# The Theory of the Leisure Class

Source: https://dinand.com/reading-notes/the-theory-of-the-leisure-class/
Author: Dinand Tinholt

> Thorstein Veblen, 1899, and the hand-made spoon that costs more because someone made it slowly.

![Black-and-white studio portrait of Thorstein Veblen, with a moustache and goatee, in a dark suit.](https://dinand.com/assets/reading-notes/the-theory-of-the-leisure-class.jpg)

*Thorstein Veblen, author of The Theory of the Leisure Class.Image: “Thorstein Veblen”, unknown photographer. Public domain, via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Veblen3a.jpg). Resized for this page.*

Thorstein Veblen published The Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899 and gave us the phrase conspicuous consumption. The book is a sardonic anthropology of the American rich. He treats their mansions and manners the way a field researcher treats the rituals of a distant tribe.

One passage stays with me. Veblen sets a hand-wrought silver spoon beside a machine-made spoon of aluminium. Both carry soup equally well. The silver one costs about a hundred times more, and its owner prizes the small irregularities that prove a craftsman spent time on it.

## What gets expensive when writing gets cheap

Generated text and code now cost close to nothing. Veblen would predict a premium on visible human effort, and a hand-drawn map or a talk given live in a room starts to carry the signal his silver spoon carried.

The uncomfortable part of his theory is the motive. His leisure class paid for waste because waste showed status. Some of the coming demand for human-made work will have the same motive, and anyone selling it should know how many of their customers are paying for the label.

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