As an (armchair) economist, when looking at these cases of Veblen good consumption one of the things that always interests me is: is there some clever way to nudge our culture in such a way that the product of such consumption becomes socially useful? Diamonds have a negative external/internal benefit ratio, since child labor wars in africa etc, apartments on the edge of Central Park are neutral (the apartment in not helping or hurting anyone but yourself, and as per the Veblen good definition the people you're competing with). But what about Veblen goods with a positive external/internal benefit ratio? Charity auctions try to do that, and if the government were to monopolize access to one not-particularly-industrially-significant mineral and then sell it off at huge markups that would also work, at least among the subset of the population that believes government spending has >0 external benefit. I am also aware of the use of large public individual donations in traditional cultures. The cleanest solution seems to involve cryptocurrency, but that would only really start to work once everyone is wearing Google Glass and can, um, efficiently verify the results from a challenge-response protocol against a long-range RFID inside people's wedding rings.
Any charitable donation with your name on it is a Veblen good that (hopefully) becomes socially useful. If people donated out of a genuine sense of charity they would donate anonymously.
