Tiger Woods Makes How Much??

“I can’t believe that America pays athletes and movie stars so much!”

The presumption in this statement is that “America” is some single entity that has decided it values athletes more than police or teachers and that if only “America” changed its mind, this could somehow be “fixed.” However the reality is that in economics, having an available substitute usually drives prices down. For example, despite the importance of Police Officer Smith’s job, he is far easier to replace than Michael Jordan. The same can be said for teachers, nurses, firemen and even soldiers. In most cases, there is no shortage of applicants possessing the necessary skills to fill these important roles.

The movie-star effect is also a product of mass media. There are two ways to get rich: bring a million dollars’ worth of value to one person, or bring a dollar’s worth of value to millions of people. When an actor’s effectiveness was limited to the number of people you could fit in a single theater, their economic position was similarly poorer. Once they were able to bring their performance to millions of people through movie reels, their value and wealth increased dramatically.

So, why are athletes paid so much? Because you, me and millions of other people are willing to pay a few dollars for their performance, and that adds up. But when someone complains about their salaries, what are they suggesting? Are they willing to launch a campaign to convince millions of people to stop paying to watch sporting events? Or are they suggesting that by fiat, dictate or some other law we should place a cap on how much we value those individuals?

I’m often torn on whether people who make such statements are simply ignorant of basic economics or truly desire to wield power over others to bring into existence their own world view. I’d prefer to think it’s the former.

Regression to Serfdom

The market has failed. That's a frequent justification for expanding the powers granted to politicians. But how has the market failed? By who's standards? When we miss a hole in one do we talk about "physics failure?" Or if we can't balance the checkbook is it a "failure of mathematics?" What it really means is that people's interactions haven't produced the results the speaker wanted. But how often do these same folks talk about legislative failure? About programs and politics that have unintended consequences?

These days it is rare that people seize power by force of arms. The people violently wrested power from the ruling class in a series of revolts over hundreds of years. Now, the approach of the ruling class is to convince the people to freely gift that power back to the government, where it can be conveniently bought and sold. As I've said before, when you hear "the free market has failed" just mentally substitute "freedom has failed" and you'll begin to see through the lies used to convince us to return to serfdom.

"Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It's the unspoken truth of humanity, that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled." - Loki

Surplus Population

Catholic.org had an interesting article pointing out that Obamacare will pay for sterilizations of teens as young as 15 without parental consent (probably due to an unintentional combination of laws which simply proves the Law of Unintended Consequences).  Combine that with a Secretary of HHS who looks at abortion as a source of tax savings and you've got a pretty chilling worldview shaping up on the left: a worldview that simply doesn't value human life.