Podcasts about Thorstein Veblen

Bart Geeraedts sprak met Hanno Sauer over zijn boek Klasse. Voortbouwend op de ideeën van Thorstein Veblen betoogt Sauer dat sociale klassen meer zijn dan economische categorieën. Sociale hiërarchieën reproduceren zich via statussignalen, zoals smaak en gedrag. Daardoor blijven klassenverschillen een fundamenteel kenmerk van de moderne samenleving.

Economia Underground, um podcast institucionalista.No episódio de hoje, vamos conversar sobre um texto pouco conhecido de Thorstein Veblen intitulado Dementia Praecox, publicado em 1922 no The Freeman. Neste curto artigo, o pioneiro institucionalista busca descrever a essência do comportamento norte-americano focando em como os vested interests criaram um país fundado no medo, na paranoia e na violência. Um artigo de mais de cem anos que muito explica sobre as bases institucionais dos Estados Unidos daquela época e dos dias de hoje.Nos siga no Instagram: @economiaunderground

Economia Underground, um podcast institucionalista.No episódio de hoje, mais uma vez contamos com a participação da querida Luiza Fernanda Pereira Santos, doutoranda no Programa de Pós-graduação em Políticas Públicas da UFPR. Em sua primeira participação aqui no Economia Underground, no episódio #179, celebramos a premiada dissertação da Luíza. Dessa vez, celebraremos o seu sucesso na premiação anual de estudantes da Association for Institutional Thought (AFIT) e da Association for Evolutionary Economics (AFEE). O artigo em questão é o “Sharing, caring, surviving: Thorstein Veblen's parental bent and human evolution beyond violence.”Nos siga no Instagram: @economiaunderground

La economía estudia la asignación de unos recursos escasos y en la resolución de este problema ético, la filosofía es de mayor utilidad que las matemáticas. María Blanco quiere saber cómo se ha estudiado la economía a lo largo de los siglos. Esta ciencia se matematizó en la segunda mitad del siglo XX por culpa de Paul Samuelson, quien representaría mediante complejas ecuaciones las funciones de la oferta y la demanda. No siempre fue este el método de estudio, los primeros economistas se asemejaban más a los filósofos. Antes de escribir La riqueza de las naciones, Adam Smith había publicado La teoría de los sentimientos morales, un tratado sobre la moral. Por suerte, todo río regresa a su cauce. La economía del siglo XXI será filosófica, no matemática.Kapital es posible gracias a sus colaboradores:⁠Thenomba⁠. La escuela que te hará encontrar tu propósito.Thenomba es la escuela que te prepara para encontrar un propósito, no un trabajo.Me han hecho embajador del máster y puedo ofrecerte un descuento especial en el precio. Si quieres matricularte, utiliza el código KAPITAL20 para llevarte una rebaja del 20%. 42 oyentes de este podcast ya utilizaron el código en la exitosa edición de diciembre. Si te preguntas si esto encaja contigo, te recomiendo simplemente escuchar los episodios de hace unas semanas con Higinio Marín y Ricardo Piñero. Higinio y Ricardo son dos de los profesores del máster y esas dos entrevistas reflejan la vocación humanista de su programa. Si resuenan en tu cabeza algunas de las ideas de esas conversaciones, entonces Thenomba es para ti.Patrocina Kapital. Toda la información en este link.Índice:0:32 Un empresario paga costes antes de conocer beneficios.8:18 Valor contraintuitivo de Mercadona.14:23 Compañía de las Indias Orientales.21:04 Todos somos empresarios.32:24 Economistas con vidas de película.39:55 Batalla de gallos entre Keynes y Hayek.46:46 Innecesaria matematización de la economía.49:50 Las movidas de Veblen.54:02 Académicos multidisciplinares.1:06:20 ¿Es un historiador optimista sobre el futuro?1:15:54 Escuela de Salamanca.1:24:04 Solo los judíos podían prestar con interés.1:29:43 Tigres, leones, todos quieren ser los campeones.1:38:26 Es más fácil contar pobres que contar ricos.Apuntes:La riqueza de las naciones. Adam Smith.La teoría de los sentimientos morales. Adam Smith.Risk, uncertainty and profit. Frank Knight.The capitalist and the entrepreneur. Peter Klein.Start-up nation. Dan Senor & Saul Singer.Tratado de economia politica. Jean Baptiste Say.La acción humana. Ludwig von Mises.Teoría general de la ocupación, el interés y el dinero. John Maynard Keynes.Principios de economía política y tributación. David Ricardo.Hacia la estación de Finlandia. Edmund Wilson.Teoría de la clase ociosa. Thorstein Veblen.Economical writing. Deirdre McCloskey.Armonías económicas. Frédéric Bastiat.Bastiat as an economist. María Blanco & Carlos Rodríguez Braun.

In this episode of Built to Divide we dissect the collision of NIMBY politics, Proposition 13 in California, environmental law, rising construction costs, and cultural status signaling that defined housing in the 2010s. Dimitrius Lynch takes listeners inside the community meeting rooms where projects die quietly, tracing how California's tax revolt rewired local incentives, how CEQA evolved from environmental shield to procedural weapon, and why housing scarcity became fiscally rational—even when socially destructive.This episode connects Thorstein Veblen's leisure class theory to modern zoning fights, explains why new construction skews luxury, and reveals how amenities became financial risk mitigation tools, not indulgences. From Hudson Yards and empty towers as safety-deposit boxes to YIMBY vs. NIMBY power shifts, this episode shows why the middle disappeared from the housing market—and why scarcity today is a policy choice, not a mystery.Episode Extras - Photos, videos, sources and links to additional content found during research.Episode Credits:Production in collaboration with Gābl MediaWritten & Executive Produced by Dimitrius LynchAudio Engineering and Sound Design by Jeff Alvarez

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 17:14:00 +0000 https://feed.neuezwanziger.de/link/21941/17249510/da94c66e-9b4c-419b-8a64-4a5c4af2ec5a b9a554de333a9c3ffbb6ee6605b70a9e Stefan und Wolfgang treffen sich vorm Salon Alles hören Komm' in den Salon. Es gibt ihn via Webplayer & RSS-Feed (zum Hören im Podcatcher deiner Wahl, auch bei Apple Podcasts und Spotify). Wenn du Salon-Stürmer bist, lade weitere Hörer von der [Gästeliste] Diskutiert mit uns hier 00:00:00 – Vor dem Salon Der Salon beginnt mit einem Blick auf die aktuelle Nachrichtenlage, angefangen bei den Haftungsfragen des Gelsenkirchener Tresorraum-Einbruchs bis hin zur politischen Aufarbeitung des Berliner Stromausfalls und der Kritik an Kai Wegners Freizeitgestaltung während der Krise. Die Gastgeber analysieren zudem die neue geopolitische Ehrlichkeit der USA unter Trump, die unverhohlen ökonomische Interessen in Venezuela artikuliert, und demaskieren den Schaukampf zwischen Jake Paul und Mike Tyson als Symptom einer durchinszenierten Leistungsgesellschaft. Schließlich wird der Bogen zu den transhumanistischen Fantasien der Tech-Elite gespannt, exemplifiziert an Alexander Wangs Wunsch nach Hirn-Computer-Schnittstellen zur Sicherung kognitiver Dominanz. 00:52:39 – Salon für Dezember 2025 Wolfgang und Stefan leiten zum Hauptteil des Salons über und geben einen kurzen Ausblick auf die Themenvielfalt der Episode. Zudem stellen sie die neue Diskurs-Plattform des Podcasts vor, die eine unabhängigere Hörerkommunikation ermöglichen soll. 00:54:57 – Salon-Hinweis für März Wolfgang kündigt einen gemeinsamen Konzertbesuch mit der Community für März 2026 in der Alten Oper Frankfurt an. Geplant ist der Besuch eines Auftritts des Isidore String Quartets, das Werke von Haydn und Dvořák spielen wird. 00:55:56 – Daniel Markovits, The Meritocracy Trap, 2019 Im Zentrum der Diskussion steht Daniel Markovits' These, dass die Meritokratie zu einem Mechanismus mutiert ist, der Reichtum und Chancen innerhalb einer neuen, super-ordinären Arbeiterklasse konzentriert und eine Kastenbildung durch exzessive Bildungsinvestitionen vorantreibt. Die Gastgeber analysieren, wie diese neue Elite, anders als frühere Aristokratien, ihre Privilegien durch extreme Selbstausbeutung legitimiert, was zu einer toxischen Dynamik aus Burnout bei den Gewinnern und systematischem Ausschluss der Mittelschicht führt. Dieser strukturelle Verschluss wird als wesentlicher Treiber für den modernen Populismus identifiziert, da die Aufstiegsversprechen der Leistungsgesellschaft für die breite Masse zur Illusion verkommen sind. Erwähnungen: Branko Milanović, Michael Sandel, Francis Fukuyama, Alexander Wang, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Thorstein Veblen, Pierre Bourdieu, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Julia Friedrichs, Christoph Butterwegge, Oliver Stone, Michael Douglas, Gordon Gekko. 02:57:21 – Die meritokratische Falle in 1 Minute Wolfgang fasst die Kernbotschaft des Buches prägnant zusammen: Die Meritokratie ist eine Falle, die echte Gleichheit durch einen gnadenlosen Wettbewerb ersetzt, der letztlich sowohl die erschöpften Gewinner als auch die abgehängten Verlierer beschädigt. 02:59:24 – Ben Shattuck, Die Geschichte des Klangs, 2024 Wolfgang rezensiert Ben Shattucks Erzählung, die zwei Liebesgeschichten über Jahrzehnte hinweg verwebt, verbunden durch das Motiv des Sammelns von Volksliedern und die Frage, ob Liebe besser als flüchtige, intensive Erinnerung oder als gelebte Realität bewahrt wird. Die Novelle kontrastiert die melancholische Schönheit festgehaltener Momente auf Wachswalzen mit der Tristesse eines angepassten Lebens und wirft die Frage auf, was von einem Leben bleibt, wenn man sich gegen die Leidenschaft entscheidet. Erwähnungen: Paul Mescal, Josh O'Connor, Thomas Edison, Jane Austen, Édouard Manet. 03:10:49 – C.J. Chivers, In Ukraine, a New Arsenal of Killer A.I. Drones Is Being Born, 2025 Stefan stellt eine investigative Reportage über die rasante Evolution der semi-autonomen Drohnenkriegsführung in der Ukraine vor, in der westliche Tech-Größen wie Eric Schmidt das Konfliktgebiet als Labor für KI-gesteuerte Waffensysteme nutzen. Diskutiert wird der technologische Sprung zu visuellen Positionierungssystemen, die herkömmliche Störsender nutzlos machen und konventionelle Militärinfrastruktur obsolet werden lassen könnten. Die Gastgeber debattieren das "Gatling-Paradoxon" – die trügerische Hoffnung, dass tödlichere Technologie zu mehr Abschreckung führt – und die Verwischung der Grenzen zwischen Silicon Valley, Hollywood-Ästhetik und automatisiertem Töten. Erwähnungen: Eric Schmidt, Nazar Bigun, Brian Streem, Daniel Suarez, Paul Virilio, Steven Spielberg, Richard Gatling. 03:24:36 – Uwe Volkmann, Die unpolitische Gewalt, 2025 Wolfgang diskutiert Uwe Volkmanns Kritik am Bundesverfassungsgericht, dem vorgeworfen wird, sich durch juristischen Formalismus – etwa bei der Triage-Gesetzgebung oder der Schuldenbremse – der politischen Verantwortung zu entziehen. Es wird debattiert, ob der strikte Rechtspositivismus eine notwendige Demokratiesicherung darstellt oder ob er zu einer Dysfunktionalität führt, bei der existenzielle Fragen in Zuständigkeitsdebatten zerrieben werden, anstatt materielle Gerechtigkeit zu schaffen. Erwähnungen: Paul Laband, Gustav Radbruch, Christian Lindner. 03:50:45 – ungleichheit.info Stefan empfiehlt eine Webseite zur Datenvisualisierung, die die extreme Diskrepanz der Vermögensverteilung eindrücklich darstellt und aufzeigt, wie systematisch Großparteien das Thema Ungleichheit in ihren Wahlprogrammen ignorieren. Dies dient als Aufhänger für ein Plädoyer zur Renaissance der unabhängigen Blogosphäre und persönlicher Webseiten, um der Dominanz zentralisierter Plattformen etwas entgegenzusetzen. Erwähnungen: Martina Liel, Reese Witherspoon, Dua Lipa. 03:57:20 – Hito Steyerl, Medium Hot. Bilder in Zeiten der Hitze, 2024 Wolfgang bespricht Hito Steyerls Essaysammlung zur Ästhetik und Politik von KI-Bildern, insbesondere das Phänomen des "Haxenpornos" – verzerrte, nicht-explizite Nacktheit als Resultat prüder Content-Filter. Die Diskussion beleuchtet, wie KI-Modelle "gemeine Bilder" (mean images) erzeugen, die einen statistischen Durchschnitt abbilden und dabei gesellschaftliche Normen und koloniale Strukturen reproduzieren. Erwähnungen: James Bridle, Édouard Manet, Yann LeCun. 04:05:47 – Benjamin Riley, Large Language Mistake, 2024 Stefan führt eine Kritik an Large Language Models ein, die die Gleichsetzung von sprachlicher Kompetenz mit echter Intelligenz infrage stellt und argumentiert, dass Sprache primär ein Kommunikationswerkzeug und nicht der Gedanke selbst ist. Der Text postuliert, dass LLMs als "Maschinen toter Metaphern" lediglich vorhandene kulturelle Skripte recyceln, ohne die für echte Innovation notwendige kognitive Tiefe zu besitzen. Erwähnungen: Dario Amodei, Mark Zuckerberg. 04:11:21 – Vauhini Vara, What If Readers Like A.I.-Generated Fiction?, 2024 Das Segment beleuchtet ein Experiment, bei dem eine KI beauftragt wurde, einen Text von Han Kang stilistisch zu imitieren, wobei Testleser die geglättete KI-Version oft dem emotional roheren Original vorzogen. Die Gastgeber diskutieren die Implikationen für die Literatur und hinterfragen, ob die "Authentizität" eines Autors für den Lesegenuss notwendig ist oder ob KI-Assistenz die literarische Varianz legitim erweitern könnte. Erwähnungen: Han Kang, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Ernest Hemingway, Gwyneth Paltrow. 04:26:58 – Nils Schniederjann, Nicht besser als die EKD: Die Kriegsrhetorik der deutschen Katholiken, 2024 Wolfgang analysiert einen Artikel, der die Deutsche Bischofskonferenz für ihre kriegsbefürwortende Haltung kritisiert, die eher Regierungslinien folgt als der diplomatischen Friedanstradition des Vatikans. Diskutiert wird der Riss zwischen den deutschen Bischöfen und dem universalistischen, pazifistischeren Ansatz von Papst Franziskus sowie die Frage nach der Relevanz der Kirche, wenn sie lediglich säkulare Sicherheitsstrategien theologisch verbrämt. Erwähnungen: Papst Leo XIII., Papst Johannes XXIII., Papst Franziskus, Wladimir Putin. 04:34:22 – Musik: Quatuor Arod spielt Haydn Wolfgang empfiehlt die Einspielung von Joseph Haydns Streichquartetten Op. 76 durch das Quatuor Arod und lobt deren dynamischen, transparenten Klang, der durch die Verwendung historischer Bögen erzielt wird. Die Rezension hebt hervor, wie das Ensemble den Gesprächscharakter der Gattung und die Balance zwischen kontemplativer Tiefe und tänzerischer Derbheit meistert. Erwähnungen: Joseph Haydn, André Rieu. 04:38:09 – Ankündigung: Patrick Kaczmarczyk Stefan und Wolfgang kündigen die Lektüre für den nächsten Salon an: Patrick Kaczmarczyks Analyse zum Zerfall der westlichen Weltordnung und dem Aufstieg des globalen Südens. Literaturliste Daniel Markovits: The Meritocracy Trap penguin.co.uk Ben Shattuck: Die Geschichte des Klangs hanser-literaturverlage.de C.J. Chivers: In Ukraine, a New Arsenal of Killer A.I. Drones Is Being Born nytimes.com Uwe Volkmann: Die unpolitische Gewalt faz.net Ungleichheit.info ungleichheit.info Hito Steyerl: Medium Hot. Bilder in Zeiten der Hitze diaphanes.net Benjamin Riley: Large Language Mistake theverge.com Vauhini Vara: What If Readers Like A.I.-Generated Fiction? newyorker.com Nils Schniederjann: Nicht besser als die EKD: Die Kriegsrhetorik der deutschen Katholiken freitag.de Musik: Quatuor Arod spielt Haydn warnerclassics.com Ankündigung: Patrick Kaczmarczyk – Zerfall der Weltordnung: Die Ignoranz des Westens und der Aufstand des globalen Südens westendverlag.de full Stefan und Wolfgang treffen sich vorm Salon no Stefan Schulz und Wolfgang M. Schmitt 3298

An important critic of modern culture, American economist Thorstein Veblen is best known for the concept of “conspicuous consumption,” the ostentatious display of goods in the service of social status. In the field of architectural history, scholars have employed Veblen in support of a wide range of arguments about modern architecture, but never has he attracted a comprehensive and critical treatment from the viewpoint of architectural history. In Barbarian Architecture: Thorstein Veblen's Chicago (MIT Press, 2024), Joanna Merwood-Salisbury corrects this omission by reexamining Veblen's famous book as an original theory of modernity and situating it in a particular place and time—Chicago in the 1890s. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, she explores Veblen's position in relation to debates about industrial reform and aesthetics in Chicago during the period 1890–1906. Bolstered by a strong visual narrative made possible by several of Chicago's historic photographic collections, Barbarian Architecture makes a compelling and original argument for the influence of Veblen's home city on his work and ideas. This interview was conducted by Matthew Wells, Senior Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester. His research explores nineteenth-century architecture, focusing on cultural techniques, technology, and political economy. Wells is the author of Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

An important critic of modern culture, American economist Thorstein Veblen is best known for the concept of “conspicuous consumption,” the ostentatious display of goods in the service of social status. In the field of architectural history, scholars have employed Veblen in support of a wide range of arguments about modern architecture, but never has he attracted a comprehensive and critical treatment from the viewpoint of architectural history. In Barbarian Architecture: Thorstein Veblen's Chicago (MIT Press, 2024), Joanna Merwood-Salisbury corrects this omission by reexamining Veblen's famous book as an original theory of modernity and situating it in a particular place and time—Chicago in the 1890s. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, she explores Veblen's position in relation to debates about industrial reform and aesthetics in Chicago during the period 1890–1906. Bolstered by a strong visual narrative made possible by several of Chicago's historic photographic collections, Barbarian Architecture makes a compelling and original argument for the influence of Veblen's home city on his work and ideas. This interview was conducted by Matthew Wells, Senior Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester. His research explores nineteenth-century architecture, focusing on cultural techniques, technology, and political economy. Wells is the author of Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

An important critic of modern culture, American economist Thorstein Veblen is best known for the concept of “conspicuous consumption,” the ostentatious display of goods in the service of social status. In the field of architectural history, scholars have employed Veblen in support of a wide range of arguments about modern architecture, but never has he attracted a comprehensive and critical treatment from the viewpoint of architectural history. In Barbarian Architecture: Thorstein Veblen's Chicago (MIT Press, 2024), Joanna Merwood-Salisbury corrects this omission by reexamining Veblen's famous book as an original theory of modernity and situating it in a particular place and time—Chicago in the 1890s. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, she explores Veblen's position in relation to debates about industrial reform and aesthetics in Chicago during the period 1890–1906. Bolstered by a strong visual narrative made possible by several of Chicago's historic photographic collections, Barbarian Architecture makes a compelling and original argument for the influence of Veblen's home city on his work and ideas. This interview was conducted by Matthew Wells, Senior Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester. His research explores nineteenth-century architecture, focusing on cultural techniques, technology, and political economy. Wells is the author of Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/architecture

An important critic of modern culture, American economist Thorstein Veblen is best known for the concept of “conspicuous consumption,” the ostentatious display of goods in the service of social status. In the field of architectural history, scholars have employed Veblen in support of a wide range of arguments about modern architecture, but never has he attracted a comprehensive and critical treatment from the viewpoint of architectural history. In Barbarian Architecture: Thorstein Veblen's Chicago (MIT Press, 2024), Joanna Merwood-Salisbury corrects this omission by reexamining Veblen's famous book as an original theory of modernity and situating it in a particular place and time—Chicago in the 1890s. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, she explores Veblen's position in relation to debates about industrial reform and aesthetics in Chicago during the period 1890–1906. Bolstered by a strong visual narrative made possible by several of Chicago's historic photographic collections, Barbarian Architecture makes a compelling and original argument for the influence of Veblen's home city on his work and ideas. This interview was conducted by Matthew Wells, Senior Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the University of Manchester. His research explores nineteenth-century architecture, focusing on cultural techniques, technology, and political economy. Wells is the author of Modelling the Metropolis: The Architectural Model in Victorian London (2023). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Money and power are merging on the high seas. The New Yorker's Evan Osnos exposes how super yachts became the new seat of American oligarchy.Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/1217What We Discuss with Evan Osnos:Billionaire political donations increased 200x in 20 years ($25M to $3B in 2024), marking America's shift from democracy to oligarchy — where economic and political power fuse.Super yachts are floating power centers — not just status symbols but boardrooms, tax havens, and networking hubs where billion-dollar deals happen beyond public scrutiny and regulation.Each super yacht pollutes like 1,500 cars running continuously, costs 10 percent of its purchase price annually to maintain, and creates toxic work environments for crew in legal gray zones.The ultra-wealthy face insatiable desire — where 50-meter boats become "embarrassing," half-billion-dollar yachts are "quite nice," and satisfaction remains perpetually out of reach.History shows extreme inequality resolves through crisis — war, revolution, or pandemic. But we can prevent these outcomes by making systems less advantageous to the few and more inclusive to all. Support politicians who limit campaign finance influence. Vote with your wallet. Build communities that value contribution over consumption. Small actions compound: we shape culture by what we celebrate and reject.And much more...And if you're still game to support us, please leave a review here — even one sentence helps! Sign up for Six-Minute Networking — our free networking and relationship development mini course — at jordanharbinger.com/course!Subscribe to our once-a-week Wee Bit Wiser newsletter today and start filling your Wednesdays with wisdom!Do you even Reddit, bro? Join us at r/JordanHarbinger!This Episode Is Brought To You By Our Fine Sponsors:Beam: Up to 30% off: shopbeam.com/JHS, code JHSFactor: 50% off first box: factormeals.com/jordan50off, code JORDAN50OFFGelt: 10% off 1st year: joingelt.com/jhsKa'Chava: 15% off: kachava.com, code JORDANSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Pourquoi on veut ce que les ultra-riches ont ? Adhérez à cette chaîne pour obtenir des avantages : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN4TCCaX-gqBNkrUqXdgGRA/join Merci à Murphy Cooper https://www.instagram.com/murphycooper/?hl=fr Écriture, réalisation et montage: Laurent Turcot Pour soutenir la chaîne, au choix: 1. Cliquez sur le bouton « Adhérer » sous la vidéo. 2. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/hndl Musique issue du site : epidemicsound.com Images provenant de https://www.storyblocks.com Abonnez-vous à la chaine: https://www.youtube.com/c/LHistoirenousledira Les vidéos sont utilisées à des fins éducatives selon l'article 107 du Copyright Act de 1976 sur le Fair-Use. Sources et pour aller plus loin: Hervé Kempf et Juan Mendez, Comment les riches ravagent la planète et comment les en empêcher, Paris, Seuil, 2024. Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class - An Economic Study of Institutions ; trad. fr. Théorie de la classe de loisir, Paris, Gallimard, 1970. Potlatch, encyclopédie canadienne, René R. Gadacz, 7 février 2006 https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/fr/article/potlatch-1 Consume This! The Potlatch Revisited: Staging Wealth and Waste, Ashley Mears, 2017 https://asaconsumers.wordpress.com/2017/09/11/consume-this-the-potlatch-revisited-staging-wealth-and-waste/ Autres références disponibles sur demande. #histoire #documentaire #luxe #consommation #argent #money

L'effet Veblen est un phénomène économique et sociologique qui décrit un comportement paradoxal : plus un produit est cher, plus certaines personnes ont envie de l'acheter. Contrairement à la logique classique selon laquelle une hausse des prix diminue la demande, l'effet Veblen montre qu'un prix élevé peut, au contraire, attirer les consommateurs… précisément parce qu'il est élevé.Ce concept porte le nom de Thorstein Veblen, un économiste et sociologue américain du XIXe siècle, qui a introduit la notion de consommation ostentatoire. Dans son ouvrage La Théorie de la classe de loisir (1899), Veblen observe que certaines personnes achètent des biens non pour leur utilité, mais pour montrer leur statut social. Dépenser beaucoup devient alors une stratégie de distinction.Prenons un exemple : une montre vendue 20 euros donne l'heure aussi bien qu'une montre à 10 000 euros. Pourtant, la seconde séduit certains consommateurs justement parce qu'elle coûte 10 000 euros. Elle signale au monde extérieur : « Je peux me le permettre », « J'appartiens à un certain milieu ». Le produit devient un symbole, pas seulement un objet.Mais l'effet Veblen ne touche pas uniquement les très riches. Il peut aussi influencer des personnes prêtes à se mettre en difficulté financière pour acquérir des produits de luxe ou des marques prestigieuses. Pourquoi ? Parce que dans un monde de plus en plus saturé de signes, le prix devient un raccourci pour juger de la valeur. On croit, parfois inconsciemment, que « cher = mieux », ou « cher = rare = désirable ».Le marketing joue à fond sur ce ressort psychologique. Les marques de luxe ne cherchent pas à être accessibles, au contraire : elles cultivent la rareté, l'exclusivité, et l'élitisme. Certaines montent artificiellement les prix, limitent la production, voire refusent de vendre à certains clients pour entretenir l'illusion d'un club fermé. Résultat : plus c'est difficile d'accès, plus c'est convoité.Ce mécanisme n'est pas toujours irrationnel. Dans certains contextes, dépenser beaucoup peut rapporter : une voiture haut de gamme peut ouvrir des opportunités professionnelles, des vêtements de luxe peuvent favoriser l'influence ou l'image. Mais l'effet Veblen devient problématique quand il pousse à acheter pour acheter, sans besoin réel, ni satisfaction durable — juste pour impressionner ou appartenir.En résumé, l'effet Veblen explique pourquoi des gens achètent des choses très chères non pour leur qualité, mais pour ce qu'elles représentent socialement. Et dans une société où l'image compte parfois plus que le fond, cet effet peut nous faire acheter… n'importe quoi. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Adam and Cameron continue their occasional series on heterodox economists. This week, they discuss the life and work of the American economist Thorstein Veblen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We took another dive into the large pile of books…and came up with The The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen.This seminal book needs unpacking, with a crowbar and claw hammer! We draw together 50 Cent, the Robber Barons, wealth and affluence as we review this 19th century classic. Plus a shocking confession….Support your local bookstore or library PLEASE :-)or find out where to grab the book here: ⁠https://booko.co.nz/w/10033590/The-Theory-of-the-Leisure-Class_by_Thorstein-VeblenFollow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube or wherever you listen (or watch!) your podcasts.Connect with us here: ⁠⁠⁠the232podcast@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠Get Sean's book The Impact Professional at: ⁠⁠⁠impactprofessional.nz⁠

Economia Underground, um podcast institucionalista.Neste episódio, temos a honra de receber Mirna Wabi-Sabi, escritora e fundadora da plataforma9, para discutir a tradução recente de "Por que a Economia Não É Uma Ciência Evolucionária?", de Thorstein Veblen.Notícia relacionada: https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/economia/macroeconomia/petrobras-registra-23-vazamentos-de-oleo-em-dois-anos/Nos siga no Instagram: @economiaunderground

In this episode, we talk about Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class. In it, he argues that modern culture is basically continuous with that of predatory barbarism, except that it is drunk on the extreme surplus produced by capitalism. Under these conditions, much of human activity becomes performative: consumption, leisure, and perhaps paradoxically enough even hustle culture are all forms of demonstrating one's superiority in a petty game of social esteem. We explore some of these paradoxes and discuss whether Veblen's analysis still rings fully true in the 21st century, but to be honest we mostly just pour vitriol and scorn upon the extremely embarrassing members of our own ruling class. We can be petty, too!leftofphilosophy.comReferences:Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).Bernard Rosenberg, “Veblen and Marx”, Social Research 15:1 (1948): 99-117.Music:“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN

Recientemente se han vuelto virales una serie de videos que muestran lo barato que cuesta fabricar bienes de lujo en China, y que dizque “revelan” la verdad de los márgenes de utilidad obscenos que obtienen las compañías que los venden en sus exclusivas tiendas boutique.Lo más interesante de estos videos lo vemos en algo que se repite una y otro vez en cada uno de ellos: los productores chinos dicen que pueden venderte el mismo producto, 100 veces mas barato, siempre y cuando sea SIN la marca. Sin el logo, la estampita, herrería o monería que le anuncia a los demás de qué marca es tu artículo de lujo. La Conspiración China de las Marcas de Lujo quiere poner sobre la mesa una pregunta: ¿QUÉ es lo que pagas cuando compras un artículo de lujo?.La pregunta, para nada, es nueva. En 1899, Thorstein Veblen acuño el concepto del “consumo conspicuo”: cuando compras bienes valiosos no porque los necesitas, sino para que los demás vean que los compraste. El consumo conspicuo de bienes valiosos, dice Velben “es un medio para obtener respetabilidad por parte del caballero ocioso” y además, “no consumirlos en la cantidad y calidad adecuadas se vuelve una señal de inferioridad y desmérito”En este episodio vamos a hablar sobre la Conspiración China de los Bienes de Lujo, y de qué efecto tendrá, si alguno en el mercado mundial de artículos de lujo. Para hablar del tema regresa a la cabina nuestra experta en moda, Sofia Felix, así que agarren su birkin, póngansen su chal, y ¡a escuchar!

An informative discussion with Dr. James Sturgeon, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Univerity of Missouri-Kansas City, on his new book Institutional Economics: Theory and Pratice. We talk about how institutional economics, which can be traced to prominent American economists such as Thorstein Veblen, John R. Commons, and John Kenneth Galbraith, is an alternative way of doing economic analysis and problem solving when contrasted with what passes for mainstream economics today.

Technocracy Inc., technate, Howard Scott, engineers, Edward Bellamy, Thorstein Veblen, Looking Backward 2000-1887, Technical Alliance, Columbia University, Rockefeller family and their connections to Columbia, Committee of Technocracy, Walter Rautenstrauch, Henry Wallace, Continental Committee of Technocracy, Harold Loeb, Technocracy Inc.'s rapid spread in California, energy certificates, work in the technate, Technocracy Inc. defines North America as stretching from Greenland to Panama, Technocracy Inc.'s government, how Technocracy Inc. applies to the twenty-first century, the Crisis of Capitalism, 2008 financial crisis, Are we in a post-capitalist age?, Yanis Varoufakis, technofeudalism, the gig economy & apps as vassalage, the decline of wage labor, the importance of data, is data capital?, how Technocracy Inc can be applied to technofeudalism, World Economic Forum (WEF), universal basic income (UBI), how UBI can be applied to energy certificates, currency that deliberately depreciates, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), Covid lockdowns, "trust the science", MAGA, Joshua Haldeman, Elon Musk, Trump 2.0 as ushering in technate, the North American technate as a self-sustaining fortress, global war of attrition, DOGE as a trial run for Technocracy Inc., cryptocurrencies, Kardashev scale, USAID, the deliberate destruction of representative democracy by both Democrats and MAGAyhly2f:https://medium.com/@yhly2f/untold-qanon-origins-wikileaks-the-magic-mirror-and-the-abyss-7953ee3088d4Music by: Keith Allen Dennis:https://keithallendennis.bandcamp.com/ Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Economia Underground, um podcast institucionalista.Neste episódio discutimos o texto recém publicado no Journal of Economic Issues intitulado "Thorstein Veblen and Du Boi's Critiques of the Antebellum South: Merging Divergent Approaches". Assim como o título nos antecipa, neste trabalho são examinadas as críticas ao Sul antebellum feitas por Veblen e Du Bois mesclando suas perspectivas distintas.Nos siga no Instagram: @economiaunderground

Full episode w/ Nathan (Looming Totality/Y2K_Mindset) on the ideas and sociology of Megalopolis, his hypothesis on the Long 2014, the past decade of slop, and why utopian thinking is goodDavid Graeber, Elective Affinities by Goethe, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899), by Thorstein Veblen, The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler, Nixon shock/OPEC crisis, Axial Age, The Lord of the Rings - Boris Groys, Sports Gambling, Linux, Creative Commons movement, "This was made for me"

What if your beliefs about health and wellness are just status symbols in disguise? On this episode of the Mind Muscle Podcast, we explore the intriguing world of luxury beliefs, as coined by Rob Henderson, and examine how these ideas serve as modern-day markers of social status. With historical insights from the minds of Thorstein Veblen and Pierre Bourdieu, we unpack the immaterial signs of wealth and how they shape our daily choices in nutrition and fitness, often at the cost of the less affluent. From the aspirational allure of fad diets to the exclusivity of youth sports, we peel back the layers to reveal how elite posturing influences areas meant to promote wellness for all.Status signaling is everywhere, and it's not just about diamonds or designer clothes. Through fascinating tales of spices and dueling, we discuss how individuals have historically projected their identities and maintained social hierarchies. Today, this manifests in the wellness industry where affluent individuals adopt luxury beliefs to flaunt their status, yet these choices often leave others to struggle with the financial and social costs. Our conversation also touches on the ways these behaviors have evolved, drawing a line from past to present in a way that reveals both the superficiality and the social power of luxury beliefs.In the world of youth sports, financial capability has overshadowed raw talent, creating a class divide that further complicates the landscape of competitive parenting. We emphasize the need to return to community-focused sports that prioritize personal growth and community bonding over competitive spending. By questioning the true purpose of sports, we advocate for a system that fosters inclusivity and genuine talent development. Join us as we challenge the status quo and encourage listeners to embrace wellness practices that are not only inclusive but also meaningful. Let's reshape the narrative around health and fitness, ensuring that they are accessible and beneficial to all.Producer: Thor BenanderEditor: Luke MoreyIntro Theme: Ajax BenanderIntro: Timothy DurantFor more, visit Simon at The Antagonist

Joutilaisuuden teema jatkuu. Sosiologi ja taloustieteilijä Thorstein Veblen sanoo tunnetuimmassa teoksessaan “Joutilas luokka”, että yhteiskunnan rikkaimmat tuntevat vaistomaista vastenmielisyyttä muutoksia kohtaan. Veblenin kirjan ovat suomentaneet Tiina Arppe ja Sulevi Riukulehto. Päivän mietelauseessa kuvaillaan varakkaan luokan muutosvastarintaa. Siteerattavat otteet on poiminut Jakke Holvas. Mietelauseen lukee Jari Aula.

Curating your personal brand Image:  The Psychological Power of Image in Luxury Real Estate   The luxury real estate market isn't just about beautiful properties – it's about understanding the mindset of affluent clients. By grasping the psychology behind luxury consumption, you can position yourself as the go-to agent for high-net-worth individuals. Today, we'll explore key psychological concepts, understand the needs of luxury clients, and learn how to align your image with these principles. Let's start with three fundamental concepts in luxury psychology: The Halo Effect: This psychological phenomenon is where a positive impression in one area leads people to view everything else about you more favorably. In luxury real estate, your polished image can create a halo, influencing how clients perceive your expertise and the value of your listings. Veblen Goods: Named after economist Thorstein Veblen, these are items that become more desirable as they become more expensive. This contradicts typical supply and demand but is crucial in luxury markets. Your high-end clients often seek out these goods as status symbols. Social Proof in Luxury Markets: In the world of luxury, people often look to others to determine what's desirable. Your image and success serve as social proof, signaling to potential clients that you're a trusted expert in the high-end market.   Visual cues in your appearance signal success and expertise, tapping into the client's desire for status and need for a trustworthy expert. Your well-tailored suit or expertly coordinated outfit serves as a visual representation of your attention to detail and understanding of luxury.   Non-verbal communication, like confident body language and poise, builds trust subconsciously. It shows you're comfortable in luxury settings, reassuring clients of your expertise.   By curating an image that aligns with luxury standards, you create a sense of exclusivity around your services. This satisfies the client's need for uniqueness – they're not just hiring any agent, they're working with a luxury specialist.   1. Identify Luxury Market Expectations: Based on what we've learned about luxury psychology, high-end clients expect an agent who embodies success, exclusivity, and expertise. This goes beyond clothing to encompass your overall presentation, communication style, and the experience you provide.   2. Assess Your Current Image: Look at yourself through the lens of luxury psychology. Does your image signal success and expertise? Does it create a sense of exclusivity? Are you building trust through your non-verbal communication?   3. Work On One Thing: Any discrepancies you've identified are opportunities for growth. Focus on elevating elements of your image that directly tap into the psychological needs we've discussed."   Usueful Resources: Sign up for the weekly ICON INSIDER:   Icon Insider Connect with Luxury Real Estate Image Consultant, Afton Porter: Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/aftonporter/ Join the Facebook Group:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/realestateicon LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/aftonporterstyle/

In this episode, Ralph and Luc unpack how Americans got so obsessed with maintaining square green carpets on their front lawns. We dive into the history to trace back the origins and dissemination of this artificial aesthetic. We also look into solutions, ranging from bans on leaf blowers to cash schemes to encourage people to quit their lawn.We read a poem about the lunacy of leaf blowers, and highlight ways in which manicured suburban imported lawn grass is a synecdoche for colonialism. You can also watch this episode on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-l1JO3FbzEChapters:00:00 Introduction: Local bans on gas-powered lawn equipment01:48 Poem about leaf blowers by Touch Moonflower03:59 Commenting on the poem06:51 How did lawns become so common in the USA?07:56 Versailles' green carpet and Italian Renaissance landscapes inspired the British lawn18:59 How 18th Century aristocratic English turf grass took root on the new continent21:53 Thorstein Veblen on why American elites found lawns so respectable24:10 Founding fathers disseminate the pastoral ideal27:05 Planning communities of continuous lawn: Andrew Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted32:03 Frank J. Scott tells suburbanites that homogenous manicured grass is neighbourly34:48 How the lawn got cemented into the American imaginary in the aftermath of World War II37:16 Post WWII suburban developments empowered Home Owners Associations (HOAs)41:01 Quantifying the environmental impacts of modern US lawns45:47 Why imported turf grass is a synecdoche for colonialism50:40 Carpets of grass are fuel that spreads wildfires51:38 Gas powered leaf blowers are huge polluters55:00 How loud are leaf blowers?55:51 Lawn care is a Sisyphean task of sterilisation57:53 Norms around lawns are socially enforced59:59 What solutions have helped people quit their lawn?1:09:50 Conclusion and wrap up: the zeitgeist is shifting!1:11:50 Luc's cover of "Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni MitchellSources:• Ann Leighton, American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century, 1986. • Michael Pollan, “Why Mow? The Case Against Lawns”, The New York Times Magazine, May 1989.• Georges Teyssot, The American Lawn: Surface of Everyday Life, 1999.• Monique Mosser, The saga of grass: From the heavenly carpet to fallow fields, 1999.• Cristina Milesi, “More Lawns than Irrigated Corn”, NASA Earth Observatory, November 2005. • Paul Robbins, Lawn People: How Grasses, Weeds, and Chemicals Make Us Who We Are, 2007.• Ted Steinberg, American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn, 2007.• Elizabeth Kolbert, “Turf War”, The New Yorker, July 2008. • Joseph Manca, "British landscape gardening and Italian renaissance painting", Artibus et Historiae (297-322), 2015.• Jamie Banks and Robert McConnell, National Emissions from Lawn and Garden Equipment, Environmental Protection Agency, April 2015.• Christopher Ingraham, “Lawns are a soul-crushing timesuck and most of us would be better off without them”, The Washington Post, August 2015.

“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 Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class   This week, join Cyrus Palizban, Nicolas Sarian, Zohar Atkins, and Harry Jacobs as we explore Thorstein Veblen's assertion. We discuss various dimensions of emulation, from its philosophical implications to its real-world applications like influencing market trends and investment decisions. The conversation spans topics including the impact of social media influencers, the evolution of wealth and luxury from a historical perspective, and the balance between emulating others and maintaining individuality. From Bruce Springsteen's music to Warren Buffett's investment strategies, the podcast delves into how emulation drives not only economic behaviors but also personal and cultural narratives.   00:00 Welcome to The Lightning Podcast 00:32 Diving Into Thorstein Veblen's Insights 01:32 Exploring Emulation in Society 05:15 The Phenomenon of Veblen Goods 13:00 Emulation vs. Self-Preservation 14:29 The Influence of Role Models and Emulation in Modern Society 17:55 Economic Wisdom from Warren Buffett 21:48 The Apple vs. Amazon Investment Philosophy 24:03 Navigating the Digital Music Landscape 24:36 The Evolution of Music Consumption: From Napster to Spotify 25:36 Bruce Springsteen: The Soundtrack of Life 25:47 A Deep Dive into 'Born in the USA' and Its Misinterpretations 27:00 Personal Encounters with Bruce Springsteen 30:07 Emulating Musical Giants: The Quest for Originality 32:55 Exploring Wealth, Liquidity, and the Value of Property 39:15 The Cultural Impact of Home Ownership and Economic Collapse 44:33 Wrapping Up: From Veblen to Springsteen and Beyond   Want to continue the discussion? Join us for more learning and discussion in our Meditations and Chronicles WhatsApp groups!   Meditations: https://chat.whatsapp.com/JIFXc06ABCPEsyfUBtvm1U Chronicles: https://chat.whatsapp.com/FD6M9a35KCE2XrnJrqaGLU   Follow us on other platforms for more content!   Twitter: https://x.com/lightinspires   Instagram: https://instagram.com/lightning.inspiration?igshid=NzZlODBkYWE4Ng==   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lightning-meditations/  

“As far as wealth is inextricable with social organisation, it will infuse the individual on the very essential level on his sense of self...” In this week's TANK podcast, Caroline Issa reads and decodes Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class, a treatise on consumerism and the emergent concept of conspicuous consumption.

Chapter 1 What's The Theory of the Leisure Class Book by Thorstein VeblenThe Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (commonly referred to as The Theory of the Leisure Class) is a book written by Thorstein Veblen and published in 1899. It is considered a founding and influential work in the field of sociology, particularly in regards to the analysis of capitalist economies and social stratification. Veblen's main argument in the book is that social status and prestige are attained not through productive labor, but rather through conspicuous consumption and leisure activities. He argues that the upper class engages in "pecuniary emulation" - the desire to display wealth and social status through extravagant spending and wasteful activities, regardless of the practical utility of the goods or the activities themselves.Veblen criticizes the prevailing economic theories of his time, particularly the classical economic theory of utility and the neoclassical economic theory of marginal utility. He introduces the concept of "conspicuous waste" to explain the irrational and excessive consumption patterns of the upper class, which he believes leads to the waste of resources and perpetuates economic inequality.The book discusses various aspects of the leisure class, including their lifestyles, social rituals, patterns of consumption, and their impact on the economy. It also delves into the distinction between "industry" and "business" and critiques the economic system that promotes what Veblen calls "predatory capitalism."Overall, Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class examines the social and economic dynamics of the upper class and offers a critical analysis of the materialistic and wasteful nature of capitalism. It remains an important work in the fields of sociology, economics, and social theory.Chapter 2 Is The Theory of the Leisure Class Book A Good BookThe Theory of the Leisure Class is generally considered a classic work of social theory and economics. It was published in 1899 and is still widely read and referenced today. Thorstein Veblen's critique of conspicuous consumption and the role of leisure and status in society was groundbreaking at the time and has had a lasting impact on the field of sociology. That being said, whether or not a book is considered "good" is subjective and depends on personal interests and preferences. Some readers may find Veblen's writing style and language challenging, as it was written in a more academic and verbose manner. However, for those interested in economics, sociology, or social criticism, The Theory of the Leisure Class is likely to be a valuable and thought-provoking read.Chapter 3 The Theory of the Leisure Class Book by Thorstein Veblen Summary"The Theory of the Leisure Class" is a book written by Thorstein Veblen and published in 1899. It is a work of economic sociology that examines the nature and purpose of consumerism and conspicuous consumption in industrial societies.In this book, Veblen argues that the leisure class, which consists of the wealthy and privileged members of society, engage in conspicuous consumption as a means of displaying their social status and superiority to others. He suggests that the desire for social prestige and the need to maintain a certain image drives individuals to spend money on luxury goods and unnecessary commodities.Veblen introduces the concept of "pecuniary emulation," which describes the process by which individuals imitate the consumption patterns of the leisure class in order to gain social acceptance and recognition. He suggests that through this emulation, individuals strive to achieve a higher social status and elevate themselves above others in

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most influential work of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). In 1899, during America's Gilded Age, Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class as a reminder that all that glisters is not gold. He picked on traits of the waning landed class of Americans and showed how the new moneyed class was adopting these in ways that led to greater waste throughout society. He called these conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption and he developed a critique of a system that favoured profits for owners without regard to social good. The Theory of the Leisure Class was a best seller and funded Veblen for the rest of his life, and his ideas influenced the New Deal of the 1930s. Since then, an item that becomes more desirable as it becomes more expensive is known as a Veblen good. With Matthew Watson Professor of Political Economy at the University of WarwickBill Waller Professor of Economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New YorkAndMary Wrenn Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of the West of EnglandProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Charles Camic, Veblen: The Making of an Economist who Unmade Economics (Harvard University Press, 2021)John P. Diggins, Thorstein Veblen: Theorist of the Leisure Class (Princeton University Press, 1999)John P. Diggins, The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory (Seabury Press, 1978)John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Penguin, 1999) Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (Penguin, 2000), particularly the chapter ‘The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen'Ken McCormick, Veblen in Plain English: A Complete Introduction to Thorstein Veblen's Economics (Cambria Press, 2006)Sidney Plotkin and Rick Tilman, The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen (Yale University Press, 2012)Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need (William Morrow & Company, 1999)Juliet B. Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (first published 1899; Oxford University Press, 2009)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (first published 1904; Legare Street Press, 2022)Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (first published 2018; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times: The Case of America (first published 1923; Routledge, 2017)Thorstein Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption (Penguin, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Complete Works (Musaicum Books, 2017)Charles J. Whalen (ed.), Institutional Economics: Perspective and Methods in Pursuit of a Better World (Routledge, 2021)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most influential work of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). In 1899, during America's Gilded Age, Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class as a reminder that all that glisters is not gold. He picked on traits of the waning landed class of Americans and showed how the new moneyed class was adopting these in ways that led to greater waste throughout society. He called these conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption and he developed a critique of a system that favoured profits for owners without regard to social good. The Theory of the Leisure Class was a best seller and funded Veblen for the rest of his life, and his ideas influenced the New Deal of the 1930s. Since then, an item that becomes more desirable as it becomes more expensive is known as a Veblen good. With Matthew Watson Professor of Political Economy at the University of WarwickBill Waller Professor of Economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New YorkAndMary Wrenn Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of the West of EnglandProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Charles Camic, Veblen: The Making of an Economist who Unmade Economics (Harvard University Press, 2021)John P. Diggins, Thorstein Veblen: Theorist of the Leisure Class (Princeton University Press, 1999)John P. Diggins, The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory (Seabury Press, 1978)John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Penguin, 1999) Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (Penguin, 2000), particularly the chapter ‘The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen'Ken McCormick, Veblen in Plain English: A Complete Introduction to Thorstein Veblen's Economics (Cambria Press, 2006)Sidney Plotkin and Rick Tilman, The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen (Yale University Press, 2012)Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need (William Morrow & Company, 1999)Juliet B. Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (first published 1899; Oxford University Press, 2009)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (first published 1904; Legare Street Press, 2022)Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (first published 2018; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times: The Case of America (first published 1923; Routledge, 2017)Thorstein Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption (Penguin, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Complete Works (Musaicum Books, 2017)Charles J. Whalen (ed.), Institutional Economics: Perspective and Methods in Pursuit of a Better World (Routledge, 2021)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most influential work of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). In 1899, during America's Gilded Age, Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class as a reminder that all that glisters is not gold. He picked on traits of the waning landed class of Americans and showed how the new moneyed class was adopting these in ways that led to greater waste throughout society. He called these conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption and he developed a critique of a system that favoured profits for owners without regard to social good. The Theory of the Leisure Class was a best seller and funded Veblen for the rest of his life, and his ideas influenced the New Deal of the 1930s. Since then, an item that becomes more desirable as it becomes more expensive is known as a Veblen good. With Matthew Watson Professor of Political Economy at the University of WarwickBill Waller Professor of Economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New YorkAndMary Wrenn Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of the West of EnglandProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Charles Camic, Veblen: The Making of an Economist who Unmade Economics (Harvard University Press, 2021)John P. Diggins, Thorstein Veblen: Theorist of the Leisure Class (Princeton University Press, 1999)John P. Diggins, The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory (Seabury Press, 1978)John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Penguin, 1999) Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (Penguin, 2000), particularly the chapter ‘The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen'Ken McCormick, Veblen in Plain English: A Complete Introduction to Thorstein Veblen's Economics (Cambria Press, 2006)Sidney Plotkin and Rick Tilman, The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen (Yale University Press, 2012)Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need (William Morrow & Company, 1999)Juliet B. Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (first published 1899; Oxford University Press, 2009)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (first published 1904; Legare Street Press, 2022)Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (first published 2018; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times: The Case of America (first published 1923; Routledge, 2017)Thorstein Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption (Penguin, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Complete Works (Musaicum Books, 2017)Charles J. Whalen (ed.), Institutional Economics: Perspective and Methods in Pursuit of a Better World (Routledge, 2021)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most influential work of Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929). In 1899, during America's Gilded Age, Veblen wrote The Theory of the Leisure Class as a reminder that all that glisters is not gold. He picked on traits of the waning landed class of Americans and showed how the new moneyed class was adopting these in ways that led to greater waste throughout society. He called these conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption and he developed a critique of a system that favoured profits for owners without regard to social good. The Theory of the Leisure Class was a best seller and funded Veblen for the rest of his life, and his ideas influenced the New Deal of the 1930s. Since then, an item that becomes more desirable as it becomes more expensive is known as a Veblen good. With Matthew Watson Professor of Political Economy at the University of WarwickBill Waller Professor of Economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, New YorkAndMary Wrenn Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of the West of EnglandProducer: Simon TillotsonReading list:Charles Camic, Veblen: The Making of an Economist who Unmade Economics (Harvard University Press, 2021)John P. Diggins, Thorstein Veblen: Theorist of the Leisure Class (Princeton University Press, 1999)John P. Diggins, The Bard of Savagery: Thorstein Veblen and Modern Social Theory (Seabury Press, 1978)John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Penguin, 1999) Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (Penguin, 2000), particularly the chapter ‘The Savage Society of Thorstein Veblen'Ken McCormick, Veblen in Plain English: A Complete Introduction to Thorstein Veblen's Economics (Cambria Press, 2006)Sidney Plotkin and Rick Tilman, The Political Ideas of Thorstein Veblen (Yale University Press, 2012)Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need (William Morrow & Company, 1999)Juliet B. Schor, Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (first published 1899; Oxford University Press, 2009)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (first published 1904; Legare Street Press, 2022)Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America (first published 2018; Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015) Thorstein Veblen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times: The Case of America (first published 1923; Routledge, 2017)Thorstein Veblen, Conspicuous Consumption (Penguin, 2005)Thorstein Veblen, The Complete Works (Musaicum Books, 2017)Charles J. Whalen (ed.), Institutional Economics: Perspective and Methods in Pursuit of a Better World (Routledge, 2021)

Ultrarricos agora têm até monge particular https://digital.estadao.com.br/@rene_5/csb_SoQApKunitra6sc3fUccopLCymiHFUqrc90QFeHWpYco_nnaC_U6ONy2q1ImauMse5WhjI_lbc6LP3gOzycH8A Was Caligula Really the Worst Roman Emperor? | With Professor Mary Beard https://youtu.be/SY4LyjKva8o?si=fcil73BNbpQww8J6 The Theory of the Leisure Class https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001sdrt Thorstein Veblen https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorstein_Veblen Beware the Language That Erases Reality https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2023/10/open-letter-writers-war-israel/675680/ The Iron Age Steppe and the Emergence of the Scythians https://pca.st/ck6rcnlf Andrei Rublev | Trailer | Opens August ... Read more

L'avènement des hommes en gris. Monopolisation du pouvoir par une clique dominant une administration pléthorique, mise en place d'une dictature du chiffre et des données, les technocrates ont pénétré progressivement l'ensemble des strates de l'État, sacrifiant tout à leur idéologie mortifère. Dans la première partie de cet épisode, Gaël et Geoffroy reviennent à la racine de la technocratie et racontent comment depuis un siècle se façonne un monde gouverné par une froide logique bureaucratique où l'entre-soi le plus parfait alimente le mythe d'un pouvoir dissimulé. Musique : Thibaud R.  Habillage sonore / mixage : Alexandre Lechaux Contact: tousparano@gmail.com Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/Tous-Parano-106178481205195

Leonardo DiCaprio n'est jamais sorti avec une femme de plus de 25 ans, alors qu'il est bientôt quinquagénaire. À l'image de l'acteur, les hommes qui fréquentent des femmes bien plus jeunes qu'eux sont légion, et cela semble socialement bien plus acceptable que l'inverse. La domination masculine s'exprime aussi à travers la façon dont les relations amoureuses sont considérées par la société, et cela vaut le coup d'en prendre conscience. Références: Infographie sur la comparaison entre l'âge de Leonardo DiCaprio et celui de ses compagnes, 2019, Reddit. Publication Instagram sur la rumeur de couple entre Leonardo DiCaprio et Eden Polani, 8 février 2023, Oh! My Mag. «L'irrésistible attrait de la jeunesse», Vincent Cocquebert, 8 septembre 2016, Marie-Claire. Yann Moix: «J'aime les femmes plus jeunes, je n'en suis pas responsable et je n'en ai pas honte!», «On n'est pas couché», 12 janvier 2019, France 2. «Le problème avec les hommes qui n'aiment que les femmes asiatiques», Pauline Verduzier, 17 janvier 2019, Slate.fr. «Yann Moix n'a pas inventé l'attirance des hommes pour les femmes plus jeunes qu'eux», Daphnée Leportois, 14 janvier 2019, Slate.fr. Théorie de la classe de loisir, Thorstein Veblen, 1899. Publication Instagram sur l'âge des partenaires à l'écran de Denis Podalydès, 8 février 2023, Brin de Flamme. Mansplaining est un podcast de Thomas Messias produit par Slate Podcasts. Direction éditoriale: Christophe Carron Production éditoriale: Nina Pareja Montage: Mona Delahais et Clémentine Amblard Réalisation: Mona Delahais Si vous aimez Mansplaining, pensez à l'exprimer en lui donnant la note maximale sur votre plateforme de podcast préférée, en en parlant autour de vous et en laissant plein de commentaires bienveillants sur les réseaux sociaux. Suivez Slate Podcasts sur Facebook et Instagram (retrouvez-y aussi le compte de Mansplaining).

We all have deep human needs—for belonging, for autonomy, for creative expression, for safety and security. But modern life can make it a real challenge to get those needs met in meaningful ways. Instead, we're offered products with flashy marketing messages. Kitchen gadgets, social media platforms, clothing, personal care products, and many others offer to help us live our best lives. Financial and educational products promise a greater sense of security and autonomy. But do these commodities really satisfy our needs? Or do they merely stave off the hunger a little longer?In this final episode of The Economics Of, I explore how various economic concepts can help us understand why we buy the things we do, how our consumption relates to larger economics forces, and how our relationships are influenced by it all. I also talk with Mara Glatzel, the author of Needy, about how to better understand our own needs and create the conditions through which we can get those needs met.Footnotes: Get your copy of Needy by Mara Glatzel Learn more about Mara Glatzel “Varieties of the Rat Race: Conspicuous Consumption in the US & Germany” by Till Van Treeck, via the Institute for New Economic Thinking “Trickle-Down Consumption” by Marianne Bertrand and Adair Morse in The Review of Economics and Statistics “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844” by Karl Marx Adam Smith's America by Glory M. Liu Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman “Alienation” on Overthink with David Pena-Guzman and Ellie Anderson More on Thorstein Veblen via Investopedia Everything, All the Time, Everywhere by Stuart Jeffries Liquid Love by Zygmunt Bauman New episodes are published in essay form every Thursday at explorewhatworks.com. Get them delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge, by subscribing to What Works Weekly: explorewhatworks.com/weeklyIf you'd like to learn more about how we can approach life and work differently, check out my book, What Works. I explore the history and cultural context that's led us to this success-obsessed, productivity-oriented moment. Then I guide you through deconstructing those messages and rebuilding a structure for work-life that works. ★ Support this podcast ★

Tonight's reading comes from,The Theory of the Leisure Class. Written by Thorstein Veblen and published in 1899, this story explores how humans have developed etiquette and leisure, over the course of history. My name is Teddy and I aim to help people everywhere get a good night's rest. Sleep is so important and my mission is to help you get the rest you need. The podcast is designed to play in the background while you slowly fall asleep. As always, a thank you to everyone who supports me on Patreon or Anchor with a monthly financial contribution. I'm ever so grateful for your financial contribution to the podcast. The podcast is free and it's thanks to your support, that allow me to bring out more episodes for those who need them. If you would like, you can also say hello at Boreyoutosleep.com where you can support the podcast. I'm also on Twitter and Instagram @BoreYouToSleep. You can also find me on Facebook by searching Bore you to Sleep Podcast. A fantastic way to say thank you is to leave a review or share the podcast with a friend. These are fantastic ways for me to help others and the greatest compliment I can receive. In the meantime, lie back, relax, and enjoy the readings. Sincerely. Teddy --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/boreyoutosleep/support

Tonight's reading comes from The Instinct of Workmanship. Published in 1914 and written by Thorstein Veblen, this book looks at the psychology and physiology that contributes to our human workmanship. My name is Teddy and I aim to help people everywhere get a good night's rest. Sleep is so important and my mission is to help you get the rest you need. The podcast is designed to play in the background while you slowly fall asleep. A massive thank you to everyone who I heard from during the week. It means so much to me to know that the podcast is helping you all get the sleep that you need. If you're a regular listener of the show and want to say thank you, a great way to support the show is to become a Patreon or Sponsor at BoreyoutoSleep.com. I am grateful for everyone who sponsors the show with a financial contribution, regardless of how small that may be. Every contribution helps me bring out more episodes to allow people everyone to get a good nights rest. If you would like, you can also say hello at Boreyoutosleep.com where you can support the podcast. I'm also on Twitter and Instagram @BoreYouToSleep. You can also find me on Facebook by searching Bore you to Sleep Podcast. A fantastic way to say thank you is to leave a review or share the podcast with a friend. These are fantastic ways for me to help others and the greatest compliment I can receive. In the meantime, lie back, relax and enjoy the readings. Sincerely. Teddy --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/boreyoutosleep/support

Rob Henderson recently received his PhD in psychology at St. Catharine's College, Cambridge. Zach Goldberg is a former research fellow at CSPI and currently affiliated with the Manhattan Institute. They both join the podcast to talk about Rob's idea of “luxury beliefs” and Zach's new paper testing the theory in the context of attitudes towards criminal justice policy. Richard wonders about the extent to which one can say any individual actually suffers the consequences of their political beliefs, since the views of one person rarely change a policy outcome.Later on in the conversation, Richard asks whether the luxury beliefs idea absolves inner city communities of their own shortcomings and serves as a way to put the blame on mostly white elites. Zach and Rob point to polls showing that blacks are more supportive than white liberals of spending money on police, which leads to a discussion of whether we can interpret such data in a different way and would be better served by putting more stock in factors such as how much communities cooperate with law enforcement, how they vote, and the kinds of politicians they support. The host and two guests also debate the extent to which liberal elites have actually pushed harmful ideas onto the masses, and if influential figures could change attitudes and behavior if they actually tried.Listen in podcast form or watch on YouTube.Links:* Zach Goldberg, “Is Defunding the Police a ‘Luxury Belief'? Analyzing White Vs. Non-White Democrats' Attitudes on Policing.”* Rob Henderson, “‘Luxury beliefs' are the latest status symbol for rich Americans.”* Rob Henderson, “Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update.” Get full access to Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology at www.cspicenter.com/subscribe

Last episode, we looked at the technocrats of the industrial age: Thorstein Veblen, Howard Scott, and the “industrial tinkerers,” as Daniel Bell put it. But Daniel Bell went on to say we were entered a new age — a …

Detrás de una cartera falsa hay mucho más de lo que los consumidores se imaginan. Desde procesos de producción dañinos para el medio ambiente hasta trata de personas, el negocio de las falsificaciones en la industria de la moda tiene ramificaciones y consecuencias profundas en distintos niveles de la sociedad. En este capítulo, hacemos un recorrido por el origen de esta práctica, los tipos de réplicas y copias en el mercado, las motivaciones de los consumidores para adquirirlas y los negocios oscuros que muchas veces esconden.Referencias:Elizabeth Hawes, Fashion is Spinach (Nueva York: Random House, 1938), p 35-36.Véronique Hyland, “The Museum at FIT's New Exhibition Is All About Knockoffs”, The Cut, 1 de diciembre de 2014, acceso el 28 de agosto de 2022, https://www.thecut.com/2014/11/new-fashion-exhibit-thats-all-about-knockoffs.htmlElizabeth Paton, “Luxury's Gray Market is Emerging From the Shadow”, The New York Times, 24 de agosto de 2021, acceso el 28 de agosto de 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/24/fashion/fashion-luxury-gray-market.htmlJoanna Large, The Consumption of Counterfeit Fashion (Springer International Publishing AG, 2019).Kelly Gamble, “Counterfeit fashion: A comprehensive study determining the influence factors of fashion counterfeit purchase decisions” (tesis de maestría, University of North Carolina Wilmington, 2011), http://dl.uncw.edu/Etd/2011-3/gamblek/kellygamble.pdfKevin V. Tu, “Counterfeit fashion: the interplay between copyright and trademark law in original fashion designs and designer knockoffs”, Texas Intellectual Property Law Journal 18, n.º3 (2010): 419-449.Thorstein Veblen, Teoría De La Clase Ociosa (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1966).Alexander Nill y Clifford J. Shultz, II, “The scourge of global counterfeiting”, Business Horizons 39, issue 6 (1996).Encuéntranos en:http://www.modadospuntocero.com/p/salon-de-moda-podcast.html@moda2_0 @culturasdemoda @coventrendlab#SalonDeModaAgradecemos a Fair Cardinals (@faircardinals) por la música, a Jhon Jairo Varela Rodríguez por el diseño gráfico y a Maca Rubio por la edición del audio.

durée : 00:04:14 - Le Pourquoi du comment : économie et social - par : Dominique Méda - De la "classe de loisir", apanage de la classe dominante

Subscribe to Reactionary Minds: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | YouTubeReactionary Minds is a project of The UnPopulist. Hosted by Aaron Ross Powell. Produced by Landry Ayres.The following is a transcript of Reactionary Minds’ interview with Virginia Postrel, author of many books, including The Future and Its Enemies. The transcript has been lightly edited for flow and clarity.Aaron Ross Powell: I’m Aaron Ross Powell, and this is Reactionary Minds, a project of The UnPopulist. We’re used to thinking about politics as a battle between left and right, progressive and conservative. But those sides can be somewhat protean, with their positions, preferences and policies shifting in ways that make it difficult to analyze the political landscape clearly.My guest today has a different way of framing politics—one she first set out 24 years ago, and one which looks more and more prescient with every passing day. Virginia Postrel is the author of many books, including The Future and Its Enemies. Her latest is the Fabric of Civilization. The core of Postrel’s framework for understanding politics isn’t left versus right, but dynamism versus stasis.Aaron Ross Powell: What does it mean to be a “stasist,” to use your term?Virginia Postrel: What I say in The Future and Its Enemies when I’m just laying out the basic distinctions is that dynamists, which is people like me, have a central value of learning. We can talk about that later, but the contrast is important, and stasists come in a couple of varieties, but their central value is stability or control.Then I divide them into what I call reactionaries, which are the people who are more into keeping things literally the same, not necessarily the status quo. It could be going back to some imagined past or creating some utopia, but the idea of a stable society. Then technocrats, who are much more common in liberal democratic societies, who say, well, we want progress—we want things to change—but it’s got to look exactly like this. Very much an early 20th-century idea of control and planning the future, so that progress becomes something not that evolves, but that is dictated.Aaron: When you say early 20th century and the rise of the technocratic position, is that because something new happened in the 20th century, or is it because prior to the 20th century, stasis won out because we weren’t moving very quickly anyway?Virginia: That’s a very good question—not one that I really thought about when I was writing this book many years ago. But I think what happened was the rise of large business enterprises, railroads and huge manufacturing corporations, vertically integrated enterprises where you had to have a range of control to operate the business. That all happened really beginning of the 19th century, where you had these much larger organizations than had existed before.They were very successful, and people developed new and genuinely innovative and efficient ways of doing things. And that led to an idea that if you can do this at U.S. Steel or General Motors, you should be able to do it for the whole society— that, in fact, because they were run by the profit motive, these enterprises maybe were a little inefficient and wasteful and duplicative (competition was seen as wasteful and duplicative). And so that you could do something about that [inefficiency] if you could plan the society in general. There are many forms of this in the early 20th century.Obviously, you have the full-blown state socialism, state ownership of the means of production, with extreme versions in places like the Soviet Union. But there were also much more democracy-friendly versions associated with Thorstein Veblen, who’s famous for The Theory of the Leisure Class, but who also wrote a book whose title escapes me at the moment where he contrasted the good engineers with the bad financiers. The idea was that if you could just set engineering principles loose on society, you could have a much more efficient and productive society. That idea was in the air, and it came out of real business innovation that just got applied in ways that didn’t work.One of the things that’s interesting about the history of liberalism is that before Friedrich Hayek’s writing on “the use of knowledge in society” and the whole socialist calculation debate—and I don't want to get into the weeds of that—what was wrong with that theory of control wasn’t obvious. A lot of people who were basically liberal became very attracted to socialism because it seemed like a way of improving the lot of people and extending the liberal contract in certain ways.The idea that it was replacing local knowledge and even the knowledge of individual preferences with some necessarily dictatorial—even if it was being done in a democratic way—process was not obvious in 1900. It was not well articulated. I think there were people who understood it intuitively, but it had not really been fully grasped.Aaron: That raises an interesting distinction, I think, within stasism, as opposed to dynamism. What you’ve just described is an awfully let’s call it ideological or philosophical argument for stasis. You had these arguments about the way a firm runs, and we can analogize that out, and we can manage progress and so on. That’s like an intellectual approach. But a lot of stasis seems to be more of almost an aesthetic approach. So you get people like Wendell Berry—or Josh Hawley in some of his earlier, pre-political career writings is almost making an argument that the ideal America is one that always and forever looks like a Thomas Kinkade painting. Or that modern architecture is bad and what we really need is the return of the aesthetics of the Catholic church to rule us. Are these distinct things, or do they bleed together?Virginia: They are distinct things, and historically they’re distinct things because they’re very different reactions to what’s called the second industrial revolution. That is the rise of these really large enterprises, railroads being that quintessential one. In the 19th century, you also have the arts-and-crafts movement around William Morris. You have the rise of neo-Gothic architecture, which is initially a very ideologically freighted thing. It is a rejection of industrialism.The irony is that it then just—I write about this in The Substance of Style— becomes a style. Therefore, you get to a point where you have Blair Hall at Princeton University built and named for a railroad magnate in the neo-Gothic style because it associates the university with the great universities of Britain. It takes on a different meaning over time, but there is definitely in reaction to industrialism not only this kind of technocratic argument, which also takes a Marxist form; there is a medievalist argument, as well, that we are losing handcraft. We’re losing beauty. The cities are ugly. They’re crowded—of course, cities were always crowded—but [there’s] coal smoke and factories, and it is a ugly transition in many ways. Therefore, we should go back to a pastoral, hierarchical, often Catholic ideal. That is a reactionary stasis, which is very prominent in a lot of the great literature of the period—not so much in novels, but in poetry. Yes, they are two distinct, very old—at this point we’re talking 150 years; I guess that’s not old by human history, but certainly old by American history—ideals, and they take different forms.The American ideal is different from the European ideal, the reactionary ideal. Also, one thing that’s different is while there is this Wendell Berry, farmer, slightly medievalist view, there is also in the U.S. a wilderness ideal. In Europe, the cultivated landscape is always, or almost always, the ideal, whereas in the U.S., you also have a notion that untouched by human hands is ideal. That’s less common on the right than on, I don't know, I hesitate to call [it] exactly the left, but in the environmental movement.Aaron: That raises my next question, which is, Does this technocratic versus reactionary (or traditionalist or natural) by and large map onto a left-right spectrum? It certainly seems like technocrats are the left and the center left, generally speaking, and the people calling for a return to the old ways tend to be on the right.Virginia: Well, part of the point of The Future and Its Enemies is that these things do not really map onto the left and the right. They cross those divisions. It’s just that what people want is somewhat different, and so conservative technocrats might be more inclined to regulate land use so that you have single-family suburban homes or regulate immigration in a technocratic way, so that you give priority to people who have a lot of college degrees and professional skills, because they’re going to be—a Brahman from India is better than a peasant from Guatemala, because we can anticipate that.I’m just using those as examples. I describe technocracy as an ideological ideal in the early 20th century, because there was an intellectual movement there, but I don’t think it is primarily ideological. I think, for many people, it is common sense. It is common sense that somebody ought to be in charge, and people ought to make rules, and we ought to control things. And if this is dangerous, we should prohibit it, and if it’s good, we should subsidize it. This is the norm in our politics, and that wasn’t new in the 20th century.Things were subsidized and prohibited forever, but it got this patina of efficiency and rationality and modernity in the early 20th century. It took on an ideological air, but it is the norm in our politics. That’s one reason I spend a lot of time in the book talking about it. But really what interests me is [that] I think of it as the norm: That it’s what most of our political discussions are, but both reactionaries and dynamists, therefore, have to make alliances with technocrats in order to get the world they want. They’re the polar opposites, but the question is—in some ways, the technocrats decide who wins.Aaron: How totalizing are these two—are the dynamic versus the static viewpoint? Because there are lots of vectors for change. There’s technological change; there’s social; there’s political. Like we right now refer to, say, the Trumpist movement as “conservative,” but populism is on the one hand, very stasist in culture shifting too quickly—I-don't-like-it-make-it-stop!—but it’s very politically radical in terms of [saying] the systems that we have in place need to be torn down and replaced.Virginia: I describe them as if they’re these silos, but that’s just a model; that’s not reality. That’s the map, not the landscape. First of all, most people have elements of all of these things in their thinking, in their intuitions, in their politics; as you say, it takes multiple dimensions. Somebody may think that we should, even within, say, economic regulation—somebody may think that we should let people build houses more freely, but the FDA should regulate really tightly, something like that.Talking about the radical institutional aspects of populists of various types brings up the issue of rules, which is one of the things that’s the trickiest to understand and to grapple with. How do you think about rules? Let’s say you want this kind of dynamism. You want this kind of learning, bottom-up order without design, trial and error, correction, economic progress, or social learning. What sort of rules give you that? There’s very much this idea that you need nested rules, and you need certain rules that are fundamental and don’t change very often.You could call that the constitutional order, and those need to be fairly simple, and they need to be broadly applicable, and they need to allow things like recombinations and people using their own knowledge to make decisions and plans. And there’s a chapter about that, which I then, in a completely different context, reinvented in The Substance of Style; honest to God, I did it from the bottom up. I didn’t refer, because it was all about neighborhoods, where [it’s a] fact that people care about what houses look like, but on the other hand, they care about their neighbor’s house, and they will pay money to live in a planned community—but on the other hand, people want freedom, and how do you think about that?One of the issues is that you need to be able to move when rules are very prescriptive; there need to be ways to exit. What you’re seeing in this populist upsurge is a notion that the rules that we think of as not changing very much—that stable institutions, the liberal institutions that govern societies—are barriers to what populists want, and so, therefore, they need to be taken down.That does become a radical move. One of the misperceptions that was in lots of reviews of the book was the idea that dynamism equals change, and that I’m saying all change is good. First of all, even in the process of dynamism—that is, bottom-up change—not all change is good. It’s an experimental process. Sometimes you do things—whether it’s you start a company or you change your living arrangements—and it’s a bad idea. It doesn’t work, and that’s why we need criticism and competition, and that’s part of the process.Aaron: Then the goal is we want a dynamic society because it produces all of these. The book is full of all the wonderful benefits that come out of a dynamic society. But at the same time, the people who are fans of stasis—yes, a lot of them take it way too far in a reactionary direction—but. … There is something fundamentally true to the notion of wanting things to be somewhat stable and familiar. I just three weeks ago moved my whole family from Washington, D.C., to Colorado.We all know moving is incredibly stressful, and it’s not just because of all the logistics you have to deal with. Uprooting yourself is deeply stressful, and [it] takes a long time to get re-established. More people move in a dynamic society than in the past, but the world around us is changing too, in a way that feels like the same stress that I have with moving. People want [to feel] like, “My life is settled and is going to look roughly tomorrow the way it did today.” There is something very human and understandable about that. How do you get the effects of dynamism without everyone constantly feeling like they’re being uprooted?Virginia: This is a really good question, a really hard question. Part of it goes back to this idea of nested rules and also nested commitments. One of the important aspects of dynamist rules is that they allow for commitments—that you can make contracts of various kinds (to use that term), but it could also be marriage; it could be, I'm going to live in this town, and I'm going to be involved in civic institutions and volunteer institutions, and I'm going to put down roots here.That said, one of the difficult things is that one person’s stability is an intrusion on another person’s plans often. For example, I write a lot about housing, and there’s some about housing in the book, but there’s not as much as I would probably put there if I were writing it today. One thing that we see in Los Angeles, where I live, is there are a lot of veto players whenever you want to build anything, and they are people who want their neighborhood to stay the same.One result of that is that people who have grown up in Los Angeles, the children of people who lived here, cannot live here anymore because it’s too expensive. That's this kind of, I want stability [laughs]—oh, but wait a minute; I’d also like to see my grandchildren, but now they live in Texas because they couldn’t afford to live here. There’s often trade-offs with issues of trying to make stability, but human life inherently changes. Generations come and go; we grow older; people have children, et cetera.There is a certain amount of change that always is going to happen, but there is a highly nonideological issue which comes up, in fact, in my most recent book, The Fabric of Civilization, in the context of the original Luddites. The original Luddites were not ideologues [chuckles]; they were not stasists who wanted to keep medieval ways because they liked what the Middle Ages represented to their intellect.They were hand weavers who had prospered from the invention of mechanical spinning, which gave them ample supplies of thread. So they had prospered because of the technological and economic upheavals of a generation earlier, and now they were losing their jobs to power looms, and so they were mad. They were stressed. At that time, losing your job was not like losing your job in 21st century America; losing your job meant your children might starve.There was a reason to be upset. They engaged in both nonviolent civic activity, petitioning Parliament and that sort of thing—and also violent riots and smashing looms and that sort of thing. The government said, “No, you don’t get to choose.” There was a technocratic aspect of that, which is, they said, "Look, this is going to be good for society. It’s going to create new jobs and new industries. It’s going to make Britain more prosperous against its rivals.” All of these kinds of things. And so power looms went ahead, and some of the Luddites got deported to Australia (the more violent ones).That is really important in the history of economic prosperity, and the people who were the children and grandchildren and great-great-great-grandchildren of those people are far better off in basically every respect than their ancestors, but it was a true, genuine, painful transition. I don’t know what my prescription would’ve been back then other than let this go forward. In a richer society, there are things that can be done with redistribution to ease those transitions.Another thing that I think we don't emphasize nearly enough in the U.S. today is the traditional American thing of moving to different parts of the country. There's considerable evidence that people are more locked into place than they used to be, and that makes certain things more difficult. Particularly, if you are somebody who is living in Detroit, say, it might be better if you could move to Colorado or North Carolina, but you don't have the money, because moving is not just disruptive; it's expensive to do so.There may be other barriers like licensing regulations or that sort of thing, but the main barrier, aside from the psychological barrier, is the financial one. I think that that's the sort of thing you need to think about from a policy point of view. But you're right. People like change; they like the benefits of change; but only up to a point.Aaron: There's another side to it, too, I think. As I was re-reading the book in prep for our conversation, I kept thinking there's a moral imperative of dynamism when you think about it in a social context, because the story you just told is an economic and a production one. The disruption that can come from changes in economics—and we see this all the time like a lot of the reactionary movement right now is—but we're losing the old lifestyle of working in the factory in the small town and supporting your family at a middle-class level on one salary. That's gone away.That's an economic story, but I think a lot of what we're seeing today from illiberal sides is about social change. The anti-trans backlash is in a lot of respects about this: “My conceptions of gender and gender roles are that there are people who are setting those aside, living in ways that are contrary to them, but we also see the traditional family is under attack.”It's not under attack in the sense of someone is coming and trying to just tear apart my traditional family, but that there are people who are living in nontraditional ways, and it makes me uncomfortable. In that case, it seems harder to justify the stasist worldview from a moral standpoint, because what you're saying is often that people who were traditionally marginalized or oppressed are now able to get outside of—are now centered in a way that they didn't used to be, are gaining privilege in a way that they didn't used to be, have status in a way that they didn't used to have.Or are able to express themselves and author their own identities in ways that they weren’t, and I don't like that; that makes me uncomfortable. We need to shut it down; we need to punish corporations that are too “woke” in what they're expressing or what they're putting in movies and television. That one seems harder to say yes, you've got a point [to], because telling other people they can't have dynamic self-identities isn't the kind of thing that we should necessarily correct for or compromise with.Virginia: Yes and no. The way you put it, sure, but it's also the case that a lot of these fights are between two sides each of which wants to force the other one to adopt its worldview and to pay obeisance to its worldview. So that it's not just that I have to tolerate someone who has [another worldview], whether they believe that everyone who doesn't believe in Jesus will go to hell, or whether they believe that someone with male genitalia can be considered a woman.Those are two worldviews that you can live with in a society, where people hold those views, and we just tolerate them, and it's like, I don't care if you believe Mercury is in retrograde and makes your computer go crazy. I think it's stupid, but okay, sure what the hell. We can treat them like that, or we can have fights where everybody has to get on the same page. And a lot of what we're negotiating now is what is it where everybody has to be on the same page.These are the great fights that led to liberalism in the first place—[these] were the religious wars, where there was an assumption that unless everybody agreed on that [question], unless everybody in the society was of the same faith, the society would not be strong. Obviously, this is potted history, but they kept fighting over that until they were exhausted and said, “Let's have liberalism instead.” That's oversimplifying much. A lot of these fights today are about, How do you accommodate when people have radically different worldviews, live in the same society, have to know about each other's worldviews?One of the differences today versus when I was growing up in the Bible Belt is that everybody sees everything. The people I went to college with at Princeton for the most part—I was raised a liberal Presbyterian, but the assumptions I made about the people around me—I might as well have been from Mars. I could understand Renaissance literature, because it's steeped in a religious society, in a way that most of the people that I went to school with couldn't, because they had never been in a place where everybody was religious—and really religious, not just nominally.Also, that affects jokes and stuff. Supposedly, my freshman roommate got mad, she told somebody, because I had said she was going to hell. Considering I didn't believe in hell, that was impossible, but I must have made some joke that anybody who knew me in high school would've understood. Anyway, this is a long way of saying that I think that you are right, and this goes to the issue of commitments and being able to carve out your own life. Some of these fights are about that.One of the things that happened since I wrote the Future and Its Enemies is [gay marriage]. When I wrote the Future and Its Enemies, I was for gay marriage, but that was way ahead of the curve. It advanced partly because of this desire to have a commitment. I see this as a constant negotiation, and I also see the economic ideals as not being completely disconnected from it.People talk about the good old days: Let's go back to the good old days, when you could work in a factory and have a union job and raise a family on one income and all of that. Well, first of all, I'm from South Carolina, and that wasn't the case then. Even if you were white, people were poor. Yes, you could do that—you could raise a family on one income—if you were an engineer, but not if you worked in a textile mill. You would have both parents working in a textile mill and probably the teenage kids as well—and that's, again, if you were white. If you were Black, you were even worse off. So there is a kind of centering, as you say, of a particular not only ethnically narrow experience, but also even regionally narrow experience in that kind of nostalgia. I think that remembering who's left out is an important part. It goes to this issue of the knowledge problem—of the idea that dynamism allows people to operate on their local knowledge. It allows people who might not be included in the big, top-down view to force themselves to be included, because they just go through life and do their thing.Aaron: I think part of that is not necessarily stasists, or not necessarily stasists versus dynamism or change, but about pace of change. This is the point that you made about we're all aware of what each other is doing in a way that we didn't used to be. There always are subcultures; a subculture adopts a handful of things and then innovates on them very quickly and becomes weird and pops up. Suddenly everyone's goth for a little while, and goth is very different. And this shows up in fashion frequently, or in me trying to keep up with my middle schoolers slang or so on. With the social media stuff in particular, we end up in these situations where you don't even think that your subculture is a subculture anymore. You think it is the dominant culture because you've cultivated your Twitter following, and everyone you know online knows to talk this way, or that these terms are passé or shouldn't be used anymore or whatever. Then you assume that's what everyone knows and everyone talks about. I don't even know that, in a lot of cases, it is you saying, “I want to force my subculture’s views on everyone else”; it's more just you assume that that's what all of the views are.Virginia: It's like my joke about you're going to hell. I assume that you know how I mean it—oh, wait a minute, you don't, because you don't come from that subculture. It used to be that these subcultures were [overlooked]. The mainstream media—The New York Times, Time Magazine—did not know, and even Gallup polling did not know, there was such a thing as “born-again Christians” until Jimmy Carter. And they were a huge percentage of the population. It's just that they weren't the people who worked at The New York Times; they weren't the people who lived in New York, for the most part.Partly because I have this weird background of having lived in a lot of different parts of the country, I'm more aware of how many subcultures there are, and my Facebook friends come from all of them, pretty much. I think you're absolutely right that part of what happens is people assume that their norms are universal, or should be universal, and that therefore people who violate them are bad people.And there are rewards for making those assumptions. There are rewards in terms of attention. There are rewards in terms of, “You go, girl,” or whatever, and that has been corrosive. I think that it's not new in human history, but as you say, there has been an acceleration of it, and the idea that you could know about these horrible other people who think differently from you is more likely. You don't just know about them, you probably get a distorted picture of them, because it's being filtered through people who are spinning it or selectively representing it in a way that maximizes not only its strangeness, but its “evil.”Aaron: Yes. I think we also, too, don't necessarily appreciate the pace at which things change and become accepted in our subcultures. You mentioned you wrote this book—this book was published in 1998, I think it was.Virginia: Yes. Right. So I was writing it in like 1996, '97.Aaron: I was in high school in the 90s. Thinking about gay marriage—you mentioned gay marriage—how dramatic the change on acceptance of gay relationships and gay marriage has been: When I was in high school, Ellen coming out on her sitcom was, like, We're going to have a gay character on television! This was national news; everyone was talking about it. Whereas now, 30 years later, it's just like, so what, there's a gay character.It happens very quickly, and this makes me think how much of this is about—and going back to the rules, too—ambiguity versus clarity; that people want to know how things are, and how they're going to be. And a lot of rapid change is not constant. It's not uniform. It is experimentation and competing views and figuring out which is the right one, or which is the acceptable one.All of that messiness means that things are ambiguous, and that what we want is clarity. We want to know, okay, this is the rule that I'm going to have to follow tomorrow. This is what's going to be acceptable. I'm not going to get called out for this. I'm willing to change, but I want to know what it's going to be. That dynamism is inherently ambiguous.Virginia: Well, I think that is part of it. I think people do want to be able to make their own plans and structure their own lives in a way that it is going to work for them. I would argue that you're better off in a world where people aren't constantly making new rules, from their plans, to run your plans. That's one of the big Dynamist ideas. But you were talking about people wanting clarity. One of the things that I've written about over the years is clothing sizes and problems of fit. Bear with me; this is relevant. People tend to think that it would be better if there were specific clothing sizes—that if you knew that every size eight dress was for a 35-inch bust and a 28-inch waist (I'm making these up) and 40-inch hips, or something like that, that would be great, because everything would be the same. You would know exactly what you were getting. It would actually be terrible. In the ‘40s, the catalog companies actually went to the government and said, Could you please establish some standard sizes? And they did. But almost as soon as they were established, different brands started not complying with them, because it wasn't required; it wasn't a regulation. The reason is that people's bodies come in different proportions—even two people who are the same height and weight. One will have longer legs, one will have shorter arms, one will have a bigger waist, the other will have bigger hips, et cetera. What happens is that brands develop their own fit models and their own sizes. The lack of clarity actually makes it more possible for people to find what fits. I think that is an analogy to one aspect of dynamism—that is, the fact that there isn't a single model that everyone must comply with makes it more likely that people can structure their own lives in meaningful ways. Now that said, this goes back to this issue of nested rules. Hammering down on people because they express views that were perfectly normal 10 minutes ago, or worse yet, because they use a term in a nonpejorative way (they think), and suddenly, it's turned out that it's now pejorative: This is not good. This is a kind of treating as fundamental rules things that should be flexible and adjustable and tolerant. There is this idea of tolerance when we talk about tolerance as a liberal value, a liberal virtue, but there's also mechanical tolerances. I think a society needs that kind of tolerance as well. That allows for a certain amount of differentiation and pliability; that allows things to work, and it allows people not to be constantly punished. Zero tolerance is a bad idea. Anytime people are having zero tolerance, you're almost always going to be running into trouble.Aaron: You published this book 24 years ago. As I said at the beginning, I think the framework and the thesis that you articulated in it is really powerful and helpful for understanding things. But the political landscape and the cultural landscape looks rather different now than it did in the ’90s. Looking at the threats to dynamism that we see today and the rise of illiberalism, what are the lessons that we should draw from the stasist-versus-dynamist framework for countering those threats, or at least understanding them in a way that may prove helpful to ameliorating them?Virginia: Well, there are different forms of illiberalism around the world, and there are different reasons that people back them. One of the things that is striking in the rise of Trump in the U.S. is that one component of the people who voted for him—I don't know whether this would be true if he runs again, because the whole January 6 thing alters it somewhat—were frustrated dynamists. They were people who are really sick of technocracy; they're really sick of being told what they can and cannot do. They're really sick of the fact that it's hard to build things—that it's hard to create, especially with atoms, rather than bits. Peter Thiel might be a a high-profile example, but there are lots of just little guys who own plumbing companies or whatever who are in that category. The notion that you need to knock over the table to effect change: I think some of that comes from this idea that technocracy has tied down ordinary people like Gulliver and the Lilliputians.I think one thing that needs to happen—again, I don't know that this applies in Hungary, but certainly I think it's applicable in the U.S.—is that technocrats need to get their act together, at least some of them, and need to get a little more dynamism in their heads. You're seeing some of this among intellectuals like Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias on the center-left, and you definitely see it in the issues around housing. That's one thing, because dynamists can't do it alone, and we need allies; we need to peel off technocrats who will support us, many of whom are liberals or think of themselves as liberals, in the sense that they're not illiberal. As far as the people who really want to go back to the Middle Ages, part of this is that you need to tell different stories—and this is hard. Culture is hard. This is not a libertarian show, but one of the things that I say to libertarians and also to conservatives is that they always talk about culture the way leftists talk about markets: as if there's one giant lever. If I could just get my hands on that lever and pull, I could make everything the way I want it. That's a fallacy in markets, and it's a fallacy in culture as well. Whether you like it or not, it's a dynamic process. I hadn't really thought about this, but in a way, The Fabric of Civilization, my latest book, which is the story of world history through the story of textiles, says the world is always changing. Even in the periods where it changes slowly, it changes. There are always people who are pushing against the established order, whether it's economic or cultural or whatever.Another thing that it says quite explicitly in the discussion of traditional clothing—and if somebody goes to my Substack, you can see that I posted this—is that people don't generally want to make a choice between tradition/identity and modernity/progress: They want both. Given control over their lives, they will find ways to incorporate both, to hold onto what they value in terms of their identity and tradition, and to get the benefits of modernity and liberalism.I think many people who really like change don't fully appreciate that. It was definitely not appreciated at the beginning of the 20th century and the technocratic move that we talked about earlier, but the example I use is the way indigenous women in Guatemala dress. Now, they can buy jeans and t-shirts just like everybody else, but they choose to dress in traditional garments—except they're not really traditional. They've changed in a lot of different ways. The daily blouse is made in a factory. It's made out of polyester. It's not woven on a handloom, but it still looks Maya because that identity is important. I think there is a universalizing element of liberalism that wants everyone to be a rootless cosmopolitan. Even those of us who basically are rootless cosmopolitans aren't really. We actually do have roots. I am very dedicated to living in Los Angeles. I really am from the South; whether I like it or not, it shaped me in certain ways. I have certain ties.Liberalism needs to understand that that's how people are—that they care about where they come from. They care about things that are passed down in their families. They care about their community ties, and that is perfectly compatible with liberalism and dynamism. But the manifestations of that will change. This is why the great social success story of the past 25 years—this is from a liberal, social point of view—is the story of gay marriage, because it says, yes, gay people are different in certain ways, but they are embedded in families. They want to be embedded in families—not every single one—but in the sense that most people want to be embedded in families. The mere fact that you have a sexual orientation toward the same sex does not mean that you want to leave that all behind; it means you want to have Thanksgiving, and you want to get married, and you want to have kids. And all of that which is part of normal human life since time immemorial can take a slightly different turn and still be compatible with these very ancient, conservative institutions, which, by the way, have taken a zillion different forms over human history.Aaron: Thank you for listening to Reactionary Minds, a project of The UnPopulist. If you want to learn more about the rise of a liberalism and the need to defend a free society, check out theunpopulist.substack.com.Bonus Material: Virginia Postrel, The Future and its EnemiesVirginia Postrel, “Continuity and Change: The case of Maya trajes.” This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theunpopulist.substack.com

It's hard to imagine ever having been unaware of the concept of bullshit jobs, but David Graeber made it official and helped us understand their role in our economy. Bullshit jobs are not necessarily shit jobs, nor are they low wage jobs, or dirty jobs. Bullshit jobs are those that are meaningless. The person doing the bullshit job doesn't believe the work actually needs to get done. This week's guest, Erik Dean, has studied the nature of modern jobs within money manager capitalism. He points out that bullshit jobs aren't just a product of neoliberalism: “Speculative business and these labor hierarchies of the people with secure jobs versus the precariat … those things have been around. and it's not even necessarily part of capitalism. This is one reason it's good to read Thorstein Veblen, because in an anthropological sense, he takes it back to prior to capitalism. It's not like we didn't have hierarchies before capitalism. It's not like we didn't have power and it's not like we didn't have bullshit jobs. What the hell is a court jester? It's a bullshit job to entertain the king or whatever.” Dean talks with Steve about financialized capitalism – money market capitalism – and his disagreements with many on its basic characteristics. Just as bullshit jobs existed prior to our contemporary world, so did some of its other qualities, including its speculative nature and “short termism.” It was once thought that technology would relieve us of onerous jobs, allowing a shorter, lighter workweek, exchanging bullshit jobs for socially useful work. Steve confesses skepticism about the possibility of such a revolution. Dean responds: “If we were capable individually and collectively to reimagine what work is, what your time is best spent doing, and to break free of that encroaching neoliberal finance capitalist ideology that is, again, just gradually soaking into how we think about everything. To some extent, that is a revolution. If you can change the way you think and break free of the wider education of this neoliberalist ideology, that itself is a revolution.” **Don't forget to check out the transcript for this and every episode of Macro N Cheese as well as the Extras page with additional resources. Find them at realprogressives.org/macro-n-cheese-podcast/ Erik Dean is an Instructor of Economics at Portland Community College and researcher at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. His core expertise is in heterodox production theory, institutionalist methodology, and pedagogy in economics. His recent research covers a range of topics, including the nature of the modern occupational structure and the place of the corporation in money manager capitalism and the ramifications thereof.

Entrepreneurship is an important part of a thriving economy, and entrepreneurship education is intended to make sure that those who have the potential to succeed in this way have the resources and knowledge to do so. But the opportunity for innovation, being one's own boss, and making money are not the only reasons that people become entrepreneurs. Some do so to fulfil a kind of fantasy, or simply to look good. And there is an entire educational sub-industry offering to help them to indulge this fantasy, for a price. In Towards an "Un"trepreneurial Economy: the Entrepreneurship Industry and the Veblenian Entrepreneur, authors Hartmann, Spicer, and Krabbe try to explain a strange trend in recent years: while entrepreneurial activity has gone up, success rates for entrepreneurial ventures have gone down. After considering several possible explanations, they ultimately conclude that a major reason for "excess entry" into what one might call "high-class" entrepreneurship (e.g. founding a tech start-up) is due to a sub-class of entrepreneurs who are not driven to pursue real opportunities in the market, but are simply trying to adopt the identity of an entrepreneur because of its high social status. Dubbed "Veblenian entrepreneurs" (or sometimes "wantrepreneurs") after Thorstein Veblen, the sociologist who coined the term conspicuous consumption at the end of the 19th century, these are individuals who are drawn in by a huge industry designed to sell people a dream and a lifestyle which can take them away from everyday mundanity and make them seem successful to their peers. Consumers of the entrepreneurship industry's products (such as courses, conferences, publications, and consultancy) have been shown to engage in more entrepreneurial activity, while actually having lower success rates. This idea is somewhat analogous to the notion of human capital vs. signalling in education economics - in other words, what is the value of education? Does it make you a better and more productive person, or does it just make you look good to employers? (What is the value of entrepreneurship? Does it contribute to the economy, or does it just make you look good on social media?) It also has implications for entrepreneurship educators. Should we really be encouraging entrepreneurship for everybody who is interested, or should we be discouraging those who are least likely to succeed, so that they can make better choices? Enjoy the episode. *** RELATED EPISODES 115. Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber 103. What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy by James Paul Gee 23. So Good They Can't Ignore You by Cal Newport

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is Argument and Analysis, Part 3: Intellectual Hipsters and Meta-Contrarianism, published by Scott Alexander. Related to: Why Real Men Wear Pink, That Other Kind of Status, Pretending to be Wise, The "Outside The Box" Box WARNING: Beware of things that are fun to argue -- Eliezer Yudkowsky Science has inexplicably failed to come up with a precise definition of "hipster", but from my limited understanding a hipster is a person who deliberately uses unpopular, obsolete, or obscure styles and preferences in an attempt to be "cooler" than the mainstream. But why would being deliberately uncool be cooler than being cool? As previously discussed, in certain situations refusing to signal can be a sign of high status. Thorstein Veblen invented the term "conspicuous consumption" to refer to the showy spending habits of the nouveau riche, who unlike the established money of his day took great pains to signal their wealth by buying fast cars, expensive clothes, and shiny jewelery. Why was such flashiness common among new money but not old? Because the old money was so secure in their position that it never even occurred to them that they might be confused with poor people, whereas new money, with their lack of aristocratic breeding, worried they might be mistaken for poor people if they didn't make it blatantly obvious that they had expensive things. The old money might have started off not buying flashy things for pragmatic reasons - they didn't need to, so why waste the money? But if F. Scott Fitzgerald is to be believed, the old money actively cultivated an air of superiority to the nouveau riche and their conspicuous consumption; not buying flashy objects becomes a matter of principle. This makes sense: the nouveau riche need to differentiate themselves from the poor, but the old money need to differentiate themselves from the nouveau riche. This process is called countersignaling, and one can find its telltale patterns in many walks of life. Those who study human romantic attraction warn men not to "come on too strong", and this has similarities to the nouveau riche example. A total loser might come up to a woman without a hint of romance, promise her nothing, and demand sex. A more sophisticated man might buy roses for a woman, write her love poetry, hover on her every wish, et cetera; this signifies that he is not a total loser. But the most desirable men may deliberately avoid doing nice things for women in an attempt to signal they are so high status that they don't need to. The average man tries to differentiate himself from the total loser by being nice; the extremely attractive man tries to differentiate himself from the average man by not being especially nice. In all three examples, people at the top of the pyramid end up displaying characteristics similar to those at the bottom. Hipsters deliberately wear the same clothes uncool people wear. Families with old money don't wear much more jewelry than the middle class. And very attractive men approach women with the same lack of subtlety a total loser would use.1 If politics, philosophy, and religion are really about signaling, we should expect to find countersignaling there as well. Pretending To Be Wise Let's go back to Less Wrong's long-running discussion on death. Ask any five year old child, and ey can tell you that death is bad. Death is bad because it kills you. There is nothing subtle about it, and there does not need to be. Death universally seems bad to pretty much everyone on first analysis, and what it seems, it is. But as has been pointed out, along with the gigantic cost, death does have a few small benefits. It lowers overpopulation, it allows the new generation to develop free from interference by their elders, it provides motivation to get things done quickly. Precisely because these benefits are so muc...

Certain lifestyle choices strongly correspond to long-term success: staying in school; avoiding pregnancy outside of marriage; regularly attending church; and abstaining from drug abuse, heavy drinking, and risky sex. Decades of research show these choices correlate with physical health, economic prosperity, and personal happiness. They also correlate more with the traditional and religious sides of the values aisle. Tech billionaires, Hollywood celebrities, and CEOs of megacorporations like Disney and the NFL tend to hold far more progressive views about sex, marriage, drugs, and religion. Along with media elites and progressive politicos, they often loudly reject those values that lead to health, wealth, and happiness. Why then do they not suffer the consequences of their views? According to one Cambridge academic, permissive attitudes about sex, marriage, drugs, and religion are "luxury beliefs, more status symbols for cultural elites than they are blueprints for the way they live. Rob Henderson first floated the idea of "luxury beliefs" in an essay in the New York Post, later at Quillette, and most recently in a podcast. He argues that holding beliefs that tend to be disastrous for poor and middle-class communities has become the modern equivalent of buying expensive clothes or hiring servants. It's a way of showing off your wealth and signaling your status to fellow members of the upper class. Having grown up in multiple foster homes before enlisting in the Air Force and later attending Yale, Henderson has personally experienced much of the socio-economic spectrum. He knows first-hand how destructive the progressive behaviors held in reverence by many elites are to ordinary people. In his attempt to reconcile these facts, Henderson turned to 19th-century economist Thorstein Veblen's theory of the "leisure class." According to Veblen, rich and connected people once advertised their status mainly through luxury goods—things that were expensive and served no practical purpose. Today, they've switched to expensive ideas, or notions about how to live which, if adopted by everyone, would wreck society. Henderson cites some of the luxury beliefs he has encountered among his Yale and Cambridge peers: "…when an affluent person advocates for drug legalization, or anti-vaccination policies, or open borders, or loose sexual norms, or uses the term 'white privilege,' they are engaging in a status display. They are trying to tell you, 'I am a member of the upper class.'" These beliefs and others work as signals, he says, because if anyone but a privileged elite were to act on them, it would be disastrous. For example, polyamory is a lifestyle in vogue among wealthy liberals whose financial resources can bail them out of defaulted leases, surprise pregnancies, and therapy bills. When such behaviors are adopted by the less privileged, however, the results include spiraling poverty, disease, an epidemic of single motherhood, and suicide. The costs incurred by luxury beliefs, writes Henderson, are borne by ordinary people. Richard Weaver famously said "ideas have consequences," to which we add, "and bad ideas have victims." If God's design for sex, marriage, society, and the human soul are in fact built into the fabric of the universe, we can no more ignore them without consequences than someone can walk off a ten-story roof and ignore the consequences of gravity. Those who adopt "luxury beliefs" often have a parachute of trust funds, good lawyers, and social connections. Even so, as Nicholas Kristoff wrote a few years ago in the New York Times, many upper-class progressives don't actually preach what they practice, instead choosing to live fairly traditional, monogamous, drug-free, generally moral lifestyles… which makes their "luxury beliefs" even more like fashion accessories. In the end, however, the bill for luxury beliefs comes due. If Henderson and plenty of social scientists are correct in their analysis, it's usually charged to those who can least afford it.

In the seventh installment of the Political Economists Podcast, Max and Jorrel breakdown Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class. To those unfamiliar with Veblen, the leisure class refers to the top social class that can engage in leisure openly and conspicuously. Join the two as they explain how the leisure class, modern day clout, and tax breaks all come together to showcase the disparities that persist in modern day society.

 In this episode, we read Chapters 6 to 11 of Sense and Sensibility. We talk about how Barton Cottage and its location are described in some detail, consider how the bedrooms are shared out, the closeness between the two sisters in spite of their differences, the theme of sense vs sensibility, and the way Willoughby and Marianne criticise Colonel Brandon. We discuss the character of Mrs Jennings, then Ellen talks about how members of the gentry spent their time, and Harriet talks about how adaptations and modernisations treat these chapters (including a discussion about how the Dashwoods have adapted to having less money).  Harriet also gives an overview of the other Jane Austen podcasts that are out there. Things we mention: References:Edward Copeland [Editor], The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility (2006)The epigrams of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899)Karl Marx (1818-1883)Max Weber (1864-1920)Sue Birtwistle and Susie Conklin, The Making of Pride and Prejudice (1995)Emma Thompson, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and Diaries: Bringing Jane Austen's Novel to Film (1995)Adaptations of the book: BBC, Sense and Sensibility (1971) – starring Joanna David and Ciaran Madden (4 episodes)BBC, Sense and Sensibility (1981) – starring Irene Richard and Tracey Childs (7 episodes)Columbia Pictures, Sense and Sensibility (1995) – starring Emma Thompson and Kate WinsletBBC, Sense and Sensibility (2008) – starring Hattie Morahan and Charity Wakefield (3 episodes) Modernisations of the book: Joanna Trollope, Sense & Sensibility (The Austen Project #1) (2013)YouTube, Elinor and Marianne Take Barton (2014) – starring Abi Davies and Bonita Trigg Other Jane Austen podcasts:First Impressions: Why all the Austen haters are wrongBonnets at DawnThe Daily Knightley: A Jane Austen journeyThe Austen ArchivesManners and MadnessReclaiming JaneCreative commons music used:Extract from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Sonata No. 12 in F Major, ii. Adagio. Extract from