The world's most slippery question must be “what's it worth?” A man dying of thirst in a desert may give away his house for a glass of water. But at the height of his poverty, Schubert couldn't sell a dozen of his immortal songs for a loaf of bread. Today a Schubert manuscript would fetch millions.

Context determines worth, but so does fashion and the tide of history. My house, I've just been told by an economist, is worth £300 less today than yesterday. By the end of the month, its value may have dropped by £5,000. Yet it's the same old terrace. It isn't shedding knobs and knockers by the hour. What's changing is the context in which the worth of houses is estimated. Which is mildly terrifying for ordinary, half-numerate blokes like me, who don't understand what's happening to their bricks and mortar.

And that's my point. Knowledge may play some part in determining “worth”. But so, to an alarming extent, does ignorance. If I were buying a used car, I would judge it on shape and sleekness, and probably pay thousands over the odds for a clapped-out banger. A less ignorant buyer would take a long hard look under the bonnet. But at least I'm aware that I know sweet Aston Martin about internal combustion engines, which is why I don't buy cars. Or indeed drive them. It's when the ignorant are persuaded to fork out fortunes for items that experts would dismiss with a contemptuous guffaw that notions of “worth” go topsy-turvy.

Case in point? In the newspapers last weekend was a startling advertisement. It offered tickets for the Last Night of the Proms. Bear in mind that if you really want to watch a lot of Hooray Henrys waving flags and singing Rule Britannia, it's live on telly. And that, if you have “prommed” regularly at the Albert Hall through the summer, you have a chance of getting into the Last Night for five quid. And that comparing the musical content of the Last Night with the rest of the Proms is a bit like comparing Jonathan Ross with Leonardo da Vinci.

Bear all that in mind. Then try to guess the prices at which these tickets are being flogged. I doubt if you will get close. The advertisement (from a company called Sports Exclusive) offers ordinary stalls seats for a staggering £795 each, front-row stalls for an eye-popping £995 and Grand Tier boxes seating 12 for a mind-blowing £12,995. For that, admittedly, you get “your own waitress” to serve all 12 of you “a three-course supper with wine”. But my local Indian restaurant would do that for a couple of hundred quid.

I could spend the rest of this article speculating as to how vast sums like this can be charged for seats at an event that is controlled by a publicly accountable corporation, the BBC, in a venue, the Albert Hall, that was given a lottery handout of £40 million not long ago to make it “more accessible”. Where do the tickets come from? Who allows them to be sold at this astonishing mark-up? And who's pocketing the difference - if, indeed, pockets exist that are capacious enough to cradle such a wad of readies?

But I'm more interested in the people who will buy these thousand-quid tickets for three hours of middle-of-the-road musical jingoism. Clearly they will believe that such a purchase is “worth it”. But on what basis will they decide that? When they could book the best seats at Covent Garden for a mere £200 or less, do they really imagine that the Last Night of the Proms will provide them with five times the musical pleasure? Or networking opportunities? Or snob satisfaction? Surely not.

No, I sense that the true incentive is stranger still. It's counter-intuitive economics at work. Generally, when you raise the price of an item, demand falls. But with some luxuries the reverse happens. The more the price is hiked, the more a certain sort of person clamours to join the club. Ultra-swanky hotels and very posh restaurants fall into this category. So do Impressionist paintings and cows pickled by Damien Hirst. So do Mayfair call girls (I'm told). And so, it seems, does the Last Night of the Proms.

What's fascinating is the psychology of the people who make these silly-money purchases. You might imagine that they would always end up being disappointed. Surely, you would think, no restaurant, hotel, painting or concert could ever provide a sufficiently orgasmic level of pleasure to satisfy the expectation of someone who has forked out such an obscene amount of money. I know that the more money I have spent on something, the less easily pleased I am.

But this line of logic assumes that the pleasure is derived from the experience, rather than from the smug feeling that comes from spending a vast sum on a luxury in the first place. To the super-rich individuals or corporate freebie-organisers who buy these mega-expensive items, the quality of the luxury is largely immaterial. What counts is the buzz of paying an astronomical sum for the privilege.

Whether or not the Last Night of the Proms is a decent concert, or Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted skull is a sculptural masterpiece, is irrelevant. The pertinent point is that someone, somewhere, has had the cheek, the cunning and the boldness to price these items so high that the super-rich believe they are getting something exclusive and sensational for their dosh.

I suppose we should be grateful, since a lot of people in the catering, leisure, arts and entertainment industries would be out of work if such ignorant and ostentatious flaunting of wealth didn't happen (though it's hard to see how the musicians on the platform will benefit from the £1,000 seats for the Proms). But what a dreadful way to live! You are buying items not because you need them, or even like them, but because they have a price tag stratospheric enough to offer you the false reassurance that you are getting something everyone else will covet. It only goes to show that a fool and his money are as easily parted in a glitzy auction-house or a pretentious restaurant - or at the Last Night of the Proms - as on the forecourt of a second-hand car dealer.

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