Thus, to revert to Veblen's well-known analysis of conspicuous consumption, it is no accident that he has been recognized as a social analyst gifted with an eye for the paradoxical, the ironic, the satiric.  For these are frequent, if not inevitable, outcomes of applying the concept of latent function (or its equivalent) (1968, p. 123).

The manifest purpose of buying consumption goods is, of course, the satisfaction of the needs which these goods are explicitly designed. …However, says Veblen in effect, as sociologists we must go on to consider the latent functions of acquisition, accumulation and consumption, and these latent functions are remote indeed from the manifest functions. 'Bu it is only when taken in a sense far removed from its naïve meaning [ie. Manifest function] that the consumption of goods can be said to afford the incentive from which accumulation invariably proceeds.' And among these latent functions, which help explain the persistence and the social location of the pattern of conspicuous consumption, is its symbolization of 'pecuniary strength and so of gaining or retaining a good name."  The exercise of 'punctilious discrimination' in the excellence of 'food, drink, shelter, service, ornaments, apparel, amusements' results not merely in direct gratifications derived from the consumption of 'superior' to 'inferior' articles, but also, and Veblen argues, more importantly, it results in a heightening or reaffirmation of social status (1968, p. 123).

The Veblen paradox is that people buy expensive goods not so much because the are superior but because they are expensive.  For it is the latent equation ('costliness = mark of higher social status') which he singles out in his functional analysis, rather than the manifest equation ('costliness = excellence of the goods').  Not that he denies manifest functions any place in buttressing the pattern of conspicuous consumption.  These, too, are operative (1968, pp. 123- 124).

It is only that these direct, manifest functions do not fully account for the prevailing patterns of consumption.  Otherwise put, if the latent functions of status-enhancement or status-reaffirmation were removed from the patterns of conspicuous consumption.  Otherwise put, if the latent functions of status-enhancement or status-reaffirmation were removed from the patterns of conspicuous consumption, these patterns would undergo severe changes of a sort which the 'conventional' economist could not foresee (1968, p. 124).