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beautifulgame
Guest
It's actually funny. They don't give a rat's arse about all the monopolistic mega corporations dominating their economy, but when it comes to sports they act like frikkin socialists.
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Bayern München
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AfricanBavarian
New member
It's actually funny. They don't give a rat's arse about all the monopolistic mega corporations dominating their economy, but when it comes to sports they act like frikkin socialists.
Post of the year
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beautifulgame
Guest
Post of the year
yes. best post!!!
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Ryu Hayabusa
Guest
Well, thank you, I guess. 
footyfan
Calma, calma
It's actually funny. They don't give a rat's arse about all the monopolistic mega corporations dominating their economy, but when it comes to sports they act like frikkin socialists.
Ignorance and poor sense of judgment.
There have been tons of articles in the American media about mega corporations, specially in the technology sector when referring to Google's increasing monopoly over the internet.
Besides, the views of one author (in this case the one who wrote the Bayern article) are in no way statistically significant for your hyperbolic blanket statement to be valid.
I understand that the notion of salary caps that routinely exist in American sports may be viewed as socialistic, however the intent behind it is to keep the respective sports leagues as competitive as possible with the ultimate goal being to generate as much revenue as possible.
footyfan
Calma, calma
Upon second reading, I don't even see much wrong with the article itself. If you ignore the author's choice of the word "greediest" in his headline, it is actually a pretty factual piece with barely any form of opinion expressed that may be construed as grating or controversial.
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Ryu Hayabusa
Guest
Not sure if serious...
Salary Cap, Draft with the weakest being clearly favored are as socialist, as you can get in terms of sports.
Why do you think there was never a dynasty in US-Sport except for when one or 2-3 individuals of extraordinary talent in the respective sport (e.g. Michael Jordan and the likes) felt a certain loyalty towards their club? If the rest of the world is basically of no concern to you since your league has a de facto monopol anyways, you can enforce such socialist rules to keep excitement etc.
But if your nation's league is part of the European conglomerat of football leagues within the framework of the UEFA and their transnational competitions, you would be MAD to allow such domestic restrictions, cause that would literally cut you off from international success. And nowadays everything that brings true glory to a football club is on the international level.
As for the articles about the banksters and such... yeah, I've read them as well. And who exactly has done anything? The government is powerless towards the establishment of Wall Street, the Federal Reserve and all the other mono- or oligopolistic entities that govern the US economy. Oh, ok... you had the Occupy movement which was inspired by Democracia Real ya. And what happened to them? There was a federal crackdown and they eventually ran out of steam. But even that movement represented only a fraction of the people. So consequently it is absolutely ok to generalize, the American people turn a blind eye towards their government and central bank, selling themselves out to the interests of mega corporations. I'm sorry mate, but your country is done for in terms of liberty, equality and basically everything related to the so-called American Dream.
Oh and obviously you didn't notice... the original statement was meant as a jest.
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footyfan
Calma, calma
Firstly, I'm not American.
Secondly, apologies if my comment came off as harsh, that wasn't my intention. It was a little late and I was probably cranky.
Thirdly,
This is exactly what I was talking about. These rules are necessary in American sports because of the unique situation that the leagues are in, barely anyone outside the US watches them. The sports culture is such that uncompetitive matches are bad for both teams, so such socialistic policies are necessary for both teams, it's not borne out of a desire to spread the wealth around. It's borne out of a desire to increase the size of the money pie itself. And you can see it's working out quite well for them when you notice that the list of most valuable sports teams are filled with American franchises.
Another way the leagues are unique is that the number of available teams itself is a lot smaller. They cannot afford to lose any team to bankruptcy, that would reduce revenues for all the teams because less ticket sales. It's a very simplistic explanation but just as valid.
That's all well and good, and I don't actually see anyone disagreeing with that. Nobody is advocating for salary caps or any such thing in football. One thing I would like to point out is that having a more competitive domestic league (Bundesliga in Germany's case) would automatically raise the glory and euphoria of winning it (in reference to your second sentence),
The Federal Reserve is one of the smartest and most creative groups of economists in the world. I really think you should find out more about what they can and cannot control. There will be tons of people who will say that they were responsible for the crisis by keeping interest rates too low for so long, that they were encouraging risky spending, but the truth is that most of the portions of the economy were benefiting big time from it. The housing market bust (for which you could partly pin the blame on the Fed) escalated into a global financial crisis only because there were not enough safeguards in the financial sector, and that a lot of the people involved were lying and cheating. That is something the Fed has no control over.
Anyway, I'm going off topic.
To summarize, Americans have always had a free market policy and it would be the same in their sports leagues as well except that wouldn't really work out in the way they would want, i.e higher revenues.
Apologies again if I came off caustic.
Secondly, apologies if my comment came off as harsh, that wasn't my intention. It was a little late and I was probably cranky.
Thirdly,
This is exactly what I was talking about. These rules are necessary in American sports because of the unique situation that the leagues are in, barely anyone outside the US watches them. The sports culture is such that uncompetitive matches are bad for both teams, so such socialistic policies are necessary for both teams, it's not borne out of a desire to spread the wealth around. It's borne out of a desire to increase the size of the money pie itself. And you can see it's working out quite well for them when you notice that the list of most valuable sports teams are filled with American franchises.
Another way the leagues are unique is that the number of available teams itself is a lot smaller. They cannot afford to lose any team to bankruptcy, that would reduce revenues for all the teams because less ticket sales. It's a very simplistic explanation but just as valid.
That's all well and good, and I don't actually see anyone disagreeing with that. Nobody is advocating for salary caps or any such thing in football. One thing I would like to point out is that having a more competitive domestic league (Bundesliga in Germany's case) would automatically raise the glory and euphoria of winning it (in reference to your second sentence),
The Federal Reserve is one of the smartest and most creative groups of economists in the world. I really think you should find out more about what they can and cannot control. There will be tons of people who will say that they were responsible for the crisis by keeping interest rates too low for so long, that they were encouraging risky spending, but the truth is that most of the portions of the economy were benefiting big time from it. The housing market bust (for which you could partly pin the blame on the Fed) escalated into a global financial crisis only because there were not enough safeguards in the financial sector, and that a lot of the people involved were lying and cheating. That is something the Fed has no control over.
Anyway, I'm going off topic.
To summarize, Americans have always had a free market policy and it would be the same in their sports leagues as well except that wouldn't really work out in the way they would want, i.e higher revenues.
Apologies again if I came off caustic.
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AnfieldEd
I am Leg End
LOL what no dynasties in American sports history? I suggest you do your history.
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Ryu Hayabusa
Guest
Don't worry. No harm done.
All true and reasonable thoughts. Maybe one should add that most (all?) clubs are owned by one or a couple of very wealthy individuals (a business model which also seems to establish itself in European football - sadly).
But then again, I was joking when writing the original statement.
Funny you should mention that. In Germany there ARE actually those who advocate such ideas in light of Bayern's newly found domestic dominance.
Yeah, even if that is most likely true, we still have to ask the question WHO are these "smart" people working for? As you possibly know, the Fed is not a federal institution per se in terms of it being fully owned by the federal government, but actually Wall Street private banks. The Fed was largely responsible for the two major economic crises in the last 100 years, the Great Depression and 2008, mostly due to an unreasonable policy of dirt cheap money (I could explain that in greater detail, but I have done that so often by now, I'm getting sick of it and doing it all in English is also quite exhausting) in the approx. 10 years prior to the eventual collapse. Now, we are STILL in a period of cheap (cheapest actually) money, which Helicopter Ben justified by merely applying Milton Friedman's theory of monetarism. However, just as with Keynes, people in power have a habit of never fully following the advice those great thinkers left us. In this case, Ben did much more than Friedman adviced. But again, explaining that in greater detail... not really gonna happen, since it's highly off-topic and somewhat exhausting. So but obviously private banks have an interest in dirt cheap money. And so does the federal government, which doesn't give a single crap about their excessive spending and debts. Inflating the currency given the unique position the Dollar is in obviously is one way of helping (and yes, I'm aware of the inflation statistics supposedly pointing to the contrary, but the Fed cleverly changed their methods of coming up with said number a couple of years ago and they don't even give information about the overall Dollar amount in fluctuation anymore - wonder why?).
But who loses in all that? The American people, who are robbed blind, since they can buy less and less with their hard-earned Dollars.
Anyways...
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Ryu Hayabusa
Guest
Rarely and mostly only for 2-3 years, which I mentioned.
AfricanBavarian
New member
In the NFL where parity is strictly enforced dynasties are like you said 2-3 years but in the NBA and MLB where parity is a little looser and the salary cap restrictions arent tight dynasties have formed in Chicago Bulls, LA Lakers, NY Yankees and Miami Heat potentially. But like someone mentioned since the NFL has a low audience globally its no surprise it has the strictest rules to make sure parity is kept in check
Luftstalag14
Culé de Celestial Empire
What's so wrong with socialist policies and practices? Is socialist such a dirty word these days?
AfricanBavarian
New member
Of course it is!
Jk! I agree its funny any use if socialist will pretty much red flag you to the public but why the fuck are we discussing this in a football forum
DennyCrane
Senior Member
It's a political fighting term to implicate that the person spoken to has no knowledge of basic economics. Mostly because the self proclaimed socialist regimes of the past (and we're always talking about the past) were a thinly veiled front for autocratic tendencies with economical mismanagement galore. Looking at Europe these days, we learned that it doesn't take a socialist to run a country into bankruptcy.
Fun Trivia: In Germany, which always tried to find a reasonable middleground between the two extremes of capitalism and socialism - thus dubbing it social market economy - it were actually the capitalists within the social democratic / socialist party supported by the socialists within the social democratic / socialist party and the make-believe socialists of the green party who shifted the balance towards moar capitalism by deregulating the banking sector and the insurance industry and cutting down social welfare.
Hence, the term is devoid of all meaning in modern politics.
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