Thorstein Veblen - Common Quotes

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From the foregoing survey of conspicuous leisure and consumption, it appears that the utility of both alike for the purposes of reputability lies in the element of waste that is common to both. In the one case it is a waste of time and effort, in the other it is a waste of goods.

Thorstein Veblen
Now, these businesslike maneuvers of deviation and delay are by no means to be denounced as being iniquitous or unfair, although they may have an unfortunate effect on the conditions of life for the common man. That is his misfortune, which law and custom count on his bearing with becoming fortitude. These are the ordinary and approved means of carrying on business according to the liberal principles of free bargain and self-help as established in the eighteenth century; and they are in the main still looked on as a meritorious exercise of thrift and sagacity.

Thorstein Veblen
There are all degrees of this helplessness that characterizes the common lot. So much so that certain classes, professions, and occupations — such as the clergy, the military, the courts, police, and legal profession — are perhaps to be classed as belonging primarily with the vested interests, although they can scarcely be counted as vested interests in their own right, but rather as outlying and subsidiary vested interests whose tenure is conditioned on their serving the purposes of those principal and self-directing vested interests whose tenure rests immediately on large holdings of invested wealth. Read more at location 2158

Thorstein Veblen
It is especially the latter-day system of transport and communication as it works out under the new order highly mechanical and exactingly scheduled for time, date and place — that so controls and standardizes the ordinary life of the common man on mechanical lines.

Thorstein Veblen
The great distinguishing mark of the common man is that he is helpless within the rules of the game as it is played in the twentieth century under the enlightened principles of the eighteenth century.

Thorstein Veblen
Today (October, 1918) — it is to be admitted with such emotion as may come to hand — this question is one which can be entertained quite seriously, in the light of experience. In the recent past, as matters have stood up to the outbreak of the war, the ordinary rate of production in the essential industries under businesslike management has habitually and by deliberate contrivance fallen greatly short of productive capacity. This is an article of information which the experience of the war has shifted from the rubric of "Interesting if True" to that of "Common Notoriety."

Thorstein Veblen
And it is a divine right of the nation to use its discretion and offset this inordinate efficiency of its common stock of knowledge by adroitly crippling its own commerce and the commerce of its neighbors, for the benefit of those vested interests that are domiciled within the national frontiers.

Thorstein Veblen
But the gravest significance of this cleavage that so runs through the population of the advanced industrial countries lies in the fact that it is a division between the vested interests and the common man. It is a division between those who control the conditions of work and the rate and volume of output and to whom the net output of industry goes as free income, on the one hand, and those others who have the work to do and to whom a livelihood is allowed by these persons in control, on the other hand. In point of numbers it is a very uneven division, of course.

Thorstein Veblen
As is true of the divine right of kings, so also as regards the divine right of nations, it is extremely difficult to show that it serves the common good in any material way, in any way that can be formulated or verified in terms of tangible performance.

Thorstein Veblen
But there are certain vested interests which find their profit in maintaining a tariff barrier as a means of keeping the price up and keeping the supply down; and the common man still faithfully believes that the profits which these vested interests derive in this way from increasing the cost of his livelihood and decreasing the net productivity of his industry will benefit him in some mysterious way.

Thorstein Veblen
And all the while the owner of the equipment is some person who has contributed no more than his per-capita quota to this state of the industrial arts out of which his earnings arise. Indeed the chances are that the owner has contributed less than his per-capita quota, if anything, to that common fund of knowledge on the product of which he draws by virtue of his ownership, because he is likely to be fully occupied with other things, — such things as lucrative business transactions, e. g., or the decent consumption of superfluities.

Thorstein Veblen
The common good, so far as it is a question of material welfare, is evidently best served by an unhampered working of the industrial system at its full capacity, without interruption or dislocation. But it is equally evident that the owner or manager of any given concern or section of this industrial system may be in a position to gain something for himself at the cost of the rest by obstructing, retarding or dislocating this working system at some critical point in such a way as will enable him to get the best of the bargain in his dealings with the rest.

Thorstein Veblen
Enlightened common-sense sticks by the opaque truth and refuses to go behind the returns given by the triangle of facts.

Thorstein Veblen