![]() ![]() ![]() Take for instance one of Veblen’s best-known concepts, conspicuous consumption: consuming goods not for their capacity to produce personal satisfaction (utility), but rather because they allow the consumer to demonstrate or enhance her prestige. Rather, they will reflect in part the imbecile and anachronistic habits of thought inherited from our past. And, importantly, the institutions that define what is and is not appropriate do not entirely reflect what is most conducive to nurturing individual well-being, social cooperation, and sustainable uses of technology. In this view, we’re consuming the things we consume today largely because we learned that those things are appropriate to consume. Instead, they are the result of an institutional evolution, occurring in part by unplanned drift, and in part by intentional acts of problem solving, ceremonial observance, and persuasion. They do not emerge miraculously from each of our individual constitutions. Our tastes and preferences, in this view, are primarily the result, not of some abstract lightning calculation of marginal utilities per dollar, but rather of the common habits of thought shared among our peers, our family, and our society more generally. An institutional analysis of modern consumption patterns would, of course, look first and foremost to a society’s institutions to explain these behaviors. ![]()
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