On April 25th 2025, my research on Thorstein Veblen's theory of conspicuous consumptionLink opens in a new window was cited in an article on the Dark LuxuryLink opens in a new window website. The article is written by Conrad Quilty-Harper, and it is called ‘Why Luxury's Favourite Economist Wanted to Tear it All DownLink opens in a new window’. Conrad’s argument is that something rather strange is going on, when the content of Veblen’s criticism of pecuniary culture is turned into a celebration of outsized expenditures on frivolous consumption goods. In 1899’s Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen launched a scathing attack on the debauched morals of diverting large amounts of society’s ability to meet genuine economic needs to instead catering to the whims of the rich. Somehow today, though, this has been flipped to become an instruction sheet for the luxury industry, to encourage the production of hugely expensive goods for the sole purpose of social signalling. The idea of a Veblen good has been hijacked by marketing professionals to champion gratuitous spending when all Veblen himself would have seen was a colossal waste of resources.

On November 17th 2023 I appeared on an episode of Melvyn Bragg's BBC Radio 4 show, 'In Our TimeLink opens in a new window'Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window. The episode was on Thorstein Veblen, and it explored his critique of social processes of pecuniary emulation in the Gilded Age of late nineteenth-century US politics, culminating in the twin economic phenomena of conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption. I was invited onto the show in particular to discuss the politics that underpinned Veblen's economic theory. My fellow panellists were Professor Bill Waller from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY and Dr Mary Wrenn from the University of the West of England.