Is the ethos of the NBA incompatible with capitalism?

mup · Post #21 » by **mup** » Fri Mar 27, 2015 1:05 pm

The concepts of capitalism and socialism don't apply to sports leagues because they're not sovereign entities, but if you try to apply them, I'd say that the NBA is 100% capitalist in every way except the division of labor.

The error here is that the OP and people like him can't seem to separate competition on the court from competition as businesses. NBA teams don't actually compete anymore than do actors in a play. What you view as competition is part of the entertainment. It's not business competition where one team is trying to drive the other out of business (such as coke v. Pepsi). The goal of the NBA and it's teams is (spoiler alert) not to win games for ungrateful fans but to maximize profits by allocating resources where they do the most good. If the nba thought it made sense to have all of the best players on one team and essentially limit the league to 3 teams, it would do away with the draft and do that (and watch itself die). It, like every other business in the world, determined it would rather make money and be profitable.

Every company functions the same way. Is a company socialist for spreading it's best salesmen around the country and not letting them all move to la because they want to be in la? No, they say that's cool you like la, but we need a good man to cover the Minneapolis territory. If you don't want the job, we need to find someone who does. Is that socialism?

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Greek · Post #22 » by **Greek** » Fri Mar 27, 2015 1:14 pm

Beffiosa wrote:
Greek wrote:
Beffiosa wrote:

How is socialism working out for the Greek Economy? US is not more socialist than Europe, not even close.

Too early to judge, troika is taking the most decisions right now.

That i refer as a socialism in US how Obama handle the financial crisis using Keynes economics, rather Friedman that Brussels using

A socialist party would have bought the banks and those cooperation that Obama bailed out and made them public. Obama have no idea what he want America to be. Europe loves him though.

USA is getting out of the crisis after 5 years. Europe no. Obama is doing something fine that EU doesnt...

The-Power · Post #23 » by **The-Power** » Fri Mar 27, 2015 2:01 pm

People have no clue about socialism as a concept when they're talking about it with regard to the NBA.

By the way, neither Europe nor the USA are socialist. Not close to it. Most socialist parties aren't even socialist as such and no, the USSR and its associated states didn't put Communism into practice. All of it contrary to popular belief.

BudTugly · Post #24 » by **BudTugly** » Fri Mar 27, 2015 4:13 pm

The-Power wrote:People have no clue about socialism as a concept when they're talking about it with regard to the NBA.

By the way, neither Europe nor the USA are socialist. Not close to it. Most socialist parties aren't even socialist as such and no, the USSR and it's associated states didn't put Communism into practice. All of it contrary to popular belief.

Get that truth out of here. And stop using English as your first language.

ChosunX · Post #25 » by **ChosunX** » Fri Mar 27, 2015 4:37 pm

The-Power wrote:People have no clue about socialism as a concept when they're talking about it with regard to the NBA.

By the way, neither Europe nor the USA are socialist. Not close to it. Most socialist parties aren't even socialist as such and no, the USSR and its associated states didn't put Communism into practice. All of it contrary to popular belief.

There is socialism and there is state socialism.

HotelVitale · Post #26 » by **HotelVitale** » Fri Mar 27, 2015 5:05 pm

Thanks for the surprisingly thoughtful and informed posts. I clicked on the thread anticipating some head-pounding but you've all mostly made good points. A few thoughts to add:

xfactor99 wrote: NBA and all American sports leagues in general are pretty damn socialist.

trustykilo wrote:Very socialist. They have a max salary and a min salary --- keeps all the stars from making 50-100mil/year and forces teams to overpay scrubs that shouldn't get more than 50k and force them to pay 900k-1.5 million.

The NBA isn't a 'market' itself it's a particular brand and product. It has a de facto monopoly--there are no serious competitors for pro basketball attention in the USA--and it's quite successful as a product, and any talk of how it's managed or run comes at the product-management (hence private) level. Overall, it's a product participating in a 100% capitalist market, and what both of you are calling 'socialist' is just a strategy for keeping their fully capitalist customers happy. You may think that has a 'socialist' attitude behind it but it has nothing to do with socialism the political strategy.

Also, the notion that 'capitalism' means zero restrictions on a free market is a recent colloquial idea. Capitalism by definition just means making profit off production that gets reinvested in making ever more profit. And socialism is almost always just about setting up different profit structures for capitalist practices. There are very few socialist practices/policies that aren't part of a fully capitalist framework (Pol Pot's communist Cambodia was one: every worker was forced to be a subsistence farmer who collectively grew enough to feed one another. No profits were involved, and the products were (in theory) distributed evenly to all.)