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The basis on which good repute in any highly organized 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.
Thorstein Veblen
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Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote suggests that social status in an industrial society is tied to wealth and the visible display of consumption.

Thorstein Veblen argues that in a highly organized industrial society, a person's reputation is heavily dependent on their financial strength. To establish and maintain a good name, individuals often engage in conspicuous consumption, whereby they showcase their wealth through luxury goods and leisure activities, reflecting their economic power and social standing.

Themes

ReputationWealthConsumptionStatusLeisure

In practice

Example use cases

During a business workshop, to illustrate the importance of personal branding and wealth, one might quote Veblen.

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Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure.
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In order to stand well in the eyes of the community, it is necessary to come up to a certain, somewhat indefinite, conventional standard of wealth.
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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.
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In itself and in its consequences the life of leisure is beautiful and ennobling in all civilised men's eyes.
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Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress.
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