Chapter 2: Pecuniary Emulation
Lays out the motivational engine of the book: people accumulate not to consume but to rank above neighbors.
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From The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen
Veblen identifies emulation of those above one in the social hierarchy as the chief economic motive driving accumulation and consumption beyond subsistence.
Chapter 2
The famous formulation that the desire for wealth resolves itself into a desire to excel in pecuniary comparison.
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