Thorstein Veblen

Thorstein Veblen, an American economist, and sociologist was born on July 30, 1857, in Cato, Wisconsin. His family emigrated from Norway, in Europe, to the United States America in 1847.

Thorstein was a firm critic of capitalism and he criticizes the system with a sense of humor. He was also famous for his ideas of conspicuous consumption; that is an idea that people acquire or buy things they do not need but rather to show or display their status. He argued that people with conspicuous consumption ideology often buy expensive products in order to make a social statement even when those products are not on their radar of needs (Little et al., 2014). Within the history of economic thought, Veblen is considered the leader of the institutional economics moment; he was also able to draw a stark contrast between institutions and technology during his era. That is why contemporary economist still regards and called Thorstein idea of

Of course, at that time, it was a taboo to be identified as agnostic. Agnostic, by the way, is a person who believes that everything exists because of God.

Thorstein Veblen was among the members that founded Technocracy movement. Veblen had a strong liking for socialism and believed that technology development would lead to the socialistic organization of economic affairs.

Torstein Veblen’s perspective on socialism and the evolutionary process was slightly different from Karl Marx idea. Marx saw socialism as the final political forerunner to communism; the ultimate goal was to achieve civilization. Additionally, Karl Marx saw the working class as the group to achieve it while Thorstein Veblen, he saw socialism as one intermediate phase in an ongoing evolutionary process in society that would bring the natural decay of the business enterprise system, and by the inventiveness of engineers. Thorstein Veblen died in California on August 3, 1929, at the age of