Bollen's critique of the leisure class and their conspicuous consumption

Every Bollen's critique of the "leisure class" and their "conspicuous consumption" was stunned by the tyrants of America's small partners, who had never before stood up so bitterly to criticize their ostentatious behavior.

"Tyrants" This time really fire!

Foreign policy, America's most influential political journal, has focused on the tyrants phenomenon. "To see China's Beverly Hills", published October 15, is a grim point: "Earth" means rustic or uncouth, and "Hao" means magnificent and gorgeous. They are the "Beverly Hills" of China. "Tyrants" has the artistic appreciation of the nouveau riche, the social etiquette of the upstart and the new rich habit of spending money. Magazines can not even find the exact English words to translate, they not only directly used the "tuhao" pinyin, even ironically said: "When the English word poor, French ' nouveau riche ' (nouveau riche) may be." ”

In fact, the foreign policy is still implicit, tyrants is not "China's Beverly Hills", they see will be surrounded by Beverly Hills and then won, Southern California has become the first choice for Chinese overseas buyers. According to the National Association of Realtors, as of March 2013, Chinese buyers have invested nearly 9 billion U.S. dollars in the US home market for the past 1 years and have been the second largest foreign buyers in two consecutive years, after Canada. And the average Chinese buys as much as $425,000 trillion, far more than other foreigners. Americans give Chinese buyers a cordial title "Cash King" (Cash king). Domestic real estate sites have also launched overseas home ownership business, to help "tyrants" the world to buy a building.

Tyrants's foreign ancestors

Tyrants is not a unique product of China. 1 centuries ago, Bollen (Thorstein B Veblen), the originator of American institutional Economics, had a similar theory of biological evolution to the origins of such people. His "Leisure class" is almost the ancestor of contemporary tyrants. In 1899, he published a book on the upcoming Consumer Society, "The Leisure Class theory", more than 70 years earlier than Baudrillard's "consumer society".

He said: "In the process of cultural evolution, the emergence of leisure class and ownership of the beginning of the same time." This is inevitable because the two systems are the product of the same set of economic forces. "At the turn of the century, the daily life of society and people's ideological habits, predatory activities gradually become the past, production activities to further replace the predatory activities, so the accumulated property has become more and more the symbol of achievement and advantage, but no longer the spoils of appropriation."

The reason why people occupy property, property is valuable, because property can prove that property owners than other people in society occupy a dominant position, it is to obtain honor and respect of the habit of the foundation, is to meet the necessary means of self-esteem. In other words, in Veblen's view, possession of property is not to exploit others, but merely to satisfy vanity and self-esteem.

In his view, such people are "obviously free", they are no longer engaged in basic production work. In their view, only to live a carefree life to maintain the feeling of complacency, to show themselves superior to others. They are only engaged in a few practical work of mental work, such as learning etiquette, emphasis on self-cultivation, and so on, followed by "conspicuous consumption", in the money of the dominant class from the display of their sense of superiority and sense of honor from the mentality, engaged in the waste of property consumption. He also sharply pointed out: "In any highly organized industrial society, the ultimate basis of honor is always the monetary power, and the means to show monetary power to obtain or maintain the honor is to have leisure and the obvious consumption of property." "With Veblen's critique of the" leisure class "and their" conspicuous consumption ", America's tyrants partners are stunned because no one has ever stood up to criticize their ostentatious behavior in the past.

Where Bollen was born in 1857 to a Norwegian immigrant farming community in Wisconsin State, he had been speaking Norwegian since he was a teenager until he began to speak English. At the Ritz-Carlton College in Minnesota, Bollen excelled, a top theorist at neo-classical economics, Bates John Bates Clark, then studied at Johns Hopkins and Yale University, where he finally got his ph. D. degree in philosophy at Yale. The book, "The Leisure class," which was written in his teaching at the University of Chicago, was based entirely on his in-depth study of social responses to all rights systems. People with a little knowledge of American history know that at the end of 19th century, the whole American society in the era of global rise, the rapid economic development of the emergence of a large number of nouveau riche people, they constitute the Veblen pen "Leisure class" of the subject.

Why Chinese?

The term "tyrants" has a history in China. The first refers to the country or the local rich and powerful family or individual, to later, the deduction becomes bullying "bully". Mao Zedong wrote in how to analyze the rural class: "Warlords, bureaucrats, tyrants, gentry are the political representatives of the landlord classes and are particularly vicious landlords." ”

Then the current popular "tyrants" word, but away from most of the derogatory, become a kind of friendly ridicule. It extravagantly from the origins of the players in the online game and gradually extended to all "conspicuous consumption" people. In the domestic literature and art works, such ridicule, the most famous is Feng Xiaogang's "big shot" that sentence "do not buy the right, buy expensive", is the epitome of the nouveau riche consumption behavior. Over the past 20 years, China's economy has been surging, as the gap between the rich and the poor has become more and more important, netizens to tyrants ridicule, but a helpless ego.

Say, "tyrants" the word in the domestic popular, how to revolve not open real estate. The most popular jokes on the internet about tyrants are the irony of house prices in Beijing.

The young man asked Zen Master: "Master, I am very rich now, but I am not happy at all, can you advise me what to do?" "What is rich," Jackson asked. "The youth replied:" Bank card 8 digits, five crossings have 3 suites is not rich? "The Zen master did not speak, only stretched out one hand, the youth suddenly understood:" Zen Master is let me understand Thanksgiving and repay? "No, tyrants, we ... can be friends. ”

Foreign policy in translation, the foreigners are not familiar with the five crossing, translated into the "Beijing Center" (central Beijing) is somewhat less authentic. Five is not a Beijing center, it is located in four rings, from the Beijing center Tiananmen straight distance of more than 15 kilometers. It was dubbed the center of the universe, 10 years ago, 4000 yuan a square meter of the house, now the average price is close to 70,000/square meters. It is precisely because the north-canton and so on the first line of urban real estate prices than everyone imagined climbing, so that the city appeared a large group because of the purchase of two houses and the mutation of the "tyrants." In fact, they are not really rich, their assets, perhaps 99% from a few years ago to marry and have children, improve the living environment to buy a house. They have not too late to improve their cultural taste and self-cultivation, the first "rich" up. So they can only buy a house like the Japanese in the the 1980s, because the city they live in cannot afford it, and real estate is the only asset-value-added channel they trust.

Like "The Great Gatsby" In the Gatsby, love competitors despise him is nobody, no prominent family, no prestigious schools as an endorsement, so he can only rely on Long I. Manor, a glamorous society to demonstrate their identity. As for the end of a half-day or did not hold the beauty return, this is certain. Fitzgerald's writing of the gates than at best is a primary tyrants, and he did not complete the dream is to evolve into Van Bollen refers to the senior tyrants-engaged in mental work, pay attention to taste and self-cultivation of "leisure class."