Productive Work and the Accumulation of Wealth

What are the consequences for our everyday definitions of success of the following quote from Veblen: "Purposeful effort comes to mean, primarily, effort directed to or resulting in a more creditable showing of accumulated wealth"

I begin my answer of this question by conveying my assumptions that my understanding of human perception of productivity is different from Veblen. In order to agree with Veblen, I would have to assume that people are basically narcissistic and are in need of getting attention and acclaim for their lifestyle. Since I do not believe that Veblen's underlying premise is correct, I can only surmise that his view of society would lead to the conclusion that people would not care about saving money and would spend money at all costs to "keep up with the Joneses." However, Veblen might also suggest that the accumulation of wealth could be displayed at a later time, like retirement, with everybody knowing all the details of someone's whereabouts.

What are the benefits that result from working? The result is a sustained lifestyle for themselves and their families comprised of mainly food and shelter. Any remaining income that remains after these necessary expenditures are made could be used for things that bring readily accessible gratification to the person possessing the money. However, people cannot help but think about their plans for the future. From personal interactions with people who are no longer in school but are in the work force, the common goal among them is to eventually retire. This does not mean that these people dislike what they do, but it does reflect an idea that the individual should usher in a later stage of life that involves freed-up time to engage in additional leisurely activities. "'Leisure'... does not connote indolence or quiescence," (Veblen 33). I use the word "additional" in the previous sentence, because I think one can make time to engage in activities that are not productive in one's spare time. While people can use their wages (or borrowed money) to flaunt how successful they are in experiencing what it means to accumulate wealth through the purchase of any sort of widget, I do not think this is a primary motivation on the part of people. I believe it would be more advantageous to have people save their money for the long-term goal of retirement than to spend an entire paycheck on things that can only bring short-term gratification. While some might try to say that retirement could be a sign of wealth that could be flaunted, I believe that there are many (such as myself) who would prefer to retire without disclosing their friends and former co-workers every detail of their actions. This is the reason that I, up to now, do not have Facebook. I prefer the face-to-face interactions that I have with people while in an environment of academia. Using Veblen's model to make predictions, I would think that those who save their money for retirement would use it for the intended purpose but with a big announcement to everyone they know what they plan to do while retired and then give frequent updates once retired on how the new way of life is going.

Veblen, Thorstein. Ed. Martha Banton The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Print.

-- Brad Sica

So much for the invidious distinction

In one chapter of the book "The Theory of Leisure Class," Vablen briefly summarised how pecuniary accumulation came to be the index of one's esteem. In a predatory environment possessions were symbols of one groups environmental fitness over another, and then it came to symbolise the rulers' superiority. An the society move from predatory to industrial, opportunities for individuals were open and now the accumulation of wealth becomes the basis of one's esteem not only for the self, but for the community. It's not about sustenance anymore, as research shows happiness does not increase proportionally with the accumulation of wealth, but instead establishing one's superiority by displaying that one has "more."

I came across this news earlier, and interesting enough this properly illustrated the consequences of such paradigm, in the face of economic crisis. This article mentioned how after the recession luxury cars were left all over the Dubai, whose owners, unable to sustain the extravagant lifestyle in the earlier boom, defaulted on loans, abandoned their possessions, and fled the country. Not surprisingly, a large proportion of abandoned vehicles were left in the airport parking lot, as the owners typically drove to the airport as fast as they could, before the law is able to catch them, and catch the first flight home, leaving behind them the luxurious possessions. This example serves as the most recent consequence of such social paradigm, and, would perhaps lead to more complicated social chaos.

I Wanna Be A Billionaire So Frickin' Bad...

I guess its a part of human nature to always want to improve your life. However, in the 21st century, it's no longer good enough to have a roof over your head and food on your table. If you want to be successful, your roof ought to have 5 extra rooms under it- one for the television, one for the children, one for your office, one for your pool table, and one just because you want an extra room- and your table must be furnished with Tiffany's newest set. Every aspect of our lives have become centered around making money.   When you turn on the television, you see that the Desperate House Wives of Laguna Beach have moved to Jersey Shore in hopes of joining the Bad Girls Club because they Want To Be Millionaires. Every show is a get rich quick scheme. Even on the wholesome channel of Food Network you no longer have to go through years of training to become a culinary artist. Now, you just have to be able to create the best meal out of the worst ingredients under the toughest time constraints.
I remember a discussion a group of my high school classmates and I were having right before we graduated. We were discussing how corrupt business had become. What disappointed me the most was that many of them acknowledged that the business men's actions were corrupt, but they believed that their motive was justified by the means. One girl argued that she can not be happy in life helping those less fortunate than her if it prevented her from augmenting her bank account. For me, as long as I have my basic needs, I'm fine. Of course if I get the chance to get something extra I will; however, I would not throw someone under the bus so that I could stand on top.
Even in terms of education, its all about money. The more you pay for your education, the more money you'll make. When I was telling my teachers about my decision to go to Andrews University, many of them were disappointed. Many of them thought that I should accept Brown University's offer, despite the $120,000 debt I would be in after graduation, because my high paying job would pay off my loans in a few years.
Living in this mindset of needing more money and letting the world know that you have money, tears communities apart. For instance, on the show Gossip Girl, Blair is willing to compromise her friendship with her best friend in order to remain the Queen-B in the group. These affects can also be seen in the news. Bernie Madoff stole millions of dollars from people to improve his lavished life style. In turn, this caused some people to commit suicide because they felt their life had reached its lowest point because they no longer had money. Even in the recent oil spill, the underhanded actions of BP led to faulty oil mines being built and millions of gallons of oil to disrupt the homes of natures finest.
No one ever wants to feel as if he or she is not good enough. So when a society builds its values on how much money you have, people move their focus from the community to self. Everyone ends up singing "I wanna be a billionaire, so frickin bad..." and doing all they can to fulfill that dream.

iSucceed

Why is it that as one gets older, the definition of success changes? As a child, success can be defined as eating all the vegetables of of your plate. As one gets older, success begins to mean different things, until one becomes an adult, and society's view of success takes over. For the most part, society considers success to be synonymous with wealth. If one has the most money, and the most possessions, then that person is successful. How many times have you ever walked by a trailer park and said to yourself, "The people living in those trailers must be very successful." Now, is there anything wrong with living in a trailer? Of course not. In fact, most people living in trailer parks are probably content with their life and not struggling in any fashion whatsoever; however, society would assume that if you are successful, you shouldn't be living in a trailer park. For some reason, the postmodern world has broken away from its normally subjective stance and developed and objective view of the idea of success. I am surprised that at this point in our society, we have not developed an app for measuring how successful of a life we lead. All you would have to do is enter your annual income, and iSucceed would tell who how successful you are on the success scale.

While I am very opposed to the idea of success as defined by society, it is interesting how drawn I am to meeting that definition. As much as I hate to admit, I want to be successful in society's eyes. Now, of course that is just a result of human nature, but nonetheless, my feelings remain. It is a trap that everyone falls into at some point in time. People wish to be accepted in others eyes, and they believe that the way to obtain acceptance is through wealth and possessions. I believe this mentality needs to change, unfortunately it never will. I challenge someone to give me a solution to this problem. It is IMPOSSIBLE to change the mentality of an entire world. It is sad, but true. Even if a solution could be found, it would never catch on.

Its ridiculous to measure success primarily off of wealth and possessions. Success is something that varies from person to person. Success for me is living a life in which I am satisfied with what I surround myself with. If I am happy with my job, I have a family which I love, few financial struggles, I can say I am successful. Wealth has very little to do with how successful I become. Of course, it is impossible to eliminate wealth from the equation, but it certainly should not have as strong of a weight. In the end, success is about satisfaction. If one is satisfied with where they are at in their life, in respect to where they have come, then that person can is a success in my book.

Success and Self-Worth

Recently, I confessed to my mother that I don’t know if I want to go to med-school anymore. She panicked and asked me about my “plan B”. I told her that I would love to continue my education, go to graduate school for art, and pursue a career in the creative field. She broke into a frenzied slew of questions: “You need to choose a successful career, one that adds to society. How will you afford nice things? I gave you a better life than I had, so now it’s your turn to do the same for your children. How will you afford to send them to Adventist schools?” I wavered in my thought-process and wondered if I would be a loser forever if I didn't go to med-school, get my luxury condo and matching car. I decided my self-esteem would survive if the foundations of my success were fulfillment, happiness, and the luxury of spending time with my loved ones. Then, I tuned her out and thought about the life my parents had given to me. It was wonderful, yes, and the summer vacations were nice, but what about how she worked long hard nights as a registered nurse in order to afford “the best”? Why didn’t she criticize my father’s career? As a pastor, he makes a pile of beans each paycheck. Why was his job honorable despite the lack of monetary success?

You see, success is a tricky thing. Our American society tells us that it’s not just the things we have, but it is who sees them that’s important. Success is also the status that you achieve. So much of our society’s values come from ephemeral, material, status-building things—both tangible and intangible. The job you land, the car you buy, the house you live in and the area in which it’s located, your annual income, the size of your disposable income—it’s all crucially important, says our society. According to Veblen, pecuniary strength is directly related to success, which is fundamental to a person’s self-esteem. For my parents, pecuniary strength comes from a good education, and an honorable career choice that allows you to provide a comfortable lifestyle where you can have “the best” of everything. The best being: luxury cars, safe neighborhoods with active homeowner associations, and cruises in the summer.

So I ask myself, where is our concept of self-worth and success? It very well may be in the things we own and how wealthy we feel.

The Role of Public Success in Society

In his book The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen writes the following:  “Purposeful effort comes to mean, primarily, effort directed to or resulting in a more credible showing of accumulated wealth” (pg 34).  To put this in modern language, meaningful work is that which builds visible wealth.  This prevalent concept of success has consequences, both good and bad.  One of the positive results can be an increased motivation to work.  This is shown in that over the course of history as man has invented more efficient means to accomplish time-consuming tasks, society has continued to work just as hard, if not harder.  This reflects the above concept of success and the work drive that it leads to.  Work is elevated in importance because it provides a means to become rich, and visible wealth is equated to success because it is something tangible that even one’s enemies can’t refute.  This concept of success can then have positive results if it supplies a lazy person with motivation to work. 

In investigating the personal consequences of this definition of success, I want to consider the implications of the need for the wealth to be visible.  In today’s society, it is possible to buy expensive items on credit.  This means that people can live a lifestyle that suggests that they are rich, even though they don’t really possess as much wealth as it appears. They can drive fancy cars, go on exotic vacations, live in luxurious houses, all without owning any of it because it is all on credit.  To the observer, they are rich, and therefore, they are successful.  However, the individual knows that it is all a charade.  They are being crushed by the debt that is to their name, knowing that at some point it will catch up to them. 

This way of living doesn’t result in satisfaction, but rather in worry and stress.  And once one has bought into this concept of success, it is hard to find a way out.  Peer pressure to “stay on top” so to speak leads to extreme competition.  As material wealth becomes the basis for one’s value, his or her identity and self-worth become unstable because the standard for wealth is always in flux.  Success then becomes relative to everyone else’s levels of success as measured by visible wealth.  The consequences of this selfish mindset are manifested in families and communities, which suffer because each individual values him or herself above the community.

So how do we manage to keep the positive corollary to this definition of success, such as industriousness, while rejecting the negative repercussions on the individual, family, and community?  I propose that we both modify our definition of success and that we stop deriving our value from success because as long as we are constantly comparing ourselves to others, we will never consider ourselves truly successful.  We all fail at some point in our lives, but we don’t have to choose to let that failure define who we are, but that is most often the result when we allow success to define who we are. 

Displaying Wealth

The measure of success is not by the wealth a person has accumulated, but by the display of that wealth. Displaying wealth has become rather an art. It needs to be subtle, yet obvious enough to show that what you have is better. Also you need to be consistent in your displaying of wealth. You need to buy right things at right time. Otherwise, you become a source of criticism or even worse, a laughingstock. A lady who bought a dress that is out of fashion will not likely be envied no matter how expensive that dress was. As it is apparent, displaying wealth takes a considerable effort. We often read about ridiculous and unnecessarily expensive items and people who are stupid enough to buy them. Here I’m talking about things such as a million dollar hello kitty doll covered in diamonds that does nothing. We can all point finger at people like that and make fun of them, but displaying wealth in such way has bigger social consequences. If you ask children to draw an image of successful person, they will probably draw a guy in suit with a nice car and a big house. Why isn’t that we don’t associate successful life with happy family in a modestly sized home? Why is our notion of successful life depended upon wealth?
This idea of success seems to be the driving force in today’s society. Our society needs people to be envious. We need people to build new things, buy new things, and want better things. Therefore in order to encourage spending, companies bombard us with the images of superfluous lifestyle. The obvious down side is that it makes people generally unsatisfied and unhappy. People work hard and spend more time working to get there, but less on enjoying life.
By accumulating wealth, people want to increase their value, and feel good about themselves for what they’ve accumulated. Many people base their self value in comparison with their neighbors. If I live in a bigger house, I must be making more money than my neighbors, and therefore more valuable than them. The easiest and the cruelest way to assess a person is by his appearance. These hints do give some information about a person’s status, but nothing about a person standing when everything else is removed from him.
We have hard time accepting that we are all humans. We can easily equate ourselves with people who seem to be better off than us. But it is difficult to think that I and a drug addict on the street are both children of God. It is unlikely that people will stop judging others by wealth, and focus their lives on other aspects of life. I also don’t think it can be changed because it is so deeply rooted in human selfishness and the desire to be superior. Real changing of heart and desire can only be accomplished by the grace of God.