Based on the technical definition, football is not a public good as teams are excludable and rivalrous since each team is limited to 11 players on the field without penalty. But no one really applies the technical definition to derive public goods. For if they did, the concept of public goods would disappear from economic textbooks and from debates over the need for government interventions in the market. FULL ARTICLE
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/6048/is-high-school-football-a-public-good/
Is High School Football a Public Good?
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Democracies everywhere lead to more and more Socialism. The concept of Individual’s rights are ignored and Collectivist’s rights are always in the forefront. Thousands of examples as this one can be used to make the same collectivist point. The solution? More articles like this one in all Public schools, this in time would replace all public schools with private ones…A very distant dream of course given the mentality of the public in general.
I wrote a similar piece in August 2005, calling for the banning of football on the same principle. I’ve reposted on my link here. Keep up the good work folks !
I prefer to say that Democracies lead to theft rather than socialism. When a group of thieves agree to work together, we call it organized crime. When it spreads to the majority of citizens, we call it Democracy. It is still organized crime.
My son plays football at a private school which receives no Federal, State, or local money. We compete quite well with State-sponsored teams. This year we won our region and went to the quarter-finals of the playoffs.
Indeed the best high school teams in the country – Google Max Preps – are private schools who can offer good athletes a superior education.
While I’ll agree with you on state subsidies of sport, sport itself – particularly team sports – is/are a wonderful thing and should be encouraged.
Sports are good. And as we see from Little League and other private organizations, can be quite satisfactorily provided privately. If all schools were required to drop sports, you would very rapidly see private organizations step in to fill the void. Probably in the beginning using the existing school infrastructure until they have time to build their own stadiums. In fact, the only thing keeping private sports organizations from existing is the presence and monopoly of public school organizations.
Democracies everywhere lead to more and more Socialism.
Please list all the democracies currently in the process of turning control of the means of production over to the workers.
- Josh
Sports and cheap junk food are the modern equivalent of the Roman “bread and circuses.” Sports takes people’s minds off the destruction of the middle class. It is social engineering.
Nice piece, and as a high school teacher, I see this first-hand.
You guys might also be interested in a similar piece I put together earlier this year, Separation of Sport and State
Josh,
In case you haven’t noticed The United States as
one example. More and more of the means of production is being confiscated via more taxation,regulations and currency inflation and used by Government at all levels. used for what? To help the workers.
Constitutional Capitalism is the way to go but exists nowhere on earth.
Criticism of high school football from an Alabama based think tank? That could be hazardous to your health.
Seriously though, why is state-supported athletics any more inappropriate than state-supported schooling? All of the same arguments apply.
Hello,
I have a question regarding public goods, which is not so relevant to the discussed topic. But I’d be very grateful if someone can give an opinion on this. Is Google a public good? I’m a student in Austria and this was on my exam today and I thought the correct answer was yes. But it’s said that it isn’t because there is rivalry( because when many people google it gets overloaded or something) and people can be excluded( example was China blocking Websites?!?)
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