The engineers and the price system Thorstein Veblen Books
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The engineers and the price system Thorstein Veblen Books
Thorstein Veblen has written previous books. In these other books he brought a different flavor into economics. Adam Smith said little government means the free market will be able to work well on its own. Ricardo and Malthus brought up complications to the market system. John Stuart Mill, explained that the market can work well, but their is a need for institutions like charities, and certain laws to protect the vulnerable. Thorstein Veblen disagreed with Mill explained that institutions on the whole only harm people. On the factory floor you have people able to do the work, able to produce things. What do you need an institution for, when its the machine and the human that create wealth? Veblen saw religion as myth, and a way of getting money out of people. He saw the traditional family as domineering and oppressing women. He was also against private property.In this book here, he takes things further in regards to showing his true colors and what he calls the absentee owners. These are people who have money, to start up businesses and are not on the factory floor, no they are telling others what they can and cannot do. Veblen says they sabotage factory output! Here's how it works: Suppose you and your community buy one tub of ice cream per family per week for say $3. If Ice cream output goes up, you will only buy more ice cream if the price goes down, to say $2. By them increasing the output they must lower prices.
So the business person must keep output at a level which will maximise his/her profits. This means potential employees are unemployed, it means materials are underutilized. To this Thorstein Veblen blames finance on everything. Output being controlled creating unemployment is caused by those who have the finance to control business decisions. He also says that if their was no advertising costs, the price of goods could be cut by 50%. The cost of just billboards was $600,000,000 in the 1919, and that was when an ounce of gold was worth $20 an ounce, prices were much cheaper.
Veblen saw absentee owners with advertisers as a big source of the problem. His solution, to strip absentee owners of their property. Of course he saw this as an eventual solution, because people had too much respect for the business people. He did see that one day, if the technicians on the factory floor got together with other factories they could start up a revolution. He called them a soviet of engineers.
So Veblen spoke out against institutions and now we see that his solutions were very similiar to Karl Marx's. One of the differences is that Marx was more militant and aggressive, whereas Veblen was more mellow about it. This also may explain Roosevelt's new deal. The new deal required people to limit their business output, as part of the recovery. Maybe, this is how Veblen's ideas influenced society. Also Veblen saw military spending as helping business people, not too different than Keynes.
Finally one last thought. Going back to the ice cream example. Maybe the solution would be to produce other goods. If producing more means lower prices and lower profits, why not just create new things, so a soviet of technicians may not be the solution.
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The engineers and the price system Thorstein Veblen Books Reviews
It s slow going. Pick it up and read any half dozen lines and you will be amazed. It is a more important economic work than conspicuous consumption. No I haven't read everything he wrote. I read and reread conspicuous consumption over the last 50 years and only recently discovered engineers. Really good scholars are often strange ducks. Supposedly, Thorsten once asked this question of a class. Rhetorically he asked if they considered silk a classy material. He wore a rumpled old suit to class. It was so worn that the elbows were shiny. He would ask why the shiny elbows of his coat weren't considered "classy" like silk. Yes, this was Veblen.
This edition looses much of its readability because it is all run together as a cheap pamphlet. The original was also a wonderful tutorial on how to pad a term paper.
The Engineers and the Price System
Absolutely fantastic ! What vision,Veblen really nailed it Both Engineers and Technologists should familiarize themselves with this!
Thorsten Veblen writes like a turn of the century lawyer with a snide, subtle, and wicked anger he humorously avoids concealing. His vision of American culture is so sound, so prescient, and so deeply irreverential towards all we hold dear, and he has much to teach us. I read this book because the introduction to The Technological Society, by Jacques Ellul says this book is better. Also because I've been dazzled by Veblen's other works Conspicuous Consumption and The Theory of the Leisure Class. This book, originally published in 1919 or thereabouts, is witnessing the nascent Soviet Union from afar, and the corporate corruption, stilled and consolidated into the Federal Reserve, up close. He sees the wealthy status quo as irrelevant saboteurs (the first chapter defines this term, with his characteristic scrupulosity)to the vital economic health of the country, and decries the advent of corporate takeover. He proposes a 'Soviet of Technicians' which the more optimistic of us could claim as a prediction of the rise of the Sciences in America during the twentieth century. However the final chapter is interpreted in retrospect, it is nonetheless an important commentary about the dynamics between capital and technology during the turn of the century. The bitter anger of his repeated use of the term, just yet, says a lot about his laconic and profound turn of mind. Please, materialists, read Mr. Veblen and find your way out!!!
If you are looking at this book you probably already know why it is essential reading--my "one star" review is about the Forgotten Books Classic Reprint Edition of the book. This edition is, essentially, a bad photocopy of the book--the print is annoyingly faint. Worse still, the text is full of under linings and various markings--those are all copied too. The only funny thing is that it appears that someone tried to cover the underlining with some sort of white out. The effect is comical, however, because they often blot out parts of the print above the underlining. This is a crappy edition.
Thorstein Veblen has written previous books. In these other books he brought a different flavor into economics. Adam Smith said little government means the free market will be able to work well on its own. Ricardo and Malthus brought up complications to the market system. John Stuart Mill, explained that the market can work well, but their is a need for institutions like charities, and certain laws to protect the vulnerable. Thorstein Veblen disagreed with Mill explained that institutions on the whole only harm people. On the factory floor you have people able to do the work, able to produce things. What do you need an institution for, when its the machine and the human that create wealth? Veblen saw religion as myth, and a way of getting money out of people. He saw the traditional family as domineering and oppressing women. He was also against private property.
In this book here, he takes things further in regards to showing his true colors and what he calls the absentee owners. These are people who have money, to start up businesses and are not on the factory floor, no they are telling others what they can and cannot do. Veblen says they sabotage factory output! Here's how it works Suppose you and your community buy one tub of ice cream per family per week for say $3. If Ice cream output goes up, you will only buy more ice cream if the price goes down, to say $2. By them increasing the output they must lower prices.
So the business person must keep output at a level which will maximise his/her profits. This means potential employees are unemployed, it means materials are underutilized. To this Thorstein Veblen blames finance on everything. Output being controlled creating unemployment is caused by those who have the finance to control business decisions. He also says that if their was no advertising costs, the price of goods could be cut by 50%. The cost of just billboards was $600,000,000 in the 1919, and that was when an ounce of gold was worth $20 an ounce, prices were much cheaper.
Veblen saw absentee owners with advertisers as a big source of the problem. His solution, to strip absentee owners of their property. Of course he saw this as an eventual solution, because people had too much respect for the business people. He did see that one day, if the technicians on the factory floor got together with other factories they could start up a revolution. He called them a soviet of engineers.
So Veblen spoke out against institutions and now we see that his solutions were very similiar to Karl Marx's. One of the differences is that Marx was more militant and aggressive, whereas Veblen was more mellow about it. This also may explain Roosevelt's new deal. The new deal required people to limit their business output, as part of the recovery. Maybe, this is how Veblen's ideas influenced society. Also Veblen saw military spending as helping business people, not too different than Keynes.
Finally one last thought. Going back to the ice cream example. Maybe the solution would be to produce other goods. If producing more means lower prices and lower profits, why not just create new things, so a soviet of technicians may not be the solution.
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