Without mentioning him, Elizabeth Kolbert (pictured), in this article, takes up one of the leading themes in the work of one of my favorite Norwegians, Thorstein Veblen, author of Theory of the Leisure Class. Veblen's idea was that the affluent are in a perpetual contest with each other to see who can gain the most social prestige by conspicuously possessing and consuming the most stuff. If he was right, it would help explain why people buy season tickets for Timberwolves games--the ridiculously high price, which according to classical economic theory should drive demand to zero (especially considering the poor quality of the entertainment), is actually the source of what demand there is. Look, look, I've got so much I can throw it away on this!
But, Kolbert would ask, where is the "leisure" referred to in Theory of the Leisure Class? Everyone is so busy, and not least the rich among us. Drawing on the work of some of the biggest names in economics--Keynes, Stiglitz, Becker, others--she advances several theories, all interesting, concerning why everyone is so busy, even overwhelmed. I think the best solution involves the word "perpetual"--the perpetual contest to see who can acquire the most stuff and thus the highest status. It never ends, so, instead of getting any pleasure from the things in your life, you only are exhausted by the pursuit. Kolbert supplies the following contemporary shopping list:
. . . laptops, microwaves, Xboxes, smartphones, smart watches, smart refrigerators, Prada totes, True Religion jeans, battery-powered meat thermometers, those gizmos you stick in the freezer and then into your beer to keep it cold as you drink it.
The problem of warm drinks could also be overcome if yuppie kvetchers would only cease nursing them. The more difficult problem is that Kolbert's catalog is incomplete and fluid. Every time you go shopping, you add more items to the list than you check off of it. Two of Kolbert's economists--Gary Becker and Luis Rayo--explain that people "have reference points that adjust upwards as their circumstances improve." I think it was Carlyle who thundered, "Lower your denominator!"--meaning that, instead of trying to make your contentedness quotient one by increasing the numerator ("things possessed"), you should proceed by decreasing the denominator ("things desired"). Most of the stuff for sale is not that great anyway.
Americans, however, seem especially determined to place the wealthy on a pedestal before trying to claw their way onto it themselves. Is there another country in which a high net worth is regarded as a qualification for high office? Kolbert's article ran in the New Yorker, and it happened that the very next issue included a profile of Edward St Aubyn, the novelist who, being by birth a member of the upper crust of English society, is well placed to observe their ways. From the profile, which is by Ian Parker:
The novel that St Aubyn then began, "At Last," registers his sense of accomplishment. Mourners gather for the funeral of Eleanor Melrose, whose American family is modelled closely on Lorna St Aubyn's family. [Lorna is Edward's mother.] Someone says, "What is it now? Six generations with every single descendant, not just the eldest son, essentially idle." As Patrick also observes, the enormous wealth of Eleanor's family was never turned into political power or cultural monuments. Similarly, one can Google one's way across Lorna St Aubyn's family tree and find little evidence of activity beyond astrology, horse-carriage driving, and an up-market nail salon on West Broadway. If St Aubyn's achievement is literary and psychiatric, it's also sociological: he got something done. In his living room, he described boyhood visits to see his grandfather, an alcoholic wreck, in the Jardins du Casino, in Monaco. "He'd be sitting in these beautiful suits which were only marred by the fact that he'd pissed himself," St Aubyn said.
So you can't fault them all for perverse over striving. Were he American, he could have treated his lassitude by running for Congress.
