This Sunday millions of Americans will gather watch the spectacle of the NFL Superbowl, a triumph of socialistic capitalism. The NFL is by far the most successful professional sports enterprise in America today. And the reason for this great success? Revenue sharing among the individual franchises that make up the league, you know socialism. They share revenue on everything from tickets and TV to towels and t-shirts, with the individual franchise keeping a portion of the sales and the rest going for equal distribution among all the teams.
Make no mistake about it, the NFL and the individual franchises (except for the most-glorious Green Bay Packers, owned by The People of Green Bay) are capitalistic ventures intent on making a profit and a return on investment and that is as it should be. But the NFL, unlike it's now weaker cousin MLB (America's former passtime) long ago realized that the health and well being of the whole is directly related to, and dependent on, the health and well being of each individual member.
By socializing their success the NFL has been able to produce a superior product with most of the teams being competative at any given time and a fairly rapid turnover of championship teams. And this has been good for their customers, the fans who get competative teams to root for and close, entertaining games to watch, which in return is good for the NFL and all it's members. There are no Yankees in the NFL, using their big media market renvue advantage perenially to buy their way to success. There are no Cubs, perpetually refusing to re-invest revenue in a superior product, secure in the monopoly over their mindlessly loyal and long suffering fans. It's better to be successful on a wheat pile than king of a dung heap.
Purity is not always a good thing and often comes with severe drawbacks and shortcomings. It's true with dogs and horses. Constant inbreeding in the quest for purity ends up accentuating inherent weaknesses and in general, mutts tend to be healthier than purebreads. The same is true with economic systems. Pure capitalism and pure socialism soon show the cracks of their inherent weaknesses that inevitably lead to crisis and failure. But the balancing act of a healthy blend allows the strengths of both to come through while keeping expression of the weaknesses of each to a minimum.
So remember this Sunday when when your witnessing a prime display of sucessful socialistic capitalism that even the Packers from the smallest city in professional sports can reach the top and enjoy their day in the sun when there is a reasonable sharing of resources and a level playing field. Go PACK GO!
GREATNESS! ouch
ReplyDeleteI'll see your "Triumph of Socialistic Capitalism" and raise you one "NFL Promotes Classism"....
ReplyDeletehttp://nfl.fanhouse.com/2011/02/08/super-bowl-insults-the-masses/
Yeah gotta agree with you there. So what else is new?
ReplyDeleteBut then I've no real inclination to go myself anyway and (perhaps thanks to the whiskey and my usual ability to ignore them) I do not recall a single Super Bowl commercial and of course I was no where near a TV during the half time. But my Packers won. So the joke's on who? Not me, anyway.
Btw, meant to say, kudos for actually reading the Obamacare bill. That's far more than I can say. The small section I read referenced so many other existing statutes that you'd have to go read that my head was spinning. And I read regs as part of my job!
Reading that thing was as frustrating as it was disappointing (for the reasons I mentioned in the other blog). I found that I could email the PDF of it to my Kindle though. That worked pretty good. I can't say I cross-checked with other statutes, bills, etc much at all, but I tried to at least read the context I could get to easily.
ReplyDeleteMostly I did it as a personal challenge, not really as a tool to gain credibility in a discussion. I would guess there are several hundred pages in there that are only REALLY understandable by Constitutional lawyers. Having seem politicians come and go over the years, I have no reason to believe any of them are smart enough to understand it themselves....