socialism and baseball – USA Gov Policy

The question of “Tanking” has arisen. “Tanking” is the practice of a team intentionally taking steps that almost guarantee a losing season, under the premise that he owners are actually saving up cash or acquiring higher draft picks for the future. CBS Sports, in a 2018 analysis, noted that “It’s time to reassess the practice of tanking… and recognize it for what it is: cover for profit-hungry owners to line their pockets, at the expense of their own fans’ entertainment.” Those owners don’t have to worry about depriving their fanbase of a competitive team, discouraging them from attending games; revenue sharing dollars will come in anyway.

How bad was tanking in 2018? Last August, Baseball America’s Kyle Glaser reported: “ How bad can a tank job get in 2018? The answer, apparently, is historically bad. After an offseason where “tanking” was the word on everyone’s mind, Major League Baseball is on track to see a nearly unprecedented amount of losing. Since adopting a 162-game schedule in 1961, MLB has never had more than two 110-loss teams in a season. It is currently on pace to tie that record. In that same time, MLB has never had more than four 100-loss teams in a season. It is currently on pace to tie that record as well.”

2018 wasn’t the first time revenue sharing was sharply questioned. In 2010, The New York Times’s J.C. Bradbury reported: “Despite the good intentions behind revenue sharing, doling out money to baseball’s have-nots has the unintended consequence of creating a disincentive to win. Though the correlation is not perfect, winning tends to attract fans, which increases local revenue. But a healthier bottom line means drawing less from the revenue-sharing pool. The quandary faced by poor-and-losing teams is that using the added wealth to improve their clubs increases local earnings, but these gains may be offset by reducing revenue-sharing payments.

“In my book on valuing baseball players, I estimated the relationship between winning and revenue for M.L.B. teams. The revenue function shows disparate responses to winning at various levels of success, which support the notion that revenue sharing discourages improvement. The function shows that improving from a mid-60s-win team to a mid-70s-win team generates financial losses. The observed revenue bump from losing is consistent with the hypothesized disincentive to win when teams face a cut in revenue sharing. I refer to this region as the loss trap, because improving your team over this range of wins can cost you money.

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“Also, strong returns to winning do not kick in until a team hits the mid-80s in wins. Losing teams might improve their financial standing somewhat if they improved drastically, but transforming a loser to a winner does not happen overnight and cannot be willed into existence. Thus, the safety net offered by revenue sharing encourages teams to remain perpetually bad.”

There are lessons far beyond the sports world in why the equal outcomes idea, and other socialism and “socialism light” ideas fail.

Mark J. Perry, writing for the American Enterprise Institute explains:

“Socialism does not work because it is not consistent with fundamental principles of human behavior. The failure of socialism in countries around the world can be traced to one critical defect: it is a system that ignores incentives. In a capitalist economy, incentives are of the utmost importance. Market prices, the profit-and-loss system of accounting, and private property rights provide an efficient, interrelated system of incentives to guide and direct economic behavior. Capitalism is based on the theory that incentives matter! Under socialism, incentives either play a minimal role or are ignored totally…By failing to emphasize incentives, socialism is a theory inconsistent with human nature and is therefore doomed to fail. Socialism is based on the theory that incentives don’t matter!”

Photo: Pixabay

America’s long tradition as “The Land of Opportunity” is being replaced by the new philosophy of “equal outcomes,” regardless of the effort put in. The attempt to implement this idea, akin to the growing popularity of socialism, has already found a home in one of the nation’s most beloved institutions: Major League Baseball (MLB).

The results have not been good.

MLB’s luxury tax and revenue sharing practices are also known as a “competitive balance tax.” Proponents of the concept allege that it was necessary to allow teams in smaller cities to play more competitively against big-city teams. Hal Steinbrenner, a co-owner of one of those big-city teams, The New York Yankees, disagrees with the idea. The National Review quotes him as stating “At some point, if you don’t want to worry about teams in minor markets, don’t put teams in minor markets, or don’t leave teams in minor markets if they’re truly minor…Socialism, communism, whatever you want to call it, is never the answer.”

Whatever label is placed on the concept, it has not achieved the results it was supposed to, and has in fact produced a whole new set of problems.

William Ryan Colby, in a paper presented to the e Department of Economics at Amherst College noted that “In 1996, Major League Baseball introduced its first system of comprehensive revenue sharing with the goal of creating more competitive balance in the league. the marginal tax rates created by MLB’s revenue sharing systems have actually worsened balance in the league. Although the most recent sharing system begins to realign incentives, it still risks “turning a ‘good’ imbalance into a ‘bad one” by subsidizing poorly managed teams at the expense of well run teams… the incentive structures created by MLB revenue sharing had the anticipated negative effects on competitive balance.

How the system has worked in practice is described by NBC sports “MLB teams participate in revenue sharing, a system that redistributes income from the richest franchises to their less profitable partners in an attempt to improve competitive balance. Under the 2012–2016 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), each team contributes 34 percent of its net local revenue into a pool that gets divided equally among every team. Higher-earning clubs put in more than they get back while lower-earning clubs receive more than they put in…Over the past four years the Marlins, Rays, Royals, Padres and A’s among other teams received a combined $642 million dollars. The franchises that keep on giving to them are the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Giants. The mountain of cash deposited since 2012 i[reached] a staggering $1.15 billion [by 2016]”

A list of World Series winners since 1996 clearly demonstrates that the revenue-sharing scheme has not achieved its goals. Instead, it has ushered in a whole new set of problems.

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There have been complaints that the organization that have received the revenue sharing have pocketed the money rather than invest in building more competitive teams. Indeed, it appears that some small market teams apparently no longer worry about trying to effectively compete, because even if attendance falls off due to poor play, revenue will still flow to them from revenue sharing.

Russ Roberts, writing for CafeHayek explains: “Even if the Yankees [a big-market, big spending team] share their revenue equally with other teams, the beneficiaries of that subsidy may decide to simply pocket it rather than making their teams more competitive. Revenue sharing does reward mediocrity and punish excellence and as the amount of sharing grows, the potential harm from that perverse incentive gets worse.”

According to some, that diminished devotion to meaningful competition means that teams, both in large markets and small, feel free to be less generous with player salaries.

A 2018 CBS Sports report reported that “According to the Associated Press, the average MLB salary decreased from 2017-18. It’s only the fourth time in the last half-century the average salary decreased from one year to the next…The [MLB Players Association (MLBPA)] said…its final [2018] average was $4,095,686, down $1,436 from $4,097,122 last year. Since the union started keeping track in 1967, the only previous declines had been by $66 in 1987, when owners were found to have conspired to hold down salaries among free agents; a 4 percent decline in 1995 following a 7½-month strike that wiped out the World Series for the first time since 1904; and by 2.5 percent in 2004.”

The MLBPA voiced concern that several organizations, including at least one that received up to $160 million, were pocketing the cash and not using it to enhance their team.

The Report concludes tomorrow.

Photo: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

Part 2: America’s Strategic Posture

As we noted in Part 1, the dramatically deteriorating national security picture for the United States and its allies prompted a review of “America’s Strategic Posture.” We present Part 2, reviewing key strategic points. STRATEGY To achieve the most effective strategy for stability in light of the 2027-2035 threat environment, the Commission identifies three necessary changes: ` The United States must develop and effectively implement a truly integrated, whole-of-government strategy to address the 2027-2035 threat environment. The objectives of U.S. strategy must include effective deterrence and defeat of simultaneous Russian and Chinese aggression in Europe and Asia using conventional forces. If the United States and its Allies and partners do not field sufficient conventional forces to achieve this objective, U.S. strategy would need to be altered to increase reliance on nuclear weapons to deter or counter opportunistic or collaborative aggression in the other theater. ` The size and composition of the nuclear force must account for the possibility of combined aggression from Russia and China. U.S. strategy should no longer treat China’s nuclear forces as a “lesser included” threat. The United States needs a nuclear posture capable of simultaneously deterring both countries. The Commission recommends the United States maintain a nuclear strategy consistent with the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC), based on six fundamental tenets—assured second strike, flexible response, tailored deterrence, extended deterrence and assurance, calculated ambiguity in declaratory policy, hedge against risk—and apply these tenets to address the 2027-2035 threat. STRATEGIC POSTURE In the context of a strategic posture deploying both conventional and nuclear capability, the Commission believes the traditional role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense strategy remains valid and of continuing importance: deterrence of adversaries; assurance of Allies; achieving U.S. objectives should deterrence fail; and hedging against adverse events. The Commission recommends fully and urgently executing the U.S. nuclear modernization Program of Record (POR), which includes replacement of all U.S. nuclear delivery systems, modernization of their warheads, comprehensive modernization of U.S. nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3), and recapitalizing the nuclear enterprise infrastructure at the DOD and DOE/NNSA. The current modernization program should be supplemented to ensure U.S. nuclear strategy remains effective in a two-nuclear-peer environment. Comprehensive risk-mitigating actions across U.S. nuclear forces must be executed to ensure that delays in modernization programs or early age-out of currently deployed systems do not result in militarily significant shortfalls in deployed nuclear capability. The U.S. strategic nuclear force posture should be modified to: ` Address the larger number of targets due to the growing Chinese nuclear threat. ` Address the possibility that China will field large-scale, counterforce-capable missile forces that pose a threat to U.S. strategic nuclear forces on par with the threat Russia poses to those forces today. ` Assure the United States continues to avoid reliance on executing Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) launch under attack to retain an effective deterrent. ` Account for advances in Russian and Chinese integrated air and missile defenses (IAMD). The U.S. theater nuclear force posture should be urgently modified to: ` Provide the President a range of militarily effective nuclear response options to deter or counter Russian or Chinese limited nuclear use in theater. ` Address the need for U.S. theater nuclear forces deployed or based in the Asia-Pacific theater. ` Compensate for any shortfall in U.S. and allied non-nuclear capabilities in a sequential or simultaneous two-theater conflict against Russia and China. ` Address advances in Russian and Chinese IAMD. NUCLEAR SECURITY ENTERPRISE INFRASTRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION The Commission recommends the DOD and DOE/NNSA strategic infrastructure be expanded to have sufficient capacity to: ` Meet the capability and schedule requirements of the current nuclear modernization POR and the requirements of the force posture modifications recommended by the Commission in time to address the two-peer threat. ` Provide an effective hedge against four forms of risk: technical failure of a warhead or delivery system, programmatic delays, operational loss of delivery systems, and further deterioration of the geopolitical environment. ` Flex to respond to emerging requirements in a timely fashion. To support the proposed strategy, the Commission recommends Congress fund an overhaul and expansion of the capacity of the U.S. nuclear weapons defense industrial base and the DOE/NNSA nuclear security enterprise, including weapons science, design, and production infrastructure. Specifically: ` Congress should fund the full range of NNSA’s recapitalization efforts, such as pit production and all operations related to critical materials. ` Congress should forge and sustain bipartisan consensus and year-to-year funding stability to enable the defense industry to respond to innovative DOD contracting approaches and invest with more certainty. ` Congress should enact annual DOD and DOE authorization and appropriation bills before the beginning of each fiscal year. ` Congress should place the purview of all “050” programs (President’s Budget line item for “national security”) that are in NNSA under Defense appropriations subcommittees (House Appropriations Committee-Defense (HAC-D), Senate Appropriations Committee Defense (SAC-D). ` Cabinet Secretaries, working with states and union leaders, should establish and increase the technical education and vocational training programs required to create the nation’s necessary skilled-trades workforce for the nuclear enterprise. The Commission recommends a number of specific actions to expand the capacity and effectiveness of the nation’s infrastructure and supply chain for its strategic capabilities. The Report concludes tomorrow Photo: Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander, North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, speaks with members from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency as well as industry leaders at the NORAD and USNORTHCOM headquarters on Peterson Space Force Base, Colo.(DoD)