Monday, September 16, 2013

For the 0.01%

I just stumbled across this available from Harrods. A nice set of what are twelve presumably very fine Scotch whiskys for £987,500 or $1.57 million.
Comes with a nice case. Still, it's just twelve bottles of Scotch. I remember buying a little sample case of Laphroaig whisky once at Heathrow for just £30. Three small bottles of ten-year-old, fifteen-year-old and cask-strength seemed a pretty good deal. How could The Dalmore be thirty-three thousand times better?

But what really astounds is the sheer excessiveness of it. I'm writing a string quartet right now. Yes, I'm a rather unknown composer, but suppose I was a well-known Canadian composer. According to the League of Canadian Composers standard rates I would only get paid something like $10,000 commission for the piece. Let's see, if each of those bottles of The Dalmore is a litre, that means that $10,000 buys you about an eighth of a bottle or a little over four ounces. So my string quartet, even if it were commissioned at the standard rates would only be worth about four ounces of a really over-priced Scotch. I think Schubert used to sell his songs for, well, a song.

My friends, we are in the wrong business!

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