By Nathan Murray
Publication Date: 2026-05-05 18:14:00
Imagine two identical spoons. One of these is handcrafted from silver by a skilled metalworker. The other, a facsimile made of base metal, was mass-produced by machine. What would you value more? Most of us would say the handmade spoon.
In 1899, more than a century ago, the American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen used this very example to explain how we assign value, or his theory of conspicuous consumption, in which he claimed that middle-class consumption was driven primarily by the desire to show wealth to others. Even if these spoons were indistinguishable, Veblen explained, once identified, the handmade spoon would have a higher value.
This is partly because “the spoon made by hand satisfies our taste and sense of beauty, while the spoon made by machine from base metal has no useful function other than brute efficiency.” But for Veblen there is another factor that is more important than any aesthetic judgment: cost.
The hand-forged spoon is particularly preferred…
