Was The Joker a socialist?
Barack Obama is a socialist! Those bailouts! Health care reform! Things said with exclamation points!!!
This is the charge most often levied against Obama. It has been stressed by Republican pundits (like Jonah Goldberg and Phylis Schlafly), repeated by Republican government officials, and even codified by the Republican National Committee. In February, “We are all Socialists Now” ran across the cover of Newsweek, and perhaps more powerfully, the meme has gone -gulp- viral. Most damning of all, Angelina Jolie thinks Barack Obama is a socialist. Angelina Jolie! She was Lara Croft: Tomb Raider! Exclamation Point!
Of course, equating health care reform to socialism is nothing new. Even Ronald Reagan put out a hit record on the subject. Still, the socialism-as-the-bogeyman zeitgeist feels more ubiquitous now. In truth, it seems like the only people left to think Obama and the country is not headed toward socialism are actual socialists.
Slumbering behind all of this talk is one assumption. Although, in the United States of America, calling it an assumption may be too non-committal. Behind all of this is one, let’s say, absolute given; one seemingly unchallenged, unassailed fact – namely: Socialism is bad. “Socialist” is a Scarlet Letter in this country, and something can only be that damning if everyone agrees that socialism is bad and capitalism is good. That seems to be exactly how America feels.
The American public is staunchly pro-capitalism, except for, interestingly enough, sports. The NFL, NBA, and NHL all have salary caps, set amounts of money that teams are allowed to spend to acquire players. That doesn’t sound very capitalistic. That doesn’t sound like free market economics. The NFL, America’s most watched sport, gets praised for parity, which is partially wrought by the salary cap. What is parity? Parity is defined by Slate’s Steven Landsburg as (emphasis mine):
sports-talk for a more equal distribution of talent among teams
That sounds eerily similar to one of the “four different principles upon which socialistic distribution can conceivably be based:”
equal distribution per head.
But there is one hold out – Baseball, the “National Pastime.” Major League Baseball does not have a salary cap: teams can spend as much as they like on players. That’s capitalism; that’s free market; that’s good, right? Not according to sports pundits. The Yankees recent World Series win has exacerbated the cries, no small task considering how loud the calls already were before this victory:
“At the rate the Yankees are going, I’m not sure anyone can compete with them. Frankly, the sport might need a salary cap.”
- Mark Attanasio, Owner, Milwaukee Brewers“We would love to have a salary cap but the union has been very resistant to that.”
– Drayton McLane, Owner, Houston Astros
Popular sports writer (and Machines lover) Joe Posnanski, in a recent post (that is best appreciated in full), amped up the salary cap fervor:
You have a sport where the New York Yankees — in large part because they are located in America’s largest city and they have baseball’s richest television contract — can viably spend tens of millions of dollars more than any other team to acquire baseball players. You have one team (and only one team) playing the video game on cheat-mode.
Why should this bother us? Why do we care that one team can earn and spend more money than others? Posnanski offers the succinct and intuitive explanation:
Now, the conceit of American professional sports is that every team has a chance. That is certainly the conceit of baseball — what the commissioner calls Hope on Opening Day.
Every team should have a chance. Everyone should be on a level playing field.
When it comes to sports, this is obvious to us. It’s obvious that there is an unfair payroll discrepancy between the Yankees and the Marlins. On a more basic level, it is obvious to us that the game should be fair. It seems intuitive that every team, in every sport should have as much of a chance as anyone else to win. The difference between a championship and a stinker of a season should be about talent, execution, and allocation. The fact that the Yankees play in New York, and the Royals in Kansas City, shouldn’t be the reason one team is great, while the other is unbelievably bad.
But if the sports salary cap concept is based on fairness, why does that not also apply to, well, life? I am not advocating a switch of the American economic system from capitalism to socialism, but I am asking the question: Why, in the realm of sports, is it obvious that success should come down as much as possible to talent and hard work, and not external factors, but in the world at large we let pedigree, birth, and social class dictate so much about one’s ability to succeed?
Why do we care so much more about the potential success of the Baltimore Ravens than about kids from inner city Baltimore? Why don’t we care that they don’t get to play on a level playing field?
To read more about the topics raised in this week’s Vertex Point, check out all the related Vertex Tangents:
Etan Bednarsh is a comedian and writer living in New York City. He has written, successfully on occasion, to many publications and is generally well liked, especially by his friends. He wants you to 
Twitter
Facebook
Blogroll Link Update
