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The whole sports industry is a waste of labor and capital. And the athletes are the crux of the issue here. The stadiums, the sponsors, the billionaires, ect. are built around these athletes. Does it even matter if the athletes are "underpaid?"

What makes them a waste of capital? And would you extend this same sentiment to other “non-productive” pursuits like art or writing?

mc32 1270 days ago

There is writing of textbooks and there is writing of pulp. One adds to the patrimony of a society, the other much less so…

throw0101c 1270 days ago

> There is writing of textbooks and there is writing of pulp. One adds to the patrimony of a society, the other much less so…

So entertainment has no value to society?

This feels like an overly utilitarian outlook. Some would say STEM fields help build a better world, but art and “pulp” actually make that world worth living in.

bryceacc 1270 days ago

is tax money taken for art or writing? i could understand preservation of history or something but i don't think that compares at all to a stadium or sportsball stuff

Yes, all kinds of tax money funds the arts. The easiest to point to is the federal National Endowment for the Arts, but there are other funding mechanisms at nearly every level of govt

TomSwirly 1270 days ago

I don't get billion dollar tax subsidies for my writing or art, and yet you can read or see it for free.

First let me clarify that something can be a waste of resources even if it creates some value. For examlple if I can create 1 value from 1 dollar or 100 value from 1 dollar the 1:1 ROI is a waste of capital in terms of value. With that in mind if we compare the value of the return from sports, which includes the labor and capital costs of the stadiums, as well as the profit consumed by the owners and athletes from ticket slales after the upfront cost is payed, to housing or education, we find that the value is very low. Additionaly, in the US, there are multiple sports (basketball, baseball and football) and multiple sports teams (some states even have more than one for each sport). Compare that with other countires that just have one sport (soccer/footbal) and one team. At the very least, the sports industry in the US is a waste of capital compared to soccer, which would fill the same demand for watching sports at a much lower cost.

But those two points aside I think the demand for watching other people play sports is flawed to begin with. And I think your example given with writing is perfect to lillustrate why. Written works each have a different value to them. A different lesson to them or different story. Writing a book that has already been writen has no value as a book. For example writing a chemistry textbook that is worse than an existing one (at the same price) has no value, unless there is value in reading both. But the value of sports is to fulfil some primal urge (the "point" of which, by the way, is to play sports yourself). Any way the urge is fulfiled has the same value. There is no "type" of sports when we consider the underlying demand that generates it as an industry. It also creates a second order demand of "follwing" the teams, which is the only reason the games can't just be replayed from 20 years ago. Which, by the way, compare that to writings from hundreds of years ago that are still read today. There is no need for the best players to play to fulill the underlying demand of sports. It is just the result of competition. In fact there is no need for televised sports at all compared to watching others at a local park or playing yourself. The same definetly cannot be said about writing: especially technical works but also fiction given that the work provides something more than just entertainment once you finish reading it. Although if you don't accept that fiction can ever do that then it's value is greatly dimminished. With respect to art I'm not sure what to say. I would say we already have enough art such that one already cannot consume all of it. The value of art is also controversial. It would depend on how you view that to say whether or not to extend this same sentiment to it. But many of the issues with sports can be seen in fashion, for example. So yes it does extend to other industries, although I think it is perhaps most clear in sports.

I think we disagree on how to measure value. Is there no value to listening to a pianist play Moonlight Sonata live? I’d say it adds value to one life, just as watching sports does. The idea that “we already have enough art” seems folly and absurdly reductionist. I’m sure we can find people who conversely say we already have enough technology.

>Is there no value to listening to a pianist play Moonlight Sonata live?

There is no value to it. Some claim that listening to music is enlightening. If that is so one can listen with headphones. And in fact most people do. Yet I do not beleive music is enlightening; it is just another primitive desire. If going to to a live concert truly changes people for the better then we can say it has value. But I believe it is really just pretentiousness, and the few who truly feel that they have gotten any benefit beyond the pleasure of the music are caught up in a mawkish placebo. There is no difference between classical music and pop music in terms of value, and in fact the latter is more popular (hence the name). And one can read in the comments of music videos on youtube that the isteners get goosebumps the same as the wasteful ticket buyer, listening to "inferior" and "uncultured" music on cheap earbuds. Only intellectually stimulating forms of entertainment have any chance of holding true value.

>The idea that “we already have enough art” seems folly and absurdly reductionist.

Please explain why. is the last 400 years of art too "old" for you to consume? Has it expired? At this point, consuming a given art is just at the expense of not consuming another. I can chage my statement to "only really good new art has value, because it has to compete with the old art and win." But as I implied earlier I don't think art has value to begin with. And I believe this is evidenced by the collapse of academic art, after which "art" loses all pretexts and becomes pure pretentiousness.

>I’m sure we can find people who conversely say we already have enough technology.

What do you mean? Technology is a tool, not a type of entertainment. Using a computer for a cash register only needs RPi level of performance. Using a computer as a web server or to run some complex calculation needs more performance. And there are uses of technology that have no value, such as video games. Although here at least any use of technology drives that technology to improve. For example games made GPUs a thing and supported nVidea for many years. Now GPUs are used to fold protiens. But the act of playing a video game has no value.

>What do you mean?

I mean there are people who do not think that increases in technology add any additional value. It’s due to the facts that we are all free to choose our own value functions and what adds value to one person will not necessarily add value to another. Having one camera on my phone adds value to me, having 3 more does not add any utility to me personally. Likewise, video games add value for some people more than others. Your stance seems to have a strange egocentric perspective that there is one objective measure of value. My disagreement is that I think there are as many unique value functions as there are humans. No offense intended, but the other perspective comes across as the socially awkward takes that are all too prevalent on HN.

>Please explain why.

For the same reason it was absurd that the head of the patent office claimed 150 years ago that anything of value had already been invented. We can’t foresee what other people will value. More importantly, art can be an end to itself. The idea that everything has to be a means to some end can devolve into treating all human endeavors as inputs into some global maximization functions, reducing humans to cogs in a machine. That feels a bit philosophically bankrupt (and sad) to me.

usednet 1270 days ago

Out of all the things you can be critical of in sports, why the athletes? The demand for the sport results in athletes no matter what. I don't think HN commenters understand the extraordinary difficulty of becoming a professional athlete. Ignoring the genetic requirements, the amount of work and drive needed is unbelievable, and 99.9% will fail. Athletes are actually underpaid in the US, if you look at the wage to revenue ratios of most professional leagues.

Even if the athletes themselves were the problem, there is no viable solution here. Banning sports?

There may be no solution to the sports industry existing, but that doesn't prevent it from being a waste of capital and labor. But in it's current form, it can at least be improved by switching to soccer. See my other comment to your sibling for more detail.

>Athletes are actually underpaid in the US, if you look at the wage to revenue ratios of most professional leagues.

You need to compare the wage to profit ratio which I'll assume you meant. And while I don't say you're wrong I'd like to see the numbers. Also I guarantee the thousands of faceless workers built around these athletes are more underpayed than the athletes, although whether that's relevant depends on exactly what point you're making. In any case, while the work and drive needed to become an athelete is very high, the amount needed to fulfill the demand is very low. Again, see my other comment. So the effort put in is just to be the one to extract the resources from ticket buyers. And the more effort put in, or more accurately the more exclusive the talent pool becomes, the higher the total cost becomes, although perhaps that amount is negligible, and that depends on the numbers which I don't have and which are either way unnecessary for my central claim.

mgarfias 1270 days ago

With football at least, I think they’re underpaid considering the major problems with TBI those guys are having.

mc32 1270 days ago

Thankfully, if we ever became a socialist country ala second world socialism, athletes would get the same “pay” and only slightly bigger apartments compared to everyone else but would keep on getting more than necessary amounts of PEDs as usual.

That’s a just world.

callalex 1270 days ago

It is unclear who you are trying to argue against in this discussion.

nickff 1270 days ago

By what measure are the athletes under-paid, and by what measure are the owners and distributors over-paid?

djbusby 1270 days ago

It's the spread between workers(labor) and owners(capital). Millionaires working for Billionaires could be under paid, the same as 100k-aires are underpaid by 100M-aires.

Overpaid, or extremely wealthy by the global society - but under paid in their "local group" (for lack of better term)

Edit: like when VC say they take the risk - bullshit. They just risk money - labor (athletes, entrepreneur) risk time and health. Those are not renewable - but money is.

55555 1270 days ago

You define underpaid as being lowly paid compared to their local group but also claim that the group in aggregate is underpaid. Makes no sense.

I think your parent commenter was asking for a citation showing that NFL franchises rake in net profits for owners and another citation showing athletes wages are being held down artificially.

You are presenting ideology as objective truth.

leetcrew 1269 days ago

> citation showing athletes wages are being held down artificially

this part is not controversial. the NFL has an official policy capping the total player salaries for each team.

8note 1270 days ago

Local group:

Other athletes including basketball and boxing players. The NFL in particular tries to ensure that individuals don't become brands on their own

Aggregate: athletes as a whole

vfbgfbgtbbtgtbg 1270 days ago

Are you familiar with sports? The billionaires made their money outside of it. Sports teams often don't make any profits at all.

tshaddox 1270 days ago

One possible answer: the fact that one is making a profit from the work of the other.