April 29, 2008

Another Son of Wisconsin

Warning: this post contains a bit of diatribe - not sure where that came from.

Perhaps he is a black sheep, and he did move early on with his family to Minnesota. But Thorstein Veblen is a clearly of the cloth.

I am reading Theory of the Leisure Class and have just finished his chapter entitled (yes) Conspicuous Consumption. He is clearly skirting around some of my thinking wrt Q and he is definitely stimulating my thinking about small and high quality in the developed world.

How do we change our notions of prestige? This is along the tree hugging line of living simply but it more nuanced than birkenstocks and vegan diets. We need to work toward a more responsible footprint that acknowledges the real lives of much of America. (and no I didn't forget them) We need to think about the depths of Q as we move the several billion in poverty upward