Even if we look only at "liquid values under control of a single person", this was a tiny, tiny fraction of the UK's stock of money. I can't find M3 numbers for back then, but currently this would be 0.0000027% of money. It would be hard to argue that this was the worst spent million, or even in the bottom decile.
I'd say what they got for it was a lot of people questioning and discussing the value and purpose of money. For decades! Given that so much of our culture is supportive of acquisition regardless of harm, it could be argued that a million pounds of anti-greed propaganda was one of the most socially positive things they could have done with it.
And even if we don't go that far, even if we discount the social value of art to 0, they still provided a hell of a lot of public entertainment for a million pounds. The latest Rolling Stones tour costs about 100m pounds. Major blockbusters cost 100-300m pounds each. Many indie films will cost more than 1m GBP. Compared with that, this looks like excellent value for money, and here nobody had to buy a ticket.
So I think at the very least there are much worse uses of money to be mad about. But if you'd still prefer this one, I imagine they'd be fine with that. Stoking outrage was clearly one of the intended goals of the project, and they wouldn't have achieved their goals without it.
Even if we look only at "liquid values under control of a single person", this was a tiny, tiny fraction of the UK's stock of money. I can't find M3 numbers for back then, but currently this would be 0.0000027% of money. It would be hard to argue that this was the worst spent million, or even in the bottom decile.
I'd say what they got for it was a lot of people questioning and discussing the value and purpose of money. For decades! Given that so much of our culture is supportive of acquisition regardless of harm, it could be argued that a million pounds of anti-greed propaganda was one of the most socially positive things they could have done with it.
And even if we don't go that far, even if we discount the social value of art to 0, they still provided a hell of a lot of public entertainment for a million pounds. The latest Rolling Stones tour costs about 100m pounds. Major blockbusters cost 100-300m pounds each. Many indie films will cost more than 1m GBP. Compared with that, this looks like excellent value for money, and here nobody had to buy a ticket.
So I think at the very least there are much worse uses of money to be mad about. But if you'd still prefer this one, I imagine they'd be fine with that. Stoking outrage was clearly one of the intended goals of the project, and they wouldn't have achieved their goals without it.