Shorter director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom: True freedom is allowing an illegal cartel to rig a labor market.
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“And Georgia fans, don’t be turds. Enjoy this. Soak it up. It’s awesome. If you don’t win this year, it’s still not a failure. It’s a heck of a run. Back-to-back in the Playoff era hasn’t been done. So, to ask for a third I feel like it’s gluttonous. I feel like it’s not OK. But we’ll be in the mix.”-- David Pollack, On3.com, 5/9/23
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Get The Picture · Bloviation for the Dawgnation
Get The Picture 
Cato is not libertarian. It’s Libertarian. There’s a huge difference. The only logically consistent libertarian philosophy is voluntaryism. But let’s be honest with ourselves, Senator: You’ve never actually been a libertarian.
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Never? How long have you known me?
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HootyHoo, you ignorant slut. Voluntaryism is a subset of libertarianism. Cato certainly falls under the libertarian umbrella. Anybody who did not just recently fall off the libertarian turnip truck knows that the big-L refers to the party.
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I’d say voluntaryism is more of an anarchic philosophy than libertarian.
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I don’t see that article as a libertarian thinking. Collusion, is not libertarian, IMO. Of course, many are against our anti-trust laws. I don’t see much good or anything libertarian about power being in the hands of a few whether that is big government or big business. Today, both big government and big business that colludes or controls a market are a threat to freedom everywhere.
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Cato would disagree with you.
It’s the kind of thinking that’s hijacked libertarian policy over the past couple of decades and no amount of hairsplitting over whether the term is capitalized or not changes that.
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Frankly, I don’t know the difference between a capitalized libertarian and a lowercase one. But I do know what liberty is… and the NCAA is anti-liberty and so was that article. IMO, that makes them both anti-libertarian. Libertarian never meant no government. Otherwise, theives, murderers, colluders, monopolies all will have too much power and control over the public. Goverment way overregulates many things but when it comes to anti-trust laws (and a few others), our government often pretends they do not exists… till it becomes a political necessity (see big social media tech companies).
I agree that conservatism, classical liberalism, Democratic liberalism and libertarianism have all been hijacked over the last 20 years or so.
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I’m sure the writer would point you back to his interpretation of the distinction between California state government compulsion and ncaa compulsion. The latter is voluntary on all levels, (me) recognizing YMMV.
How one thinks of it is kind of all part and parcel of larger discussions on anti-trust laws, interpretation and enforcement thereof. Part of the reason anti-trust is a problem out of the gate is that we (and our congress) are probably incapable of putting strictly defined parameters on it–maybe because there is too much risk (exceptions swallowing the rule, bad actors falling out of bounds) or maybe it’s simply all bad law because our statutes are too aspirational and punt to the courts and agencies to enforce things on what feels like a “know it when I see it” basis (like porn, right). So, yes it is the bargain we have struck (political necessity) to try and craft the right balance between big government and big private actors. I think we’ve done relatively OK on that front.
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Not for the players.
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They are required to play football at an NCAA member institution?
😲
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Exactly, Mike. This is why I don’t think the good Senator has ever actually been a libertarian. You don’t up and forget the difference between voluntary and involuntary. You just never understood the difference to begin with. But, no. As a libertarian I don’t like Cato or its “libertarian policies,” which is an oxymoron.
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If you’re saying I never espoused the same kind of libertarianism you do, you may be right.
If you’re saying that your form of libertarianism is the only form, you certainly aren’t.
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They are required to give up economic rights that belong to them without their consent in order to do so.
Not sure why this is so hard for some of you to grasp. Unless you don’t want to, of course.
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Again, no one is putting a gun to the kids’ heads and telling them to play bigtime football at an NCAA school – if they want to go to college and play football or basketball too, they can go to an NAIA school, a junior college, play club football, etc. The reason many/most/almost all these kids are going to bigtime football and basketball schools is so they get the opportunity to go to the pros. You want to hammer the NCAA all the time for using the misleading phrase “student athlete”, but the student-athletes themselves are complicit in the degradation of the term. While, the NCAA, schools and pro leagues are mostly responsible for this limbo and sad state of affairs, let’s not kid ourselves: some of the blame does belong to the kids who – totally understandably – look at bigtime college athletics as a chance to make a career. Again though, it is a choice they are making voluntarily….
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I understand the point you continue to repeat, as if that is fully determinate of the situation. At this point, best we agree to disagree.
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The schools get to choose whether to have teams. Isn’t that voluntary too??
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It’s for the kids dammit!
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I agree with what the bill wants to do but Cato asks a legit question- why is it ok for a state to force a private university to do this? I get public but not the private schools. They can do as they see fit. The state should neither compel them nor bail them out
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Remember, by “this”, you mean illegally collude to fix the labor market.
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To me you would be a lot more convincing if you would have been making these complaints 20 or 30 years ago as well.
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No, I wouldn’t. 😉
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Well I could at lest say you had been consistent.
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🙂
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“…why is it ok for a state to force a private university to do this?”
As I understand the California Bill – caveat: I haven’t read the bill myself, but am relying on interpretations of people I tend to trust – the bill does not require a public or private university to do anything in particular. What it does is say that an NCAA rule that prohibits an athlete profiting from his image or likeness is illegal.
So, Stanford, for example could say ‘we will not give scholarships to athletes unless they agree not to accept any profit from their image or likeness’. That would be suicide, of course, but they could do that.
We think of this a little too much in a pure football world. This law applies to all athletes, basketball, baseball, hockey, swimming, diving, track, field, etc. California is a state that is covered up in athletes that we may not know much about but who have local marketability. Most of the arguments against it betray a concern that is mostly “I love my football. Don’t screw it up for me.” But that was what the concern was in 1984 when the NCAA monopoly on TV rights was blown up, and it hasn’t happened that way. The Andy Schwarz that the Senator has linked elsewhere is pretty spot on, too.
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If anybody bothers to read the article to the very end, the writer clearly expresses his disdain for both the NCAA and the state of California.
In the case of this legislation where the state is not only dictating to their institutions, but also the private ones, he finds the NCAA to be lesser of two really crappy evils.
It’s not so much of a libertarian issue since, in a more libertarian world, these wasteful state-run universities would not exist in their current overindulgent form anyway, which is what makes the NCAA’s excessive power possible in the first place.
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I bothered to read the article to the bitter end. He made a choice that it’s better to let institutions collude than it is to let S-As operate in a free market like he does.
Freedom for me, but not for thee, unless you can stick it to labor, is very on point for Cato, so, yeah, I’d say it’s how current libertarian thinking goes. YMMV.
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You use the term free market. But I don’t think it means what you think it means.
If you want to place your trust in the wise and benevolent politicians of California, rather than the wise and benevolent bureaucrats of the NCAA, feel free. But don’t pretend that you’re occupying the moral high ground.
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LMAO. Who said anything about morality?
This is nothing but sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander. If a coach can put his face on a Ford ad, no reason a player shouldn’t be able to do the same thing.
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Fair enough. If you’re simply arguing that you want the coercive power of government to choose different winners and losers than they are currently choosing, that’s a fine argument. And one that will never be settled. The losers will always want to flip the script.
But you seem to be going further and arguing that the NCAA, rather than simply being an inconvenient obstacle for the coercive aims of California politicians, is a bad actor. If I’ve misread you, I apologize.
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You’re full of chuckles today.
Violating established federal law makes the NCAA a bad actor per se, regardless of how you or I want to characterize it.
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You’re better versed on the law than I. But if the NCAA is violating the law, why is California passing a new law to force change? Why not simply enforce the current law?
Regardless, I’m more interested in morality than legality. The same people you’re relying on to protect athlete’s rights are the same people regulating cow farts. That makes the government a bad actor per se.
So again, you’re just down to an enemy of an enemy calculation while trying to portray it as something more righteous.
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How does the state of California enforce federal antitrust law?
Your morality, that is. But I’m the one who’s being righteous. Got it.
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You dismiss my morality, I dismiss yours. Easy. At least mine doesn’t involve violence. I’m always distrustful of people who argue their violence is good violence used for the benefit of the downtrodden and helpless.
But hey, if you think the same folks who banned straws are the best arbiters of what is fair and what is just, I suppose we’ll just agree to disagree.
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When California sends jackbooted thugs to Stanford, you can say you told me so.
In the meantime, isn’t it great how the NCAA got the FBI to go after shoe company people for giving kids money to attend schools that wanted them?
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Ah, so if you hand over your wallet BEFORE actually being shot, it’s just a voluntary transaction? Interesting take.
And yes, government is a useful tool to bring unwilling folks to heel. I’ve always acknowledged that. I’m simply arguing that using force to accomplish Gavin Newsome’s goals isn’t any more fair or just than using force to accomplish Mark Emmert’s goals. If anything, Emmert may be the better actor since his goals aren’t usually accomplished through violence, unlike Newsome’s.
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At least Newsome has to comply with the 5th and 14th Amendments of the Constitution, unlike Emmert.
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The only thing better than someone having a gun pointed at your head, yet having some restrictions (theoretically) on when he can use it, is not having a gun pointed at your head at all.
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If your point is the only way markets can be truly free is if no government exists, you got me.
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The state has a monopoly on violence (there’s a real libertarian phrase for you!) and, if they aren’t going to send the jackboots into Stanford to enforce the law, why are they passing such a law in the first place??? One of the biggest problems we have today is people think “just pass a law to fix this thing I don’t like,” without realizing that actually enforcing said law (maybe even against someone they know) can result in the police kicking down your door, marching them off to jail, and having a prosecutor, judge and jury throw the book at them.
P.S., the NCAA doesn’t have to comply with the 5th and 14th Amendments to the US Constitution because it is not a governmental actor…
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The fact that the law doesn’t go into effect until 2023 should give you a hint about that.
BTW, thanks for the P.S. Must have been asleep for a whole semester in my Con Law class. //sarcasm
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Oh, so the law’s not going to take effect until 2023 – so what’s the point, and why all the hoopla? Politicians get to beat their chests about “doing something” (in 5 years!) and when 5 years rolls around and nothing’s changed and people realize its about to get real, I’d be willing to bet on “kick the can down the road another 5 years” every time!
I was pretty much asleep through my Con Law classes, so I’m still not sure why you felt the need to even bring up the 5th and 14th Amendments in reference to players getting paid….
While the government can certainly force you to sell it your property (the 5th Amendment simply requires that a “fair” price be paid), the NCAA cannot force anyone to do anything. Again, kids are free to play college football for NAIA schools, on club teams, in independent leagues, etc. – the NCAA doesn’t have a monopoly on football for young men in college; what it does have, is a near monopoly (I think there have been a few foreign players drafted in the past several years) on getting talent ready for the NFL, which is where the rub is….
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“When it is not clear what the right policy is—and it is not obvious that compensation should outweigh competitive balance, or even a spirit of amateurism—it is better to let individual athletes, schools, and organizations make independent decisions.”
Better to let individual athletes make independent decisions. He actually wrote that without irony.
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Individuals can make independent decisions – they can choose whether they want to participate in intercollegiate athletics, or not…
While everyone likes to focus on the schools using the kids, the kids are also using the schools to audition for the NFL and NBA, and the NFL and NBA are using the schools and the kids to keep the cost of their development leagues down. No doubt the kids are getting used the most, but there is enough blame, hypocrisy, distaste to go around to everyone that it is starting to effect college football and basketball, in my opinion.
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But they can’t make an independent decision to play college athletics and retain their NLI rights, like you and I — or their fellow students, for that matter — do.
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Like everything in life, there are tradeoffs – and there are definitely some big tradeoffs in playing big time college athletics or not. I lived in McWhorter back in the day, and I can tell you the athletes were reelin’ in a lot more ladies than us non-athletes, if you know what I mean – that’s one tradeoff. Another might be that athletes get shuffled into a crappy academic major so that they can major in sports, while non-athletes might major in “real” academic subjects though – am i making more than probably 95% of the guys who were living in McWhorter when I was there? Yes. Are the few guys who I lived with in McWhorter who made it in the pros and were successful in the NFL, NBA (might not have had any of those) and MLB making a lot more than me? Also yes. There were tradeoffs for all of us. Did any of us have any idea how life would turn out for us? No.
As I said above, the kids use the schools to get to the pros too – when they’re in school, many of them don’t mind the crappy majors, because they recognize that they are majoring in sports, because they want to make it to the pros and, in that event, academics won’t matter. It’s only later, when they get hurt, don’t make it to the pros, or bust out after making the league minimum for 2 or 3 years, that they realize majoring in sports wasn’t such a good idea.
Ideally, it would it be great if we had all honor roll kids majoring in biology representing us on the athletic fields, and they were devoting 40 hours a week to schoolwork and 10 to sports. While many of us say (or romanticize) that that is the world many we want to live in, that world is likely not compatible with one where 90,000+ show up for a football game (or our love of college athletics)…
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Life is about tradeoffs. I don’t see how that justifies singling out S-As and denying them free market rights the rest of us enjoy.
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Exactly. I got a full-ride scholarship to UGA, which I’m thankful for to this day. But if I needed money to put gas in my car or take a girl to Last Resort, I had to find it elsewhere. Thankfully, I had time to work at the R&B and hold down a summer job or two, but between their grueling class/practice hours and the NCAA’s arbitrary limitations, football players don’t have that option. So what are they supposed to do? Saying “Well, they’ll just end up making that paper in the NFL” isn’t an excuse for keeping them broke while they’re in school.
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Wasn’t COA invented for your problem?
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If these kids had any sense they’d sign up with a professional league. They’d know the value of these kids to their bottom line!!
They know they are valued on the open market at LESS than the money colleges dedicate to them.
That’s the market. That’s reality.
If a pro league signed kids out of HS they’d go broke and we all know it.
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On one hand, we have a two party system where the parties each agree to take half our income in order to fund bankrupt entitlements, endless wars, and to dictate every minutiae of our lives to us. On the other, there is a different philosophy arguing in favor of liberty. Even if that sometimes means that people are free to be jerks, even though they wouldn’t have the coercive force of government subjugating others.
Nah. That’s crazy talk. Best to stick with the first system. If Nancy Pelosi can’t solve all our problems, surely Liz Cheney can.
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McCluskey’s reasoning is accurate, however. The best way to achieve these goals is for popular opinion to push the NCAA and colleges to change their own policies. College football is not a government institution. I suppose public universities being government institutions, however, could be treated differently.
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I have never really been a libertarian, but I know several smart people who were libertarians until they studied the economic effects of monopoly and collusion.
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I’ve had the opposite experience.
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Mental exercise:
You are in charge of marketing for Acme Sports, Collegiate Division. You have the choice of signing:
Jerry Rice who has signed an NLI to but not yet enrolled at Mississippi Valley State
Walter Payton who has signed an NLI to but not yet enrolled at Jackson State
Isaiah Crowell who has signed an NLI to but not yet enrolled at UGA.
If you pick anyone but Crowell you are a liar or a fool or both.
The school built that stage your product will be displayed on. Jerry Rice and Walter Payton did not change their colleges fortunes at all, but are among the best 5 players ever.
And the truth is that even if you could read the future you’d still pick the fucking failure at UGA because you’re moving more product in his few months connected to UGA than you are ever selling of Rice and Payton college related gear.
It IS about the front of the fucking jersey.
Mental exercise #2
Same circumstances but now they’ve finished their freshman year. You can have either:
Joe Cox hasn’t played
Steve McNair who has broken records at Alcorn State
Dante Culpepper of the then independent FCS team called UCF?
Who are you going with? Whether you do it with or without a crystal ball the answer will be Joe Cox. Why? More eyes. More fans. More sales.
It’s not because Joe is the better qb. Not even fucking close. It’s not about performance. It’s not about ability. In short, it ain’t a bout the player. He can add some value, no doubt, but you take Marcus Dupree from Norman to Hattiesburg and all of a sudden he has disappeared along with your investment.
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You need to broaden your exercise, Derek. This is something I excerpted in a prior post:
The market works in lots of ways.
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If course it does. Are there people who would hand a local hero some cash, take his photo and write off the business expense? Of course. Not exactly market economics.
One of the reasons I have a problem with this concept is the fact the Alabama fans who are business owners will flood targeted recruits with money offers….conditional money offers.
Those offers will reflect the business owner’s love of Bama, not their view of the kids abilities to move product. That is also not a market.
I get that there is an appearance of unfairness. Let the schools buy the players palaces to live in. Let them take them to class by limo. Let them have caviar Tuesday. Spoil the fuck out of them. Just don’t make them pros in any respect and understand that the girls soccer team eats caviar too.
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How is “if you come to Alabama to play football, I’ll pay you $100K” not a market? It’s two consenting parties making a contract.
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I define “market” as someone investing $X and expecting $Y in return, whether realized or not. If it’s a market, both must be money and Y should be expected to be greater than X.
In your scenario, it’s not about money and X will always be greater than Y. No functioning markets work that way.
Would you buy stock in a company that paid for college football players to go to USC? No. Why? Because it’s just waste that has nothing to do with earnings. Obviously the ones who would be engaged in this sort of thing would be closely or privately held companies who just don’t give a shit about taking a few bucks off their bottom line for the good of their fave college football team.
Moreover, you tell me what Jacob Eason or Trevor Lawrence would have attracted in money offers before they set foot on campus. The bidding war would be ludicrous and far exceed anything to do with real value. In other words the same dynamics that led to salary caps so that owners would artificially be protected from their own stupidity.
An Alabama alum illicitly paid 100k to Albert Means’ HS coach over 20 years ago. Now add its legal and you have competition i.e., many potential buyers instead of one or two. It would be insane not better.
Then you add the problem of the Antonio Brown’s and Leveon Bell’s and Terrell Owens’ of the world renegotiating weekly.
I can just see a star who knows he has everyone by the balls saying:
“I’ve got all the money I need. I think I might just sit this Championship/rivalry game out. Hammy is a bit tight. But now if someone wants to show me enough love, and when I say love I mean cash, I might fight through and help us win Saturday. As Nick says: fans, do you want to be No. 1 or not? Do you have that commitment? I guess we’ll see. Call my agent. He has a credit card machine ready to take your donation to the cause of me. And we both love me some me.”
If it’s a market and he’s a pro, why not?
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Jesus, dude, just say you don’t want players to be paid and be done with it. You are babbling about economics and markets here.
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I don’t have an issue with a stipend. You can call it a “salary” if you like. But what UGA pays the qb should be the same as UK pays its baseball players. It’s not about the money per se. My objection is to “professionalism” of sports on a college campus. If we want to have colleges lend out its name and stadium to a private corporation who is responsible for fielding a team that may or may not have college students on it, then let’s go that way. At least then it is what we say it is: a minor league for football.
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I’m guessing you don’t know much about marketing. I can make a helluva lot more marketing the great small school guys than I could off the good others.
In your two scenarios, I pay more to sign McNair than any of the rest.
Would be an interesting market, guys like Crowell should sign a deal before playing a down where small school guys would stand to make huge money by waiting a year or two.
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