Background: this is a work in progress, reflecting my view that economic rationalism is the reverse of rational economics, whatever that might be. It was found in a rubbish bin in North Sydney -- or that's the story I am sticking to.

In praise of economic rationalism

Now we have dealt successfully with your wasteful and unpredictable science industry, which could never be relied on to produce market-ready solutions at the right time, we are now looking at rationalising your Symphony Orchestra, and while our work must remain top-secret for now, I'm sure that nobody here would spread the word further, when (as you'll soon see) we've got the interests of the ABC so clearly in our sights.

You will recall that our aim with the science community was to limit recurrent expenditure while cutting off the continual drain caused by the need to maintain infrastructure which could more readily be obtained, when necessary by a favourably positioned lease-back arrangement. We eliminated the dead wood, pruned the live wood, and exported the seedlings to nurseries in the Third World where overhead costs are less. As this has proved so acceptable to the public, we must now act without delay to deal with the musical community in the same way.

Ever alert to the problems which may be raised by the more emotional members of the public, we increased our study time on this project, compared with our science survey, and watched two orchestras (not one), and in several performances at that. Now we are ready to leap into action.

For starters, we expect to eliminate the conductor, as market forces will cause a suitable tempo to emerge pretty soon after they get started, and that bloke at the back who bangs the big things in three bars only, right at the end, can be replaced with a set of cassette recordings. If that's too expensive, we could use the redundant conductor in this part.

The other bang and bash people just lurk up at the back, where they seem to spend an inordinate amount of time doing nothing. If they're not prepared to work on piece rates, we believe the tasks involved could be contracted out to members of the audience, who'll probably be willing to pay handsomely for the opportunity. We're currently looking at a double-bidding system, where members of the public make offers to play, and the highest bidder is accepted, while professional musicians are used in the remaining positions on a lowest-bid first-seated basis, and we may even be able to extend this to cover the whole orchestra.

But before we do that, we need to amend some of the modes of operation and entrenched work practices. The culture of this organisation needs to be seriously revised. I mean, look at all those guitar things! Incredible feather-bedding in the strings has been detected and will be dealt with promptly, with the double basses and celli being downsized to violas. This will, incidentally, allow marketing to produce more books of viola jokes, and the standardisation will effect significant economies of inventory.

While we're at it, we should also investigate the so-called double bass, which we have noted to be only a single instrument on both the times we have studied this orchestra. Why are these people misleading us? Is there a fraud going on here, or what?

And why are there so many second violins? Surely one second violin will suffice? Similarly, the soppy wet egalitarian liberalism implied in having so many first violins needs to be subjected to rational principles, with no more than two first violins — the remaining second violin will then be relegated to third violin and paid accordingly at a reduced rate.

And rather than having separate scores, we're going to let the violinists sit around an enlarged score, or use magnifying spectacles. They are, after all, supposed to play cooperatively, aren't they?

Many of the string instruments appear to be deliberately limited by outdated work practices, and we will probably require all of the string players to accept twelve strings, in line with the best overseas guitar practice (although we need to check the wear-and-tear aspects of pizzicato more carefully, before we decide to do away with the bows altogether). As an alternative, we could cut costs by making each player work with just a single multigrade string, thus fully utilising this scarce economic resource. It may be acceptable to have one spare string fitted to avoid down time, but any more than this must be regarded as excessive.

Some members of the orchestra, identified to us as the French horn players, we have noted, keep one hand inside the bell while they are playing, indicating that they are only working at half the optimum level — in fact, we discover that this is called (appropriately enough) "stopping the horn".

There will be no more of this sort of thing. Half the French horn players will be dismissed, and the rest will be expected to play with both hands. There's also the question of why we need to import these things from France, as there must surely be more economical sources in Asia, allowing us to show our support for the Tiger economies of our neighbours.

And what about those flute players! There's definitely room for them to add a second instrument in front.

In general, most of the remaining performers will need to become multi-skilled, and move around more — if they can walk around during that Haydn piece which demonstrates so beautifully that down-sizing works, why not in other pieces as well? Moreover, careful research reveals that the best overseas practice reflects this — are not the British Promenade concerts world-famous? And we all know what "Promenade" means, don't we?

So far as we can ascertain, the clarinet player only plays a single 440 Hz "A" before the performance, so this player will be replaced by an environmentally responsible air-horn which does not use CFCs to operate it. The removal of the clarinet player's chair will allow greater flexibility in the movement of the remaining players as they move from skill to skill.

As economists, of course, we know nothing about music, but we have already been able to effect some remarkable efficiencies, but any more will require technical advice from suitably hard-nosed musicians. We would appreciate some responsible contributions relating in particular to the non-standard design in the brass section which must increase the costs of the spare-parts inventory enormously.

If a variety of sound is needed, we don't see why we can't have a scaled set of bugles, with no moving parts to wear out, other than the player's lips which are, after all, renewable resources. (The greenies must be made to appreciate that we are just as determined as they to utilise organic and renewable sources where this is cost-effective.)

The pianos are another problem, with entrenched work practices requiring a number of different sorts of key, even when the colour is the same, as well as customised right and left pedals, and strings in many weights. Future pianos will be selected by our newly established market-driven purchasing committee on the basis of their using standardised components in all aspects of their design, with favourable notice being taken of any cross-standardisation which can be extended to the harps, harpsichords and organs.

The last issue we need to address concerns copyright payments. If the orchestra can restrict itself to material in the public domain, of which there is a great deal, we are told, a huge saving would be made.

We were also told this would mean no new material to be played, but since we all know that composers are starving to death every day (we prefer to look on this as an optimal downsizing of their life forces), and the same thing happened fifty years ago, it is abundantly clear that novel works will always be coming onto the market, so long as we accept a simple but cost-effective fifty-year hiatus, which will probably allow people time to get used to whatever new trend the composer decided to follow.

As an alternative, however, if a small number of modern works could be bought outright, this would allow us to perform these without fee as often as we liked, and it is unlikely that the public would notice the difference. This move would allow us to make considerable economies of scale in printing programs, and make the sale of advertising much easier.

And that brings me to the other half of success, to go with the belt-tightening, the need to find proper corporate sponsors. Just think of the corporate support we would find for musique concrete from the construction industry, and I reckon we'd have no problems getting a show of interest in serial music from one of the breakfast food companies.

On a different tack, I'm fairly sure we could find at least one firm who'd like to take up the proud title of "stock baroquers". If we play our cards right, we can have a number of non-overlapping sponsors, all gaining saturation coverage from the orchestra at the same time.

For example, and this is just an example, not a definitive solution, Marketing think we should target the tinned fish people. They say we could rename the minuets to minnowettes, and have a tuna brand sponsoring the piano, and then get the players to concentrate more on pieces like Nearer My Cod to Thee, Also Sprat Zarathustra, Bach's Part-eater in Sea or Britten's Young Purse-Seine's Guide, and they reckon that even the scales played before the performance could be tied-in to a promotional line.

Moving right along, these same fish people sell their by-products as cat food, which brings us to Kitten on the Keys, Debussy, and Darius Meow, though considering what they make the violin strings out of, we might have to use the brass and woodwinds for the stuff they're paying for. This is, after all, an area where the artistic sensitivities of the customers — that is, the sponsors — are paramount.

The Coffee Cantata is a dead set winner, and Marketing say that if we use a slimmed-down orchestra (which sounds fine to us), we could present that piece as the decaf version. One of the brighter minds in Marketing is working on a further development, and while they won't say much about it just yet, it involves a performance by African pygmies, and they've been giggling among themselves about drinking lots of short black.

A number of other popular works can be used in similar ways. There is a work called Sorochintsky Fair, which could be followed by a more sonorous version, Sorochintsky Dark, offering a perfect opportunity for hair products people, while the pipe organ would be an excellent place to position tobacco advertising.

Then there are the power utilities, who'd be falling over themselves to get to sponsor a performance of The Joules of the Madonna, especially if we told them it was about the Last of the Red-Hot Mommas, and then there's all that Vivaldi stuff, just ripe for development.

For example, he did a piece called The Four Seasons, but there is no reason why we can't change that to The Four Seasonings, with just a few small amendments. For example, there are sonnets — these are poems, I'm told — to go with each of the pieces, but these are an entirely uneconomical fourteen lines long, each of them! We could get three limericks for that price, and even show our sensitivity by only featuring the sponsors' message in two of them! It's a bit of a pity Vivaldi was known as the Red Priest, but in these times, that's less of a problem. Still, we may need to play that down, just a bit.

Anyhow, as I say, with a bit of thought, and with appropriate sponsors, we can see no reason why your symphony orchestra shouldn't survive, provided the repertoire is tailored better to suit the corporate sponsors' needs. We remain open to suggestions about other such sponsors and what their requirements might be.

Of course, the best solution would be to outsource the whole operation. As we have done for science, it would be far more efficient to get the work we needed from cheaper overseas suppliers, when we need it, thus avoiding expensive maintenance, superannuation and salary costs. In fact, with a suitable CD player in the centre of the stage, we would have more room for public seating, and the whole operation need only involve semi-skilled staff, who can be cheaply hired on a contract basis.

After all, look what we have managed to do for science in Australia! And I can assure you, nobody in the science community has suggested that we have done anything other than do for science over the past fifteen years.