Veblen on the Drug Habits of the Elite
Economist Thorstein Veblen's 1899 text remains as relevant as ever, well over a century later
[Continued from "...with powder and with pills."]
One of the most poignant analyses of how rich people get fucked up can be found in The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899) by Thorstein Veblen. Veblen, an economist trained at Johns Hopkins and Yale, didn’t hold back in this biting text, which examines the lifestyles of the rich and the famous through a critical, anticapitalist lens. Dripping with laconic wit, Veblen’s book describes the drug culture of the elite with incisive clarity.
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