The Engineers And The Price System
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The Engineers And The Price System
''The Engineers and the Price System'', by Thorstein Veblen, is a compilation of a series of papers originally published in ''The Dial'' in 1919, each of which mainly analyzes and criticizes the price system, planned obsolescence, and artificial scarcity Artificial scarcity is scarcity of items despite the technology for production or the sufficient capacity for sharing. The most common causes are monopoly pricing structures, such as those enabled by laws that restrict competition or by high fixe .... The final chapter outlined a plan for a "soviet of technicians". References Books critical of capitalism 1921 non-fiction books Thorstein Veblen {{econ-book-stub ...
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Thorstein Veblen
Thorstein Bunde Veblen (July 30, 1857 – August 3, 1929) was a Norwegian-American economist and sociologist who, during his lifetime, emerged as a well-known critic of capitalism. In his best-known book, ''The Theory of the Leisure Class'' (1899), Veblen coined the concepts of ''conspicuous consumption'' and ''conspicuous leisure''. Historians of economics regard Veblen as the founding father of the institutional economics school. Contemporary economists still theorize Veblen's distinction between "institutions" and "technology", known as the Veblenian dichotomy. As a leading intellectual of the Progressive Era in the US, Veblen attacked production for profit. His emphasis on conspicuous consumption greatly influenced economists who engaged in non-Marxist critiques of fascism, capitalism, and of technological determinism. Biography Early life and family background Veblen was born on July 30, 1857, in Cato, Wisconsin, to Norwegian-American immigrant parents, Thomas V ...
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United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo-Americ ...
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Economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of Agent (economics), economic agents and how economy, economies work. Microeconomics analyzes what's viewed as basic elements in the economy, including individual agents and market (economics), markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyzes the economy as a system where production, consumption, saving, and investment interact, and factors affecting it: employment of the resources of labour, capital, and land, currency inflation, economic growth, and public policies that have impact on glossary of economics, these elements. Other broad distinctions within economics include those between positive economics, desc ...
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Political Economy
Political economy is the study of how Macroeconomics, economic systems (e.g. Marketplace, markets and Economy, national economies) and Politics, political systems (e.g. law, Institution, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as Market economy, labour markets and Financial market, financial markets, as well as phenomena such as Economic growth, growth, Distribution of wealth, distribution, Economic inequality, inequality, and International trade, trade, and how these are shaped by institutions, laws, and government policy. Originating in the 16th century, it is the precursor to the modern discipline of economics. Political economy in its modern form is considered an interdisciplinary field, drawing on theory from both political science and Neoclassical economics, modern economics. Political economy originated within 16th century western Ethics, moral philosophy, with theoretical works exploring the administration ...
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The Dial
''The Dial'' was an American magazine published intermittently from 1840 to 1929. In its first form, from 1840 to 1844, it served as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists. From the 1880s to 1919 it was revived as a political review and literary criticism magazine. From 1920 to 1929 it was an influential outlet for modernist literature in English. Transcendentalist journal Members of the Hedge Club began talks for creating a vehicle for their essays and reviews in philosophy and religion in October 1839.Gura, Philip F. ''American Transcendentalism: A History''. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 128. Other influential journals, including the ''North American Review'' and the ''Christian Examiner'' refused to accept their work for publication. Orestes Brownson proposed utilizing his recently established periodical ''Boston Quarterly Review'' but members of the club decided a new publication was a better solution.Von Mehren, Joan. ''Minerva and the Muse: A Life of Margaret ...
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Price System
In economics, a price system is a system through which the valuations of any forms of property (tangible or intangible) are determined. All societies use price systems in the allocation and exchange of resources as a consequence of scarcity. Even in a barter system with no money, price systems are still utilized in the determination of exchange ratios (relative valuations) between the properties being exchanged. A price system may be either a regulated price system (such as a fixed price system) where prices are administered by an authority, or it may be a free price system (such as a market system) where prices are left to float "freely" as determined by supply and demand without the intervention of an authority. A mixed price system involves a combination of both regulated and free price systems. History Price systems have been around as long as there has been economic exchanges. The price system has transformed into the system of global capitalism that is present in the ...
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Planned Obsolescence
In economics and industrial design, planned obsolescence (also called built-in obsolescence or premature obsolescence) is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life or a purposely frail design, so that it becomes obsolete after a certain pre-determined period of time upon which it decrementally functions or suddenly ceases to function, or might be perceived as unfashionable. The rationale behind this strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases (referred to as "shortening the replacement cycle"). It is the deliberate shortening of a lifespan of a product to force people to purchase functional replacements. Planned obsolescence tends to work best when a producer has at least an oligopoly. Before introducing a planned obsolescence, the producer has to know that the customer is at least somewhat likely to buy a replacement from them (see brand loyalty). In these cases of planned obsolescence ...
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Artificial Scarcity
Artificial scarcity is scarcity of items despite the technology for production or the sufficient capacity for sharing. The most common causes are monopoly pricing structures, such as those enabled by laws that restrict competition or by high fixed costs in a particular marketplace. The inefficiency associated with artificial scarcity is formally known as a deadweight loss. Background In a capitalist system, an enterprise is judged to be successful and efficient if it is profitable. To obtain maximum profits, producers may be restricting production rather than ensuring the maximum utilisation of resources. This strategy of restricting production by firms in order to obtain profits in a capitalist system or mixed economy is known as creating artificial scarcity. Artificial scarcity essentially describes situations where the producers or owners of a good restrict its availability to others beyond what is strictly necessary. Ideas and information are prime examples of unnecessaril ...
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Books Critical Of Capitalism
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is ''codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a bo ...
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1921 Non-fiction Books
Nineteen or 19 may refer to: * 19 (number), the natural number following 18 and preceding 20 * one of the years 19 BC, AD 19, 1919, 2019 Films * ''19'' (film), a 2001 Japanese film * ''Nineteen'' (film), a 1987 science fiction film Music * 19 (band), a Japanese pop music duo Albums * ''19'' (Adele album), 2008 * ''19'', a 2003 album by Alsou * ''19'', a 2006 album by Evan Yo * ''19'', a 2018 album by MHD * ''19'', one half of the double album ''63/19'' by Kool A.D. * ''Number Nineteen'', a 1971 album by American jazz pianist Mal Waldron * ''XIX'' (EP), a 2019 EP by 1the9 Songs * "19" (song), a 1985 song by British musician Paul Hardcastle. * "Nineteen", a song by Bad4Good from the 1992 album ''Refugee'' * "Nineteen", a song by Karma to Burn from the 2001 album ''Almost Heathen''. * "Nineteen" (song), a 2007 song by American singer Billy Ray Cyrus. * "Nineteen", a song by Tegan and Sara from the 2007 album '' The Con''. * "XIX" (song), a 2014 song by Slipknot. ...
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