These are not the same and clearly identify the difference between the writings of Thorstein Veblen and Frederic Bastiat.
Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) sees payment for an item in excess of its value as the beginning of Conspicuous Consumption. When the buyer either consumes, removes from the market or uses a product in sight of the unwashed and unlearned, the buyer has practiced one of the pecuniary canons of taste. As example, paying for and wearing a bombardier leather jacket when a virgin vinyl knockoff would be just as appropriate is conspicuous consumption. The Internet feeding frenzy which led to instant millionaires saw not just a few enjoying wines the names of which they could not pronounce and living a life style which was used to described an airplane of the second world war; "The Flying Prostitute" had no visible means of support. Conspicuous consumption saw these high-flyers in all the best places living high off the hog.
Veblen lived and wrote at the turn of the century. Dilettante Veblen's jaded view of the moneyed class was one of envy. As a faculty member at the University of Chicago, he thought it beneath him to instruct those who would use the information in the performance of work, even though it might be mental rather than physical. As you read his musings it is easy to see a group of faculty wives sitting in awe of this man of great knowledge, and if he had his way with them, it was his due. So when Veblen gets off on his topic of conspicuous consumption it's easy to picture the Cohn (Cone) sisters (Dr. Claribel and Ms.Etta) of Baltimore, at the turn of the century, spending their daddy's money in France, treating famous and not so famous artist to what their money would buy. In exchange they got some really bad art, "a fool and his (their) money is(are) soon parted," which can be seen at the Baltimore Museum of Art. And Veblen as much as says, "they got what they deserved. He doesn't actually criticize this activity and one must believe that he actually was more than a bit envious as he lived the life of a "poor college professor." (That is until he was found to be more fond of other professor's wives, than perhaps he should have been. "One of the stories I recall about Veblen concerns an interview at Yale. Veblen was told that they would offer him the position but he would have to refrain from becoming involved with other faculty members' wives. Veblen's reply, "I have looked over the wives and I decline the offer."", Dr. John L. Wortham, economist, emeritus, Texas Christian University. Veblen moved on from the University of Chicago to become "America's most famous economist and social critic," that is, if you believe Ivar Berg of the University of Pennsylvania, who wrote the introduction to a reprint of The Higher Learning In America, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ, (1993).
In contrast, Conspicuous Waste was the often topic of essays by Frederic Bastiat some sixty years before Veblen entered academia's doors. Bastiat with a wry wit, disemboweled the anti-free trade establishment. Embargo, import taxes and other means of suppressing free trade represent a conspicuous waste of labor and any resulting capital paid to the worker. The worker pays more, and gets less. His candlemaker's petition reminds one of the tiger, in Little Black Sambo, chasing his tail until he melted down to a pool of butter. At least in the fable, there was something of value left from the exercise.
Conspicuous waste is nothing more than the use of man's labor to accomplish something that can be done more efficiently by machine, or when advantage is not taken of another's ability to produce something cheaper, quicker, better, or with less use of resources. Bastiat (1801 - 1850) lived during the time of the Napoleonic Wars, English imposition of import duties of cereal grains (Corn Laws), poor crop yields in England and the Irish potato famine.
Even with expansion of British wheat farming during the Napoleonic Wars, supply was not equal to demand resulting in high bread prices. Rightly, farmers feared with the war ending, importation of foreign grains would lower prices. And, the price of corn fell in 1815 to half that of three years earlier. British landowners who received a share of the farmers produce and not monetary rent, applied pressure to protect the income of farmers and Parliament passed a law permitting the import of foreign wheat free of duty only when the domestic price reached a specified price.
This was opposed by the public who saw they were to pay the burden of the duty as bread prices would surely increase. Industrial workers complained that Parliament passed legislation favoring large landowners. And, manufacturers protested that the Law would result in demands for higher wages. Complain as they might, additional Corn Laws were imposed and it took a turn of Mother Nature to reverse them.
A series of bad harvests created anger as wheat = flour = bread prices increased. With an economic depression in 1840-1842 and poor harvest of grains followed by failure of the Irish potato crop in 1845, mass starvation followed! Finally in 1846, a new Corn Law was passed that reduced the duty on grains to a pittance for those citizens who survived and remained (Many Irish and other Britishers emigrated to the United States during this period.)
While the crop failures and potato famine would surely have happened, had not the Government tried to restrain trade and protect the farmers, but instead encouraged the people to turn to other enterprises, Great Britain would have had monetary reserves and resources to exchange for wheat and other agricultural commodities on the world market. That is the fallacy of Conspicuous Waste as Bastiat observed first hand and wrote of the fallacies of regulating trade to protect a group of workers in Protection; or the Three City Aldermen in Economic Fallacies (Also titled, Economic Sophisms).
Those members of Congress, currently writing laws regulating truck traffic to encourage Conspicuous Waste should read Economic Fallacies. However, they are so adept in practicing Conspicuous Consumption that it is unlikely they will see the difference.
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