An invidious
comparison is a process of valuation of persons in respect of
worth.
Chapter Three
Conspicuous Leisure
If its working were not disturbed by other economic forces or
other features of the emulative process, the immediate effect of
such a pecuniary struggle as has just been described in outline
would be to make men industrious and frugal. This result actually
follows, in some measure, so far as regards the lower classes,
whose ordinary means of acquiring goods is productive labour.
This is more especially true of the labouring classes in a
sedentary community which is at an agricultural stage of
industry, in which there is a considerable subdivision of
industry, and whose laws and customs secure to these classes a
more or less definite share of the product of their industry.
These lower classes can in any case not avoid labour, and the
imputation of labour is therefore not greatly derogatory to them,
at least not within their class. Rather, since labour is their
recognised and accepted mode of life, they take some emulative
pride in a reputation for efficiency in their work, this being
often the only line of emulation that is open to them. For those
for whom acquisition and emulation is possible only within the
field of productive efficiency and thrift, the struggle for
pecuniary reputability will in some measure work out in an
increase of diligence and parsimony.
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