The Inefficiency of Efficiency, and the (Potential) Efficiency of Inefficiency

I find Veblen's argument about "leisure" and "waste" as means of creating status and worth for most everyone in classes above the subsistence level very interesting and usable in identifying an important contradiction of capitalist economic organization. I understood The Theory of the Leisure Class to suggest that the more efficiency in an industrial economy the more potential for leisure and conspicuous consumption, thus the more inefficiency in spending and use of resources. This latter consequence is crucial for at least two potential reasons: 1) objects, especially in the form of natural resources like trees, water, etc. lose their inert purposes as parts of the organic cycle of life becoming instead solely objects of human use and consumption--something that of course has already pretty much happened--and 2) those objects are exhausted, becoming either extremely rare--as clean water is in some South American countries as well as elsewhere--or completely depleted--e.g. "the way of the dodo." Veblen's analysis of conspicuous consumption, then, whether he meant it to or not, suggests the potential insustainability of capitalism as a means of organizing a country (e.g. U.S.A) or the world (e.g. global capitalism).

What Veblen doesn't really offer in his analysis is a way of looking at objects that would not reduce them to means of status nor a social organization that would support this. But what if instead of basing an economy on efficiency to create leisure and waste, we based an economy on a certain amount of inefficiency via works of art. Veblen mentions aesthetics many times during his analysis, usually contrasting aesthetics of (monetary) value with aesthetics in the more Kantian sense of being disinterested, or without use. But it's difficult from his discussion of the two contrasting aesthetics to determine whether or not he values or sees any hope for either aesthetic. The former seems tied up with questions of rarity (e.g. gold) while the latter seems tied up with questions that have no usefulness (e.g. dead languages, the classics). But Veblen doesn't take into account that even though the latter have no clear purpose they still suggest to the viewer a sense of purposiveness, i.e. a purpose that the viewer can not determine but is still inclined to follow and investigate. Hence, this is what I mean by an economy based on a certain amount of inefficiency in the (Kantian) aesthetic sense: beautiful objects of nature or art leading us towards examining our social status not in economic terms but in a more organic and reflective sense which could turn out to be a more efficient (at least in the long run) means of social organization.