first glance to serve for pure ostentation only, it is always
possible to detect the presence of some, at least ostensible,
useful purpose; and on the other hand, even in special machinery
and tools contrived for some particular industrial process, as
well as in the rudest appliances of human industry, the traces of
conspicuous waste, or at least of the habit of ostentation,
usually become evident on a close scrutiny. It would be hazardous
to assert that a useful purpose is ever absent from the utility
of any article or of any service, however obviously its prime
purpose and chief element is conspicuous waste; and it would be
only less hazardous to assert of any primarily useful product
that the element of waste is in no way concerned in its value,
immediately or remotely.




Chapter Five

The Pecuniary Standard of Living

For the great body of the people in any modern community, the
proximate ground of expenditure in excess of what is required for
physical comfort is not a conscious effort to excel in the
expensiveness of their visible consumption, so much as it is a
desire to live up to the conventional standard of decency in the
amount and grade of goods consumed. This desire is not guided by
a rigidly invariable standard, which must be lived up to, and
beyond which there is no incentive to go. The standard is
flexible; and especially it is indefinitely extensible, if only