Logically, burning 1 million pounds is no more wasteful than, say, building a mansion you only spend a few days in; the burning simply produces a little bit of deflation and makes everyone else's pounds worth a tiny bit more. In net, the transaction looks like "K Foundation people produce tremendous value for society through their music, in exchange they get the right to claim X units of everyone else's labor, and they chose not to claim it, making society richer by their music", which is hardly something to criticize or be nauseated by.

Yet, people were. That is the interesting part here: why are we so accepting of normal waste like military spending or the rich indulging themselves, but when this waste is put out in the open like in this burning, suddenly everyone's a consequentialist scolding 'you could've spent that charity!'

Really, they did fuck up here, but they did it by not contextualizing the burning. What they should have done is release the movie but include factoids like 'every 30 seconds, the UK spends 1 million pounds on atomic bombs' or 'every 3 months, the UK spends 1 million pounds on dog grooming' or 'every 6 months, Brits spend 1 million pounds on champagne' - that sort of thing.