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Rating: 
Summary: Innovation :Creative production and speculative destruction
Review: Marx was the first economist to present a basic two sector model analyzing the business cycle over time in a dynamic fashion.He was the first to emphasize the effects of technological advance,change and innovation and the subsequent,longlasting impacts on all aspects of society.Unfortunately,he emphasized a parallel micro analysis based on the incorrect Ricardian theories of class conflict ,labor theory of value and surplus value.Veblen was the first economist to clearly see and describe extensively in his writings the duality implicit in the creation of new capital goods and processes over the business cycle.Creative production and increased worker productivity occurred simultaneously with speculative destruction and financial sabotage .Schumpeter was certainly correct to emphasize the creative destruction that occurred in the industrial-manufacturing sector;however,he downplayed the undepleteable negative externalities created by financial speculators in the various financial markets.Keynes would later right the balance in his chapters 12 and 22 of the General Theory,although his failure to cite Schumpeter and Veblen(and Knight)is a glaring oversight.Veblen correctly emphasized the dynamic elements in the capitalist system that created both progress and poverty.Like Schumpeter,he rejected the emphasis put upon a static analysis of ceteris paribus price changes in determining the equilibrium position of an individual firm or the economy as a whole.Veblen's emphasis on an evolving economic system over time that exhibited discontinuities and possible economic collapse at particular critical points in the business cycle earn him recognition as one of the top 10 economists of the 20th century.Unfortunately,his lack of sufficient technical training in mathematics prevented him from becoming any more than a thorn in the side of classical and neoclassical economics.
Rating: 
Summary: A hop, skip, and a jump from hell.
Review: I have an old hardcover copy of this book, copyright 1904, reprinted in 1936, when times had been hard and weren't getting much better. The Preface had proclaimed a unique point of view: "the aims, motives, and means that condition current business traffic. This choice of a point of view is itself given by the current economic situation, in that the situation plainly is primarily a business situation." (p. v). Later on, considering the nature of technological society, Veblen adopts a view of thinking that is very much like the thoughts of Karl Marx on people who try to survive by having a job in such a system. "His place is to take thought of the machine and its work in terms given him by the process that is going forward. His thinking in the premises is reduced to standard units of gauge and grade. If he fails of the precise measure, by more or less, the exigencies of the process check the aberration and drive home the absolute need of conformity." (p. 308). This is not particularly appealing to anyone who has had the misfortune to see the results of such thinking in military pacification procedures, strategic bombing campaigns, politics, philosophy, psychology, religion, and the practice of law as a professional occupation. People who cannot see a connection here never read anything like this book.
Rating:
Summary: A hop, skip, and a jump from hell.
Review: I have an old hardcover copy of this book, copyright 1904, reprinted in 1936, when times had been hard and weren't getting much better. The Preface had proclaimed a unique point of view: "the aims, motives, and means that condition current business traffic. This choice of a point of view is itself given by the current economic situation, in that the situation plainly is primarily a business situation." (p. v). Later on, considering the nature of technological society, Veblen adopts a view of thinking that is very much like the thoughts of Karl Marx on people who try to survive by having a job in such a system. "His place is to take thought of the machine and its work in terms given him by the process that is going forward. His thinking in the premises is reduced to standard units of gauge and grade. If he fails of the precise measure, by more or less, the exigencies of the process check the aberration and drive home the absolute need of conformity." (p. 308). This is not particularly appealing to anyone who has had the misfortune to see the results of such thinking in military pacification procedures, strategic bombing campaigns, politics, philosophy, psychology, religion, and the practice of law as a professional occupation. People who cannot see a connection here never read anything like this book.
Rating:
Summary: Econ Class Review
Review: JMJ IHMThorstein Veblen gives a very detailed, logical account of the business enterprise as he saw it in the 1900's. He places an emphasis on the individual buisness man, the powers he holds and what he can accomplish with those powers, as well as his effect on the economic and social community as a whole. He looks at the world community as it enters into the industrial age, dominated by what he calls the "machine process." He places intense importance on the subject of machines and how they relate to business enterprise. His Theory is very well-written and comprehensive, linking all aspects of his thought together in an organized, essay-like book.
Rating:
Summary: Econ Class Review
Review: JMJ IHM Thorstein Veblen gives a very detailed, logical account of the business enterprise as he saw it in the 1900's. He places an emphasis on the individual buisness man, the powers he holds and what he can accomplish with those powers, as well as his effect on the economic and social community as a whole. He looks at the world community as it enters into the industrial age, dominated by what he calls the "machine process." He places intense importance on the subject of machines and how they relate to business enterprise. His Theory is very well-written and comprehensive, linking all aspects of his thought together in an organized, essay-like book.
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