商务英语专业组授课素材1-In Praise of Competitive Urges【荐】.doc

In Praise of Competitive Urges* Nick Foulke You know it is springtime in London not by the arrival of swallows or the sprouting of blossoms, but by the printing of the annual Sunday Times Rich List. This is a sort of league table for the super rich, a survey of the British wealthscape that decrees who comes out on top. In publishing this list, The Sunday Times has made the acquisition of extreme wealth into a spectator sport. But being rich has always been a competitive business. We live in strange times. On one side the wheels are falling off the world economy① ; food and oil prices are shooting up while property values head in the opposite direction. Yet at the other end of the socioeconomic seesaw, the big issue occupying some intelligent minds this summer is whether their super yacht is big enough. According to Philippe Lamblin, the CEO of Privatsea②, which sources large boats for people with large bank balances, the threshold for super yacht status used to be 30 meters. Today that is not nearly enough to keep status-obsessed plutocrats from feeling inadequate. Lamblin recalls joining the cruise of one of his clients and putting in at a harbor in the Mediterranean next to someone he knew; the problem was that the boat next to theirs was 55 meters—some 20 meters longer than the one they had been enjoying for a week. As he recalls, “We went aboard for a drink, and after we left, the guy I was with said, ‘You know what? Next year we go bigger’.” Once upon a time, Aristotle Onassis dazzled the world with the Christina O, which at just under 100 meters was considered a floating palace. But today, no self-respecting aspirationally minded, competitive billionaire would be so easily satisfied. Eclipse, the largest yacht at present, has been reported to be almost 170 meters long. The thing about luxury goods is that while they may look like boats, cars, wristwatches or works of art, th