentle manne of leisure.
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25k reality show from Capcom
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/154646/capcom-announces-street-fighter-x-tekken-live-reality-show-cross-assault#Item_1
Also, redhead should return soon. I have gone most of this episode without her.
I feel stupider for having had to listen to her.
What did s/he say?
8->
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I am now content.