Other Non-Fiction Veblen, Thorstein: The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899); v2; 14 Aug 2020

[Pulpmeister]

Seminal economic theory, the first from the consumption point of view, rather than supply and demand.

"The basis on which good repute in any highly organised industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods."

I first encountered Veblen when reading the Travis McGee novels, where his good friend Meyer (no other name), an economist, has his own boat, the John Maynard Keynes, nearby. When that is blown up, it is replaced by the Thorstein Veblen.

I expect to have to reread this book two or three times to get the best from it, but it is quite readable and modern parallels (it dates from 1899) are obvious.

It already exists in the library in prc format. I have remade it, for epub, azw3 and Mobi formats, and created a cover. The first edition dust jacket (if there was one) seems unobtainable. The original cover was blank, and dark blue. I used a scan of a blank cover, and added text. A portrait of Veblen is the frontispiece.

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[ableal]

Thank you for the great work on the pulp fiction books, and for this non-fiction one. I'm piping up because Veblen is one of my favorite idea-men, and this plugs a hole in my ebook library.

You may be interested in another of my favorites: Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923). Besides observing the 80-20 rule that bears his name, and the "Pareto optimality" criterion used in quite a few applications, he also tossed out interesting ideas in sociology and politics.

I recently came across this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulation_of_elite - "Changes of regime, revolutions, and so on occur not when rulers are overthrown from below, but when one elite replaces another." - which sent me chasing for more of his writings. There are some 1935 PDFs of his main work, and a selection of writings by S.E. Finer seems a good introduction (a 1966 printed book).