Ever since these enlightened principles of the modern point of view were first installed in the eighteenth century as the self-evident rule of reason in civilized life, the industrial arts have also continued to gain in productive efficiency, at an ever-accelerated rate of gain; so that today the industrial methods of the machine era are highly productive, beyond any earlier state of the industrial arts or anything that is known outside the range of this new order of industry. The output of this industrial system yields a wider margin of net product over cost than has ever been obtainable by any other or earlier known method of work. It consequently affords ground for an uncommonly substantial vested interest in this disposable net margin.


The Vested Interests and the Common Man (1919)

Thorstein Veblen Quotes

Ever since these enlightened principles of the modern point of view were first installed in the eighteenth century as the self-evident rule of reason ...

Ever since these enlightened principles of the modern point of view were first installed in the eighteenth century as the self-evident rule of reason ...