[Sca-cooks] Cooking and Serving Equipment

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Fri Feb 22 17:18:31 PST 2008


On Feb 22, 2008, at 5:55 PM, Terry Decker wrote:

>>> One must not deprive the King of his rightful share of your bounty.
>>
>> Heh. Got one word for you. Rent. See what the curia thinks of their  
>> profit
>> after each group spends twice what they would have buying the  
>> cookware
>> renting what they need for a single event.
>>
>> toodles, margaret
>
> Adamantius would be the one dealing with a curia.  In Ansteorra, you  
> would
> be 'splainin' to the Kingdom Seneschal and Exchequer, just how you  
> managed
> to blow a profitable event.  An incipient shire has a better chance of
> getting away with this one than a 30+ year barony with long term  
> players
> that should know better.  Irritating the PTB, is liable to get the  
> group a
> serious change of management.

Well, except the event was never blown, generally still made a decent  
profit (see my previous comments on value added), and put the group in  
position to bid on other such events for dealing with 400+ people  
instead of our usual 100-120, on those occasions when the Crown,  
having no bids for some event or other, calls and has a friendly chat  
with our Titular and/or Seneschal three months before the event date.

If asked, hey, did you buy a pair of 16-inch aluminum saute pans  
before Twelfth Night, we'd be able to answer yes, and make any  
corrections needed to the paperwork, but the loophole was there in the  
law structure, and nobody ever asked about it.

Now the rules have changed pretty specifically, and we can't, and  
don't, do that anymore. But when we could, it was a good way to build  
up a decent set of feast gear.

> Now, I have nothing against renting equipment.  We've rented tables,  
> chairs,
> vans, trailers, canvas and any number of other things needed to pull  
> off an
> event.  I considered renting a propane fueled convection oven at one  
> point.
> But to use rentals to stick it to the man is likely to get renting
> prohibited.  Not something I want to do when it may save the  
> barony's bacon
> down the road.

See, here's the rub. Yes, I'm sure it can get renting prohibited. But  
it sure sounds like we're portraying the hypothetical Crown as living  
in fear that somebody not named "The Kingdom" might earn a penny or  
two to make their jobs easier. And that, of course, would be  
irrational, wouldn't it, when the local groups do so much to  
accomplish the stated goal of the SCA and the Kingdoms, and the  
Kingdoms aren't just self-perpetuating bureaucratic permacourts, are  
they?

And if it did get renting prohibited, that would just make life that  
much easier for the local groups that do most of the actual work of  
the Kingdom, wouldn't it, and probably have some pretty serious  
ramifications for the Kingdom structure, as people begin to vote with  
their feet and with their wallets?

And, of course, we're not talking about purchasing stupidly items we  
don't need to do what we do. Nobody's doing anything to stick it to  
the man (well, someone is trying, I suspect, but in this case the  
local group is the man in question, the intended stickee and not the  
sticker), and the Kingdom still gets their profit money, because  
obviously, when you've got 700 people at an event, it's pretty  
unlikely that the event is going to make a $12 profit. I'm talking  
about the Kingdom still getting over 90% of what they would be  
getting, if the books were organized another way. In fact, they have a  
minimum profit level, beneath which the local group putting on the  
event must eat the difference. Essentially, we're paying the Kingdom  
for the privilege of putting on that event.

But since nobody is doing this anymore, and since on those occasions  
when it was done, it was mostly small, local events that nobody else  
in the Kingdom cared to come to anyway, least of all the Crown, nobody  
looked twice at the numbers, which were legitimate as debits and  
credits, anyway.

And finally, one must not deprive the King of his due??? First of all,  
it works both ways, and secondly, what Middle Ages did you get _that_  
from? ;-)

Adamantius (who strongly believes in supporting worthy Crowns)




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