nd along with the make-believe of purposeful employment,
and woven inextricably into its texture, there is commonly, if not
invariably, a more or less appreciable element of purposeful effort
directed to some serious end.

In the narrower sphere of vicarious leisure a similar change has gone
forward. Instead of simply passing her time in visible idleness, as in
the best days of the patriarchal regime, the housewife of the advanced
peaceable stage applies herself assiduously to household cares. The
salient features of this development of domestic service have already
been indicated. Throughout the entire evolution of conspicuous
expenditure, whether of goods or of services or human life, runs the
obvious implication that in order to effectually mend the consumer's
good fame it must be an expenditure of superfluities. In order to
be reputable it must be wasteful. No merit would accrue from the
consumption of the bare necessaries of life, except by comparison with
the abjectly poor who fall short even of the subsistence minimum; and no
standard of expenditure could result from such a comparison, except the
most prosaic and unattractive level of decency. A standard of life would
still be possible which should admit of invidious comparison in other
respects than that of opulence; as, for instance, a comparison
in various directions in the manifestation of moral, physical,
intellectual, or aesthetic force. Comparison in all these directions is
in vogue today; and the comparison made in these respects is commonly
so inextricably bound up with the pecuniary comparison as to be scarcely
distinguishable from the latter. This is especially true as regards the
current rating of expressions of intellectual and aesthetic force
or proficiency' so that we frequently interpret as aesthetic or
intellectual a difference which in substance is pecuniary only.

The use of the term "waste" is in one respect an unfortunate one. As
used in the speech of everyday life the word carries an undertone
of deprecation. It is here used for want of a better term that will
adequately describe the same range of motives and of phenomena, and
it is not to be taken in an odious sense, as implying an illegitimate
expenditure of human products or of human life. In the view of economic
theory the expenditure in question is no more and no less legitimate
than any other expenditure. It is here called "waste" because this
expenditure does not serve human life or