# Ideology Is Conspicuous Consumption

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-students-7814679/ideology-is-conspicuous-consumption
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-students-7814679/ideology-is-conspicuous-consumption.md
Podcast: [The Students](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-students-7814679)
Published: 2026-06-03T14:01:00+00:00
Episode link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/admin-students/episodes/Ideology-Is-Conspicuous-Consumption-e3k8tgc
Audio file: https://anchor.fm/s/11136470c/podcast/play/120927180/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-5-3%2F425404632-44100-2-95826c16462da.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-students-7814679/episodes/ideology-is-conspicuous-consumption
Duration seconds: 3411

## Resource

Thorstein Veblen tells us how elites display their superiority by showing off their cultivated taste and skill, which in turn displays their economic power, and ultimately their capacity for violence. Veblen was very upset by this. But you don’t have to be. 0:00 - Intro 4:40 - The structural purpose of leisure 14:05 - The macroeconomics of respectability: Conspicuous leisure and vicarious leisure 21:38 - What are the naturally honorable leisure activities? 27:16 - How today’s leisure class was created 36:30 - The new counterculture’s opportunity 40:48 - Downward social mobility and the spurious leisure class 42:50 - The inevitability of hierarchy and the failure of egalitarian experiments 50:06 - How do we channel conspicuous leisure to prosocial purposes again?

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## Transcript

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