Sublime

The bottle service club today pitches Goffman’s “action” to the world’s new elite; it encourages the rich to flaunt their riches, to display wealth for display’s sake. Bottle service clubs are predicated on conspicuous consumption, a term coined, in 1899, by Thorstein Veblen, the quirky Norwegian American economist.

Cynical as he may have been, Veblen was very much on point about two things: the pursuit of status requires evidence to support one’s cause; and ostentation, vulgar as it may seem, is rather strong evidence that someone isn’t poor.

The “Veblen effect” was coined in 1950 by economist Harvey Leibenstein, who pointed out that consumer demand depended not only on the functional utility of goods but also on certain social factors: a desire to be “in style” (the “bandwagon effect”); a desire to stand out from the herd (the “snob effect”); and a desire for “conspicuous consumption,”

Veblen Goods:

We often attach value to things simply because they're hard to get. People will be more attracted to a painting if it costs $3 million than if it costs $3. The price becomes a feature of the product in that it allows the buyer to signal affluence to others.

“Conspicuous abstention from labour therefore becomes the conventional mark of superior pecuniary achievement and the conventional index of reputability; and conversely, since application to productive labour is a mark of poverty and subjection, it becomes inconsistent with a reputable standing in the community” (Veblen).