NFL Is the NFL a Form of Socialism?

[Exe Gesis]

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2010/03/is_the_nfl_socialistic.html

Is the NFL 'Socialistic'?
By Peter Wilson

With the threat of an NFL player walkout in the news, the Boston Globe editorial board grabbed the opportunity to bring up the fatuous argument that football is a socialist enterprise.

In the space of the brief editorial titled "NFL: Socialism makes everyone rich," the Globe argues that the NFL is "fantastically successful experiment in corporate socialism" and that "[t]he league's business practices contradict the tenets of a free market." The editorial praises the NFL's "collectivist arrangement" and finishes with a twofer, praising the father of Communism and getting in a jab at Sarah Palin in one sentence: "Karl Marx could explain this; it's definitely not in the playbook of either Ron Paul or Sarah Palin."

The Globe is not guilty of original analysis; the Socialist NFL argument seems to surface in the fever swamps every six months or so. Last October, the leftist commentariat was delighted to expose the supposed hypocrisy of Rush Limbaugh's attempt to buy into a socialist enterprise like the St. Louis Rams.

A month earlier, Frank Deford reported on NPR: "There's probably no more successful socialistic enterprise in the whole world than the National Football League."

Back in 2007, the Globe's Derrick Jackson wrote in "Football Socialism" that the NFL is "the most successful form of socialism in the United States."

Daily Kos is explicit in the conclusion we're supposed to draw from the Jackson column: "Football is a socialist sport -- and the U.S. should follow its lead."

It is true that NFL owners have agreed to cooperate in a way that benefits the entire league. Their revenue-sharing agreement distributes television income equally, in effect redistributing wealth from the more popular franchises to the less successful. The football draft has a goal of leveling the playing field to reduce inequalities between teams. Salary caps and salary floors are forms of wage controls. Isn't this proof that the NFL is striving for the socialist goal of eliminating economic inequality?

This line of argument overlooks several obvious points. To state the self-evident, the sport of football is fiercely competitive. NFL players want their teams to win. People who get in the way get hurt. Watch thirty seconds of football and ask yourself which stereotype it resembles: dog-eat-dog capitalism or collectivist utopia?

An organization like the NFL should be assessed by its activity in the macro-economy, not by the internal arrangements league members have fashioned. Only the willfully blind could deny that the NFL is a capitalist enterprise competing in a market economy with other sports and entertainment for spectators and television viewers. The goal behind the league's internal cooperation is to make games more competitive and exciting, to attract more fans, and above all, to make more money. Competing for advertisers selling Doritos and Dodge Ram trucks in a market with five hundred television channels is a strange example of the "most successful form of socialism in the United States." Football in a socialist country would compete with the speeches of the Dear Leader on one of four state-owned channels.

Even if one accepts the dubious premise that the NFL succeeds because it has adopted socialism, there is no reason to conclude that these same socialist principles ought to be applied to society as a whole. These articles on the NFL promote a falsehood: that if a little bit of socialism works for football, a lot of socialism will be even better for the country.

Many economic entities that make up a free-market economy have internal constraints that could be labeled "socialist." Employees in a business corporation are expected to cooperate for the greater good of the collective. Businesses offer pensions and medical care like socialist governments, and many have unionized workforces. Families also impose values on their members of sharing wealth and obligation to the group. What is a virtue in a microcosm, however, becomes onerous when applied to an entire society. Socialism is a gateway to totalitarian government -- the totality of society is organized from above to create the best results (in theory) for everyone. Expanding socialist principles requires an expansion of the power of government to administer them. As Hayek observed sixty-six years ago, socialism must be performed by a human agency that has been given power to redistribute wealth. Power always corrupts; liberty is therefore always diminished, and socialism is always, in Hayek's words, "the road to serfdom."

We are willing to trade liberty for the benefits of an employment contract. Outside of work, you don't answer to your employer, and if you don't like your boss, you can quit. Expanding NFL socialism to American society, however, turns the government into a boss who in the interest of the collective can dictate the intimate details of our behavior. How do you quit your country, aside from emigrating to seek freedom? The vast majority of immigrants to America throughout history did exactly that, but where would Americans go to find a more free society?

Jean-François Revel says in his brilliant exposé of socialism, Last Exit to Utopia, The Survival of Socialism in a Post-Soviet Era,that "socialism is intrinsically destructive of humanity." He stresses that whenever it has been tried, it leads to utter failure, poverty, mass murder, and the gulag. Socialism makes everyone rich? Show me the money.

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[Exe Gesis]

http://www.redstate.com/diary/greghalvorson/2011/02/01/sorry-bill-maher-the-nfl-is-not-socialist/

Sorry, Bill Maher, the NFL is not socialist

DIARY / greghalvorson // Posted at 5:57 pm on February 1, 2011 by greghalvorson

Bill Maher, the Hollywood Jesus-hater who receives talking points from Playboy Bunnies, is at it again.In a recent article, he claims that the National Football League owes its success to “socialism,” that it thrives, not because of capitalism but due to redistribution of revenue amongst teams. A critique of his theory - that the sharing of TV revenue between large and small markets is socialistic - however, concludes otherwise.

Socialism, by definition, is the control of industry by government (the State), which in its quest for power, “levels” income privately produced. Leveling, or “redistribution of wealth,” is done through coercion - via progressive taxation, property seizure, etc., - such that private wealth is “capped” for the “collective good.”

Now it may be news to Bill, but upon last check, the NFL wasn’t being forced to level anything. Socialism is a political philosophy, and as such requires liberal rants, if they are to avoid sophistry, to assess it in this manner.

Bill, however, is smarter than god (I use the small-case to not offend), so let’s assume that “socialism” is generic, germane to private ventures, and that “revenue sharing” is couched in this light. We can then look at how NFL owners came to the conclusion that splitting revenue - in effect redistributing it from large to small markets - made sense. Were they coerced by Roger Goodell, the commish, to help the Packers? Did a quasi-government panel pass a law to make it so?

Hardly. The owners voted to share revenue, practicing volitional democracy, quite different than “central planning.” TV revenue, moreover, isn’t tax money, seized by government to engineer outcomes (state-run health care, statist schools), it’s money generated by private business (networks) which receives it from other businesses, so that the latter can win customers. Maher, in his rant, fails this distinction.

He also fails to examine how teams use their “slice.” The Kansas City Chiefs don’t spend the TV revenue they receive in the same manner as the San Diego Chargers - the marketing and merchandising are different, as are decisions on player personnel - and it’s each team’s management - the owner, the coach, the scouts and front-office - which must use it efficiently. Were the NFL, as Maher fantasizes, Marxist, the owners would be circumscribed, regulated in their outlays, and hamstrung in their effort to improve the bottom-line.

Indeed, as Maher fails to note, Goodell could fix wages. Peyton Manning’s talents – his exceptionalism – wouldn’t be marketed throughout America, engendering enterprise and private wealth (think Nike stripes and ESPN), bringing him disproportionate gain, they’d be collectivized, absorbed. The second-string center would get the same check. The water-boy, too.

Maher is sufficiently bright to know this, but he instead cherry-picks “shared revenue,” oblivious to other cash-streams - ticket sales and merchandise - beyond the scope of his argument. Clearly, he wants simple-minded readers (the article appeared at The Huffington Post) to make the leap from “NFL is socialism” to a broad umbrella in which benevolent Statists set bars.

Real socialism – not the fantasy – doesn’t work. Maher’s model fails (there’s that word again) to examine owner motives. The Halases and Maras and Rooneys didn’t vote to share revenue in order to please the Princeton faculty, they saw that population variance might produce Super Franchises, and that each team’s ability to sign talent should be preserved. They understood that in order to produce a product with appeal that revenue generated in New York should help Green Bay. This revenue is free of the owner’s private ventures, is exclusive to media, and is wholly created by the pursuit of wealth in open markets.

I must also point out that under socialism - the historically miserable kind – labor lacks reward, innovation is rare, and risk is moot. Under socialism, men who don’t toil, or toil barely, nonetheless receive “benefits” (others’ money), and while Bill may think he’s brilliant, mocking “tea baggers,” he’s vapid.

The warriors of the NFL are the players, and the players strive both for wealth and for rings. In the NFL, coaches toil, obsessing over details with hyper-intensity. It may rankle Maher, but a gentleman named Winston Churchill said of socialism, “It is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance.” And failure engenders fear in the National Football League.

If you fail, you’re cut. If you fail, you’re fired.

Hey, Bill, what percentage of teachers get fired in New Jersey? Yeah, the state with 600 school districts, abysmal test-scores, and no parental choice? A half-percent? Bill?

The deeper you dig, the more it unravels. Maher’s grasp of the NFL, and of “socialism,” is so trite that one wonders who’s higher, him or Snoop Dog.

He goes on to slam Major League baseball for not sharing revenue (a false equivalency), failing to point out that market-size and titles share a tenuous correlation.

Still, the Yanks won the Series, Pittsburgh stunk, so Bud Selig and Hugo Chavez should make dinner plans.

Get real. While it’s true that New York is the wealthiest team, and equally true that they have the most titles, it’s simplistic to pin dominance on F.A. Hayek. Tell the San Francisco Giants they can’t win. Tell the Florida Marlins, St. Louis Cardinals and Arizona Diamondbacks that all it takes to prevail is sprawl.

Rubbish. For every Pittsburgh which fails due to many factors, there's a Minnesota, a Tampa Bay, even a Boston (Fenway is tiny), so Maher’s in left field. The Yanks went nearly a decade (’00-’09) between titles. If he’s correct, that only the wealthy win – forget culture, chemistry, management – explain the Cubs.

They’ve been blanked since ‘08. Nineteen-o-eight…. Long before Bill started hitting the bong.

 

[Exe Gesis]

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1056995-why-the-nfl-really-stands-for-capitalism


Why the NFL Really Stands for Capitalism
By Josh Zerkle , Chief Writer Feb 7, 2012

There's a noted political pundit out there with a solid riff about how pro football's popularity is rooted in the league's socialist attributes. Bill Maher, or as I like to think of him, Jon Stewart 1.0, credits the NFL's so-called quest for fairness as the driving force behind the NFL's popularity in America and that our country's political leaders should take the hint. While that dichotomy of a "capitalist" nation being so endeared with a "socialist" enterprise is fun, it's almost entirely wrong.

First of all, insinuating that a professional football league is comparative to a $15 trillion economy is faulty without proper context. There are two separate economies that Maher seems to mash together in his rant: (1.) The NFL's relationship with its millions of fans and (2.) The relationships between the league's 32 teams.

The former is a legitimate economy, where transactions are made and profits and benefits can be maximized. The latter is not. While franchises do allocate certain outputs and inputs, the allocation is far from even slices of pie. And furthermore, those teams compete against each other on the field, not on the balance sheet.

Maher's observations about the league's salary cap and redistribution of revenue, generally speaking, aren't inaccurate. But he makes a significant oversight: The NFL's modus operandi is not a federally-implemented initiative. It's a system that everyone agreed to implement and maintain.

"The NFL takes money from the rich teams and gives it to the poorer ones," Maher quips.

That's not exactly true.

The NFL doesn't take anything; the New Englands and Washingtons of the league pony up that money freely, of their own volition, without the impending duress of state force. If they failed to do so for whatever reason, it's not as if the NFL's Internal Revenue Service would be throwing Daniel Snyder in jail, even though that visual image would please fans all over the league.

Let's take another step back. The NFL's salary cap was a recent invention, first implemented in the mid-1990s not to enhance competition, but to constrain labor costs to ensure profitability. If you're unfamiliar, turning a profit is somewhat important to someone running a business.

But the league has been sharing revenue from television for an even longer period, since the 1960s. But that was in an area when the NFL was taking a back seat to baseball, and many teams had yet to find the firm financial footing that we (and maybe even they) take for granted today.

And even those days were a far cry from the league's early days in the 1930s, where weaker franchises were either eliminated from the league or bought up and moved to more competitive markets. The NFL's collective didn't string along the Akron Bulldogs or Dayton Triangles out of some appeal for equality, and the league likely would have perished if it had tried.

So, the league's revenue sharing was less of a mechanism for "fairness and opportunity" and more of a survival tactic that pulled itself through a young, fragile sports market. In other words, it made the NFL, as a whole, more competitive. And the owners have been rewarded for that. Today's TV revenue is so large today that every team is guaranteed a profit.

So what about the draft? Despite the stratified allocation of player talent, the NFL's draft process has become gradually more capitalist over time. That is to say, shorter. In 1948, the NFL draft was 32 rounds long, meaning that nearly an entire roster's worth of rookies were locked into one team with which they could negotiate. Today, the draft is only seven rounds long, and those undrafted players maintain an opportunity to negotiate with any of the league's 32 teams.

As for the league's obvious constraints on wages, those practices were agreed upon by owners and collectively bargained with the league's workforce, the players. There was no imperialist kommissar that dictated terms to the populace.

So while these measures aren't exactly market-friendly, they were achieved through a collective bargaining process in which all owners and players participated directly, with each group seeking opportunity to maximize its own benefit. And yes, the players entering the league have little say in what they'll earn in their first (and often only) NFL contracts, but it's still leaps and bounds above what they were getting paid in college—nothing.

Here are a couple other points for people that actually know what socialism is: The NFL doesn't control the means of production, nor does the NFL field its own team to compete against its other 32 owners. It is strictly a regulatory entity, enforcing the "rules of the game" in accordance with the wishes of the teams. Aside from labor and revenue, teams hire their own coaches, sell their own tickets and operate their franchises in other ways that they see fit.

And through all of the measures listed above, a lot of teams are still terrible. Do you think we'll see the Buffalo Bills or Cleveland Browns in the playoffs any time soon? Maybe the other 30 owners should be giving them bigger checks. Wouldn't that solve the problem?

If there's anything socialist about the act of playing a football game, I must be missing it. There's no league-mandated "mercy" rule when scores get lop-sided (sorry, Jacksonville). Points are not reallocated to the losing team to make them more competitive.

If the Saints score 62 points against the Colts, they keep all 62. They don't put 10 of those points in an envelope and mail it off to Roger Goodell. Nor does the NFL step in and pull Drew Brees off the New Orleans roster and send him to the Vikings. How fair would that be to the fans of a team that put so much effort into not sucking?

Teams aren't extensively regulated, and they're rewarded for their good decisions. If Tom Coughlin makes two successful challenges in a game, he is rewarded with a third. If the 49ers can't put the ball in the end zone for seven, they can still kick a field goal for three points, and they did that a lot this year. And if they miss that kick, there's no defensive "safety net" that prevents the other team from getting a short field.

As good choices are rewarded, teams are stuck with the consequences of bad choices. Going for it on 4th-and-1? You'd better get that yard, especially in your own territory. Throwing on first down? Sounds aggressive, but if the cornerback jumps your out route, you'd better hope that your quarterback can tackle. And don't even get me started with the prospect of signing Terrell Owens.

But these elements of America's game are traits consistent with capitalism, an economic system that offers rewards and consequences in a market with minimal state interference. And while the league does feature some equality of opportunity, it doesn't guarantee equality of outcome. Otherwise, we'd have 32 teams finishing 8-8 every year, and that would be, literally, the most unrewarding sport imaginable.

 

[Brasher]

If anything I'd call it fuedalism.

The players are the vassals, the owners the lords and we all know who wears the crown.

 

[Dirty Bird]

If anything I'd call it fuedalism.

The players are the vassals, the owners the lords and we all know who wears the crown.

Peyton Manning?
Havn't seen so much love for 1 man since Jon Snow was annointed king of the north.

 

[Sydney Bloods]

Peyton Manning?
Havn't seen so much love for 1 man since Jon Snow was annointed king of the north.

FFS Spoilers!