The Democrat Thread

[southsider2k5]

Please note what I said:

 

 

Athletes are often 'encouraged' to take easy majors and easy classes in order to keep eligibility, as playing their sport is a full-time job. Graduation rates at many programs are abysmal. If they get injured, they can lose their scholarship.

 

I've still yet to hear a reason why colleges shouldn't be able to pay athletes if they want to or why athletes shouldn't be allowed to profit off of their own name and likeness and why they should be frozen out of the multi-billion dollar revenue stream they generate. What is it about the multi-billion dollar college sports industry that makes it necessary that the bulk of their labor force go unpaid? Why should thousands of NCAA athletes be completely barred from negotiating for pay or from signing endorsement deals? The schools, media companies, apparel companies, etc. certainly aren't barred from profiting off of them.

 

Even if we accepted a parity argument as a legitimate reason, it doesn't seem like the current model serves that end goal very well. I've been told in this thread that, really, it's the coaches and AD's and trainers and facilities and media deals that are the most important parts of the program and, really, the athletes are just incidental, easily replaceable. The NCAA doesn't limit schools from spending huge sums of money on any of those things. The same schools typically dominate year after year after year. The professional sports, with free agency and, in the case of baseball, no salary caps seem to do a much better job at producing parity than the NCAA.

 

Many cases? No. Not even close. A few anecdotal cases, yes. The vast majority of these people would never see a dime from their likeness, nor do they generate money for their schools. We are talking about an elite group, within an elite group.

 

[StrangeSox]

Many cases? No. Not even close. A few anecdotal cases, yes. The vast majority of these people would never see a dime from their likeness, nor do they generate money for their schools. We are talking about an elite group, within an elite group.

 

Ok. So where is the argument against allowing them to be paid or from signing outside endorsement deals? Some will sign lucrative deals, some won't. This is no different than the NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.

[southsider2k5]

Ok. So where is the argument against allowing them to be paid or from signing outside endorsement deals? Some will sign lucrative deals, some won't. This is no different than the NFL, NBA, MLB, etc.

 

I'm impressed you are so worried about rewarding the elite athletes of America.

[southsider2k5]

BTW this is a better argument against the absurdly high cost of college tuition these days in general. Subsidize the education for everybody, not just the ones generating billions of dollars for NCAA.

 

Nice move of the goalposts.

[StrangeSox]

I'm impressed you are so worried about rewarding the elite athletes of America.

Is this supposed to be an argument for or against something? It just looks like an irrelevant sideswipe.

 

Why should these athletes be frozen out of the multi-billion dollar revenue stream they generate and that makes piles of money for coaches, AD's, media networks, apparel companies, etc.?

 

edit: I don't see how my concerns here don't align with my politics in general. I'm siding with labor getting a bigger share of the profits they generate and that wouldn't exist with their work over the NCAA cartel controlling all of it. Look to major league labor disputes, and you'll see me making similar stances. If there's one aspect of the labor market that actually approaches anything close to a true meritocracy, it's professional sports.

Edited October 7, 2013 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Nice move of the goalposts.

 

What goalposts were moved, and from where?

 

edit: moving goalposts doesn't mean changing the topic, but I wasn't trying to do that, either. I added that response as an aside. It's not really directly relevant to the topic at hand (why NCAA athletes shouldn't be paid), which is why I started with the "BTW."

Edited October 7, 2013 by StrangeSox

[southsider2k5]

Is this supposed to be an argument for or against something? It just looks like an irrelevant sideswipe.

 

Why should these athletes be frozen out of the multi-billion dollar revenue stream they generate and that makes piles of money for coaches, AD's, media networks, apparel companies, etc.?

 

The biggest reason is that the system would probably collapse if they had to change it for the 1% of the 1%. Stop and think about it for a while. The vast majority of schools aren't what are being talked about here. And within those schools, we aren't talking about the vast majority of their athletes. If you had to come up with a pay system to pay players, you would be adding how much? $2000 per athlete per year? $5000? $10,000? Minimum wage? Now start multiplying that times all of the players on each team, at each university. Also remember because of Title IX you couldn't pay just the teams making money, aka the male teams, you would have a system that gave equal pay to all female athletes as well, in equal headcounts as male teams. History has already shown non-top university programs being shuttered over the minimal costs of Title IX. Can you imagine what is would look like if you and added hundreds of thousands of dollars, at least, to non-revenue programs and sports, at non-revenue producing universities? Really all you are doing is taking away opportunities for a free educations for kids who might not have that chance otherwise (once those scholarships and teams disappear), in favor of kids who are going to make their money anyway.

[StrangeSox]

The biggest reason is that the system would probably collapse if they had to change it for the 1% of the 1%. Stop and think about it for a while. The vast majority of schools aren't what are being talked about here. And within those schools, we aren't talking about the vast majority of their athletes. If you had to come up with a pay system to pay players, you would be adding how much? $2000 per athlete per year? $5000? $10,000? Minimum wage? Now start multiplying that times all of the players on each team, at each university. Also remember because of Title IX you couldn't pay just the teams making money, aka the male teams, you would have a system that gave equal pay to all female athletes as well, in equal headcounts as male teams. History has already shown non-top university programs being shuttered over the minimal costs of Title IX. Can you imagine what is would look like if you and added hundreds of thousands of dollars, at least, to non-revenue programs and sports, at non-revenue producing universities? Really all you are doing is taking away opportunities for a free educations for kids who might not have that chance otherwise (once those scholarships and teams disappear), in favor of kids who are going to make their money anyway.

 

You don't actually have to do any of that. You simply abolish the NCAA cartel's rules that forbid a school from paying athletes or from athletes making money outside of the school.

 

Doesn't Boeheim's $1.8M+/year salary take away opportunities for free educations? Why does this argument apply to some of the NCAA labor force, but not other parts? If the reality were that the billions of dollars generated primarily from basketball and football were being used to fund other scholarships, general campus improvements, etc. that would be one thing, but they aren't. They're used to make basketball and football coaches and the AD's some of the highest paid employees on campus and to build sports stadiums and training facilities.

Edited October 7, 2013 by StrangeSox

[iamshack]

You don't actually have to do any of that. You simply abolish the NCAA cartel's rules that forbid a school from paying athletes or from athletes making money outside of the school.

 

Doesn't Boeheim's $1.8M+/year salary take away opportunities for free educations? Why does this argument apply to some of the NCAA labor force, but not other parts?

I think we all smell what you are stepping in, but it's really a difficult problem to solve, and I don't have a clue what the solution is...if the NCAA then pays these players, do high schools pay them too? Certainly there are some high schools generating money off elite athletes.

[southsider2k5]

You don't actually have to do any of that. You simply abolish the NCAA cartel's rules that forbid a school from paying athletes or from athletes making money outside of the school.

 

Doesn't Boeheim's $1.8M+/year salary take away opportunities for free educations? Why does this argument apply to some of the NCAA labor force, but not other parts? If the reality were that the billions of dollars generated primarily from basketball and football were being used to fund other scholarships, general campus improvements, etc. that would be one thing, but they aren't. They're used to make basketball and football coaches and the AD's some of the highest paid employees on campus and to build sports stadiums and training facilities.

 

Replace him with a bottom level coach, and the revenue from the program disappears with it.

[StrangeSox]

Replace him with a bottom level coach, and the revenue from the program disappears with it.

 

This doesn't apply to the players as well?

[Balta1701]

Slightly different subject than the previous set of posts. This morning, the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments in the case that will be the next 5-4 decision completely destroying campaign finance regulations. This case revolves around the individual contribution limits. After this case is decided, those will be declared to be limits on free speech and unlimited, anonymous individual contributions to campaigns, suitably laundered through charities, will be possible, just as corporate contributions are now.

[Jenksismyhero]

What's the real harm here? Both parties have insanely rich donors. Both parties have already rigged the system enough so that no 3rd party could ever legitimately make a run (and really such a change could, in theory, actually be beneficial in that regard). You're not going to be some low level politician rising through the ranks without needing some serious financial support from the party, so it's not like the pool of candidates will change.

 

What's the difference if there's no longer a cap?

[Jake]

Just a growing trend in the USA - money as the all-determining factor to the quality of your existence

[StrangeSox]

Just a growing trend in the USA - money as the all-determining factor to the quality of your existence

nvm misread what Jake wrote

Edited October 9, 2013 by StrangeSox

[Jenksismyhero]

Just a growing trend in the USA since the introduction of trade- money as the all-determining factor to the quality of your existence

 

 

[Jake]

It's some great circular logic. You get paid a lot because you generate so much value, and we know that you generate so much value because otherwise you wouldn't get paid so much. Labor markets are 100% efficient and meritocratic.

 

You would like the book What Money Can't Buy - The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael Sandel, a professor at Harvard. He talks about the ways in which we've let markets into parts of our lives that have long been non-economic and explores the consequences. To some extent it is not really a polemic, but a desire to give us the framework to talk about this problem. His favorite example of market expansion is the line-standing issue: should you be able to pay someone to stand in line for you? This is less true in the USA, but in places like the UK the queue is a borderline sacred institution (friend of mine saw a fistfight interrupt in London over someone cutting the queue to get on the bus). Other interesting debates, from relatively small to larger issues:

 

-Should you be able to sell free tickets to Shakespeare in NYC?

-Should you be able to sell tix to a Springsteen concert that have long been discounted for the explicit purpose of letting less wealthy fans come to the show?

-Should you be able to pay drug addicted women to sterilize themselves?

-Should we pay children to read books?

-Should we pay people to lose weight?

-Should we allow big game hunters to buy the right to hunt endangered species as a means to fund the ranches that keep those species alive?

-Should we be able to bet on the death of celebrities? Buy life insurance on someone other than ourselves?

 

The thing to think about is that market solutions can't take into account the moral consequences of actions. Paying me to lose weight might help me lose weight, but research shows that I am likely to gain it all back when the economic incentive is gone. Why is this? Because I have only related to my weight in terms of money, rather than establishing a healthy relationship to my body. This is also observed with incentives for academic performance; the only success stories are situations where there is a cultural shift in the school. In these cases, increasing the payout doesn't increase academic performance because the money has taken on symbolic rather than financial importance via a mini-PR campaign within the schools.

 

Saving an endangered species by letting people hunt them makes sense from a utilitarian standpoint, but what you have to consider (and this doesn't mean that you have to decide to ban the practice, you just need to talk about it) is the way we relate to animals if we let this happen. The problem with hunting is not so much the loss of animals, but the way we look at and treat animals. It sullies the way we value life. This is similar to the arguments about taking life insurance out on strangers, etc.

 

The Reagan era, which put market ideals very high on the agenda (though Reagan personally was very much a moralist, this part of his agenda didn't really last in the same way on the political center and right) also coincided with a rise in economic study of issues that were not traditionally thought to be economic. There came a belief that we do cost:benefit calculations in all our decisions and, therefore, are choosing to our benefit in all facets of life. This is somewhat true. What came next, though, was economists thought, "why have implicit cost:benefit in non-economic parts of life when we might be able to put a price on those things?" So, you can buy a spot in line. To an economist, this is fair because in economics, we express our desire to do something by our willingness to pay for it. Unfortunately, the lobbyist paying a firm $200 to stand in line for him probably doesn't want to see the Supreme Court hearings as much as the gay high schooler who wants to see how the Supreme Court rules on gay rights. It used to be that this high schooler had a non-economic way of expressing his or her desire, which was by putting time into standing line.

 

The growth of markets into non-economic parts of life means money becomes a requisite for everything. This means those with and without money lead increasingly separate lives. He uses a baseball game as an example. Before skyboxes and the rapid commercialization of baseball, with general admission, the rich and the poor sat amongst each other enjoying the greatest game. Now, they both like baseball, but the low class watches on TV, the middle class watches from the lower level, and the upper class watches in the skybox. When the classes stratify financially, they are now even further stratified in the way they live their lives. It makes it much less likely that we'll ever give a s*** about each other if we don't share any common experiences.

[StrangeSox]

Just a growing trend in the USA since the introduction of trade- money as the all-determining factor to the quality of your existence

 

Plenty of societies have had both trade and communal ownership.

[StrangeSox]

You would like the book What Money Can't Buy - The Moral Limits of Markets by Michael Sandel, a professor at Harvard.

 

It's been on my Amazon Wish List for two years but nobody buys me nerdy political books

[StrangeSox]

[StrangeSox]

whoever is in charge of WaPo's twitter feed is pretty funny

 

[southsider2k5]

That is pretty funny.

[Texsox]

Nicely played. I laughed. Then cried when I realized my vote merely cancels his.

[Texsox]

Interesting strategy here for the Dems. Despite Rush telling his listeners that they are close to victory and giving in would be "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory", it seems that the shut down is hurting the GOP more than it is hurting the Dems. Although it is hurting everyone. Should Dems hold out for total victory, or try to give up the least while trying to be the party that compromised and re-opened the government? What's the end game here?

[mr_genius]

At least Obama has outsourced more jobs, taken more from the middle class, given more to billionaires, than any other president.

 

good point Grover.

 

 

Edited October 12, 2013 by mr_genius