skews13
Diamond Member
- Mar 18, 2017
- 11,860
- 16,049
- 2,415
Last nightâs NFL Super Bowl game was great. The guys wearing blue beat the guys wearing red, and Bad Bunny and Lady Gaga made MAGA snowflakes cry.
But the NFL can also teach Americans a huge lesson about economics, âsocialism,â and the differences between Republican âfree marketâ nuts and FDRâs re-regulation of the American economy that created the largest middle class in history and the first in the world to include more than half of a nationâs citizens.
Most Americans would be highly offended, for example, if the NFL took big bucks from Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg or somebody like these monopolists to change the rules so whichever team gave the League the most money could have an extra three players on the field at all times.
But thatâs pretty much exactly what Reaganomics and deregulation have brought us in our marketplaces; itâs the staggering difficulty that every small business in America faces today in the form of massive corporations like Walmart, Facebook, X, Google, and Amazon.
For capitalism to work in a way that doesnât produce oligarchs and monopolies, it must be regulated. Capitalism, after all, is just a game that people play using money and mutually agreed-upon rules. Just like football.
The NFL heavily regulates football in the United States, at least the football played by its teams. Those regulations include how many players are on the field at any time, exactly what constitutes a down or a touchdown, and rules about how players may physically contact each other, and under what circumstances.
The NFLâs super-socialist regulations also decide which team gets first pick of new players: they decided that the worst-performing teams should have first choice of newly available players, giving every team an opportunity to rise up through the ranks in the following season.
Itâs much like progressive income taxation and the estate tax, giving the little guy a chance while slightly restraining those already at the top. These regulations guarantee the safety and stability of the game itself, and also guarantee that fans of football have a consistent experience, because everybody understands and follows the rules.
Thatâs not meritocracy; itâs planned redistribution of future resources to maintain league balance. If American public policy worked this way, the millionaire opinion bots at billionaire-owned Fox âNewsâ would spontaneously combust.
The league also pools its television and licensing revenue and divides it equally among all teams: No owner gets richer just because theyâre in a bigger market. In a pure âfree market,â the Cowboys and Giants would drown everyone else in cash. The NFL says, âNope, everybody eats.â Thatâs redistribution by design.
And they impose a hard salary cap so rich owners canât simply buy championships, and they require owners to spend what is effectively a minimum wage on players rather than hoarding profits. Teams that overspend are punished: thatâs collective control of capital to prevent oligarchy, the exact thing conservatives scream about.
NFL teams are also required to spend a minimum percentage of shared revenue on their players. Owners canât just hoard money; they must reinvest in labor. Thatâs closer to social democracy than laissez-faire capitalism.
And letâs not forget that 100% of their players are protected by a union!
The NFL figured out something America forgot after Reagan: markets only work when rules prevent the powerful from rigging the game.
In other words, the NFL is a regulated market with enforced rules that prevent monopolies, protect labor, and preserve competition. And because of that, small-market teams can win, dynasties donât last forever, and fans get a fair game.
If the American economy were run more like the NFL, weâd have fewer oligarchs, more competition, and a much healthier middle class.
But imagine if Milton Friedman, Robert Bork, or the other idiots like them who first advised the Reagan administration and now have guided Republicans ever since were to have taken over the NFL.
The teams with the wealthiest owners would always get the best players, and thus would win every game. They might even decide that the team that gave the NFL the most money could have an extra player or three on the field at various times.
Theyâd assure us that the teams that didnât perform as well just have to âpull themselves up by their bootstraps.â Perhaps their problem is just that their players are âlazy,â these people would tell us, and the solution is to cut their salaries and reduce the amount of protective equipment they can wear so that they will have a âincentiveâ to play harder and increase their performance.
Then the richest teams would begin buying the poorer teams, until all the teams are owned by three or four billionaires. Sounds like every industry in todayâs America. But conservatives would try to convince you it would create a football paradise, right?
Of course it wouldnât be a paradise: Fans would stop watching, kids would stop dreaming of playing, and the game itself would collapse under the weight of rigging and unfairness. Not to mention that if the socialist NFL ever actually tried some crazy âfree marketâ stupidity like that, Congress would be holding hearings within a week and the public outrage would be deafening.
But when the same thing happens in our economy, weâre told by Republicans that itâs just âthe free market.â Weâre told that âmonopolies are natural,â that âbillionaires are geniuses,â and that working people who canât get ahead in a rigged system somehow âdeserve their fate.â
Weâre told by these fools that any attempt to re-write the rules so the American economy is fair again and our middle class can recover from the massive $50+ trillion hit itâs taken from 45 years of Reaganomics is âsocialism,â even though FDRâs system is exactly how every successful capitalist system in history has worked.
There is no free market in America. Much less a capitalist economy.
But the NFL can also teach Americans a huge lesson about economics, âsocialism,â and the differences between Republican âfree marketâ nuts and FDRâs re-regulation of the American economy that created the largest middle class in history and the first in the world to include more than half of a nationâs citizens.
Most Americans would be highly offended, for example, if the NFL took big bucks from Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg or somebody like these monopolists to change the rules so whichever team gave the League the most money could have an extra three players on the field at all times.
But thatâs pretty much exactly what Reaganomics and deregulation have brought us in our marketplaces; itâs the staggering difficulty that every small business in America faces today in the form of massive corporations like Walmart, Facebook, X, Google, and Amazon.
For capitalism to work in a way that doesnât produce oligarchs and monopolies, it must be regulated. Capitalism, after all, is just a game that people play using money and mutually agreed-upon rules. Just like football.
The NFL heavily regulates football in the United States, at least the football played by its teams. Those regulations include how many players are on the field at any time, exactly what constitutes a down or a touchdown, and rules about how players may physically contact each other, and under what circumstances.
The NFLâs super-socialist regulations also decide which team gets first pick of new players: they decided that the worst-performing teams should have first choice of newly available players, giving every team an opportunity to rise up through the ranks in the following season.
Itâs much like progressive income taxation and the estate tax, giving the little guy a chance while slightly restraining those already at the top. These regulations guarantee the safety and stability of the game itself, and also guarantee that fans of football have a consistent experience, because everybody understands and follows the rules.
Thatâs not meritocracy; itâs planned redistribution of future resources to maintain league balance. If American public policy worked this way, the millionaire opinion bots at billionaire-owned Fox âNewsâ would spontaneously combust.
The league also pools its television and licensing revenue and divides it equally among all teams: No owner gets richer just because theyâre in a bigger market. In a pure âfree market,â the Cowboys and Giants would drown everyone else in cash. The NFL says, âNope, everybody eats.â Thatâs redistribution by design.
And they impose a hard salary cap so rich owners canât simply buy championships, and they require owners to spend what is effectively a minimum wage on players rather than hoarding profits. Teams that overspend are punished: thatâs collective control of capital to prevent oligarchy, the exact thing conservatives scream about.
NFL teams are also required to spend a minimum percentage of shared revenue on their players. Owners canât just hoard money; they must reinvest in labor. Thatâs closer to social democracy than laissez-faire capitalism.
And letâs not forget that 100% of their players are protected by a union!
The NFL figured out something America forgot after Reagan: markets only work when rules prevent the powerful from rigging the game.
In other words, the NFL is a regulated market with enforced rules that prevent monopolies, protect labor, and preserve competition. And because of that, small-market teams can win, dynasties donât last forever, and fans get a fair game.
If the American economy were run more like the NFL, weâd have fewer oligarchs, more competition, and a much healthier middle class.
But imagine if Milton Friedman, Robert Bork, or the other idiots like them who first advised the Reagan administration and now have guided Republicans ever since were to have taken over the NFL.
The teams with the wealthiest owners would always get the best players, and thus would win every game. They might even decide that the team that gave the NFL the most money could have an extra player or three on the field at various times.
Theyâd assure us that the teams that didnât perform as well just have to âpull themselves up by their bootstraps.â Perhaps their problem is just that their players are âlazy,â these people would tell us, and the solution is to cut their salaries and reduce the amount of protective equipment they can wear so that they will have a âincentiveâ to play harder and increase their performance.
Then the richest teams would begin buying the poorer teams, until all the teams are owned by three or four billionaires. Sounds like every industry in todayâs America. But conservatives would try to convince you it would create a football paradise, right?
Of course it wouldnât be a paradise: Fans would stop watching, kids would stop dreaming of playing, and the game itself would collapse under the weight of rigging and unfairness. Not to mention that if the socialist NFL ever actually tried some crazy âfree marketâ stupidity like that, Congress would be holding hearings within a week and the public outrage would be deafening.
But when the same thing happens in our economy, weâre told by Republicans that itâs just âthe free market.â Weâre told that âmonopolies are natural,â that âbillionaires are geniuses,â and that working people who canât get ahead in a rigged system somehow âdeserve their fate.â
Weâre told by these fools that any attempt to re-write the rules so the American economy is fair again and our middle class can recover from the massive $50+ trillion hit itâs taken from 45 years of Reaganomics is âsocialism,â even though FDRâs system is exactly how every successful capitalist system in history has worked.
The NFL Is âSocialistâ on Purpose, and It Exposes Republican Economic Stupidity
Last nightâs NFL Super Bowl game was great. The guys wearing blue beat the guys wearing red, and Bad Bunny and Lady Gaga made MAGA snowflakes cry. But the NFL can also teach Americans a huge lesson about economics, âsocialism,â and the differences...
www.dailykos.com
There is no free market in America. Much less a capitalist economy.
