[The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen]@TWC D-Link bookThe Theory of the Leisure Class CHAPTER One ~~ Introductory 24/31
In any community where such an invidious comparison of persons is habitually made, visible success becomes an end sought for its own utility as a basis of esteem.
Esteem is gained and dispraise is avoided by putting one's efficiency in evidence.
The result is that the instinct of workmanship works out in an emulative demonstration of force. During that primitive phase of social development, when the community is still habitually peaceable, perhaps sedentary, and without a developed system of individual ownership, the efficiency of the individual can be shown chiefly and most consistently in some employment that goes to further the life of the group.
What emulation of an economic kind there is between the members of such a group will be chiefly emulation in industrial serviceability.
At the same time the incentive to emulation is not strong, nor is the scope for emulation large. When the community passes from peaceable savagery to a predatory phase of life, the conditions of emulation change.
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