ABSTRACT
Capitalism, in its legal or illegal forms, produces an ever-greater bundle of goods and services that it distributes in a highly inegalitarian fashion. The problem of poverty has become more pressing, at the same time as the wealth of the wealthiest has grown bigger and bigger. This imbalance between aggregate income and the distribution of income leads to an exacerbation of the phenomena of capitalism that Thorstein Veblen pinned down 100 years ago under the label of 'conspicuous consumption'. Veblen's idea of replacing price system with technocracy appears naïve, but his notion of conspicuous consumption has lost no relevance at all. When bourse cluster mixes with the leisure class, then neo-Veblen vision comes into place in the twenty-first century with full transparency. This chapter explains that fifty countries are currently designated least developed countries (LDCs). The list is reviewed every three years by Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), in the light of recommendations by the Committee for Development Policy (CDP).
