Ownership

Time to open up the crack pipe of connecting things that aren't sports to sports, folks. Buckle up.

Today in politics, President Obama proposed a salary cap on the financial industry. Their executives will have to make due on a half million dollars a year, so long as they are on the dole. (I'm not going to get into the merits or demerits of the move, so please save the frothing hatred of Wall Street Fat Cats and the Obama's A Commie comments... though I am highly amused by the idea that by capping their salaries, these firms might lose the oh so valuable talent that led us into this abyss, or that the Toxic Talent will be able to just walk to some other Safe Company, like those still exist, and make their old bank. Anyway, moving on.)

What interests me is the fact that sports teams -- and more than a few of them -- also take government dollars, usually at the local level for their stadium welfare construction projects, but also sometimes through luxury boxes and other goodies.

So, well, a precedent is set.

I've joked about this before, but if the Mets are taking Citi Dollars, and those Citi Dollars are coming from taxpayers, then the taxpayers deserve a say in how the Mets are run. I'm thinking they won't go to the $25 million a year price for Manny Ramirez.

Now that you've gotten your head in the realm of athlete salaries being capped by an outside force, and public sponsorship of what are supposed to be private, for profit enterprises... let's talk about organ donations and harvesting. (Yes, I know, we're a long way from dick jokes and titty here. There's a reason why this blog isn't popular, kids.)

Every year in this country and others, people who could have decades more to their lives die while waiting for a kidney, heart, or other relatively small piece to the human puzzle. Those lives wouldn't be lost in a society where donation is presumed, rather than chosen. Also, many of these people are highly educated, drawing high salaries, and providing a lot of value (read: tax income) to the shared burden that are nation states.

Which, of course, leads you to the rather unfortunate specter of individual people -- which is to say, um, you and me -- being viewed as a resource late in life, rather than the 100% focus of continuing care. (Or not so late in life when we go to The Nazi Place, which is where all long-winded blog posts eventually go.) Which, absent any complete body religious needs, is the great fear of being selfless at the close; the idea that, dammit, I should be able to own *something* in this world. My skin.

(For the record, I'm an organ donor. Moving on.)

Let's pull this back around to sports. What is an athlete who plays hurt when they don't want to, really, but a man or woman who is not in full ownership of their body? And, since you and I have a small stake in who wears the laundry, given that our tickets and gear purchases make up a portion of their salary... is there something, well, less than emancipated about all of that?

I realize this is all disjointed and not nearly Sport Enough, but here's the takeaway: we all like to think that we all have Some Control, and for the most part, we do. But in the greater scope of things, assuming you draw a paycheck for something other than fun (or have dependents, or pay taxes, or have friends rather than minions), that control is far from absolute.

Tomorrow morning, I'm going to be on a train and a subway, no matter how cold it is, or how little sleep I get from staying up late on this little foray into the void. The amount that I make from that is more or less capped by the market and this economy, regardless of performance; even if I have an absolute genius day/week/month/year, my salary is going to look a lot like what it does now. And the same goes, of course, for athletes, with the only difference is that there's a lot more air in that balloon, and a very big grain of salt as to whether the enterprise fails if you bring in someone else at replacement level.

So, in summation... our next stop in the economic spiral is a salary rollback for top paid players from teams (and maybe even leagues) failing. Hard to see people not cutting back on ticket purchases in a bad economy, folks. (Note: Super Bowl tickets went down from $800 to $500 this time around, though some of that probably was just that only one team had fans that would travel.)

And a hard cap on how much any one player can make. Just like in the real world beyond sports.

Your accusations of socialism are welcome in the comments...