Advancing technology has, since the Industrial Revolution—promised greater wealth and ease to workers. Instead, they largely remain exploited by it, and it’s the owner-class whose wealth has skyrocketed. But Americans have this Horatio Alger syndrome of overcoming adversity to make it big—even though the vast majority of us come nowhere near that. As a result, we resist collective action to protect us, getting all Darwinian instead. This leaves us subject to even further exploitation.
The middle class is doomed. In the not-so-distant future, you will have the rich, the mercantile/professional class who serve them, and the poor.
Do yourself a favorEducate your mindGet yourself togetherHey, there ain’t much time
Yes, those things are making it difficult. But that’s because college football and basketball players were exploited ruthlessly for more than a century. You weren’t supposed to earn any money on your sports performance and your ability to transfer to another school was severely limited and punishing. Of course, COACHES weren’t subject to those restrictions.
When baseball free agency was created in the early 1970s, people predicted all kinds of chaos. This was because most players had 1-year contracts that could be renewed against their will indefinitely. Thus, almost everyone was suddenly in their “walk” year. But the owners and the union got together and worked out some rules that were beneficial to everyone and put them in a collective bargaining agreement. The baseball union remains the strongest players’ union in all of sports, and the owners have seen the value of their franchises skyrocket—plus about $10B in annual revenues.
The same path forward should be created by the NCAA and its players. Don’t stand in the way of players’ unions and negotiate in good faith. Give more revenues to the players and expect their participation in a more stable system.
Although I’m a liberal and not at all interested in bothering people living their lives, I do disagree with allowing trans women to compete, simply based on competition.
Sex and gender are different. I get that some people identify as a different gender than the one to which they were born—and are genetically coded to be. We’re a big enough society to accept people like that.
But we set up women’s sports to allow them to compete with each other on a fair basis. A woman who has transitioned from being born a man—whether or not that transition is complete—has inherent advantages over women born as women. We can acknowledge and accept this without hurting on these people. We can accept them for who they are, not who they’d like to be.
I really don’t care what people call themselves, what they wear, or which bathroom they use. (Public restrooms should be unisex anyway.) But if we want to create a competitive category for women’s sports out of a sense of fair play, then we should maintain that fairness.
My guess is this is Greg’s 39th anniversary. But I have to go look it up…oh, it’s LUANN’s anniversary. She looks pretty good for 39, but you’d think she would have graduated from community college by now!
Advancing technology has, since the Industrial Revolution—promised greater wealth and ease to workers. Instead, they largely remain exploited by it, and it’s the owner-class whose wealth has skyrocketed. But Americans have this Horatio Alger syndrome of overcoming adversity to make it big—even though the vast majority of us come nowhere near that. As a result, we resist collective action to protect us, getting all Darwinian instead. This leaves us subject to even further exploitation.
The middle class is doomed. In the not-so-distant future, you will have the rich, the mercantile/professional class who serve them, and the poor.
Do yourself a favorEducate your mindGet yourself togetherHey, there ain’t much time
— Steve Wonder