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a prescient passage written on the eve of World War I, Veblen famously wrote that
… history records more frequent and more spectacular instances of the triumph of imbecile institutions over life and culture than of peoples who have by force of instinctive insight saved themselves alive out of a desperately precarious institutional situation, such, for instance, as now faces the peoples of Christendom [1914, 19].
Only the process of evolution can effect fundamental change. As Edgell remarked, for Veblen “the most recent era is more susceptible to ‘natural decay’ than social engineering of an ameliorative or radical kind” [Edgell, 2001, 98].
It is also worth noting that despite Veblen’s devastating attacks on the business system, he did not subscribe to the simplistic idea that capitalism’s institutions were designed to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor. The point is important enough to quote Veblen at length:
The modern industrial system is based on the institution of private property under free competition, and it cannot be claimed that these institutions have heretofore worked to the detriment of the material interests of the average member of society … the system of industrial competition, based on private property, has brought about, or at least has co-existed with, the most rapid advance in average wealth and industrial efficiency that the world has ever seen. Especially can it fairly be claimed that the result of the last few decades of our industrial development has been to increase greatly the creature comforts of the average