Vern Kaine recently highlighted on his blog a recent Bill Maher provocation in which Bill argued that the NFL has succeeded because of its communal economic arrangement that he likens to socialism.
New Rule: With the Super Bowl only a week away, Americans must realize what makes NFL football so great: socialism. That’s right, for all the F-15 flyovers and flag waving, football is our most successful sport because the NFL takes money from the rich teams and gives it to the poor teams…
I offered this comment:
Bill offers mostly sophistry, which is a kind of tricksterism with words. Let us, and Bill, be clear: the NFL has a total of 32 teams. Sharing revenue equally (“socialism” according to Maher) is easy with 32 units of interest. The normal distribution (statistically speaking) always has a few outliers of bad and very good behavior, but this is easily managed with only 32 entities: the bad apples can be dealt with and inequities can be smoothed over. Likewise, efficient allocation of resources can be managed with so few units of interest.
However, what works within a system of 32 does not extrapolate or translate to a system of 1,000, or 10,000, or 1 million, or 300 million. Why do I say this? Because large systems of competing interests overwhelm all of the combined computing power of the Earth and render all attempts at central planning and resource allocation to be a failure and usually a horror and tragedy. There are so many examples to prove this that it saddens me when people like Maher remain stubborn in their support of systems that result in misery and death.
Exhibit A? China. Exhibit B? Vietnam. Both are communist countries who barely lived through several decades of central planning of the kind Maher seems to respect and love. Ever heard of the Great Leap Forward, when Mao collectivized agriculture? Estimates of the human death toll range from 30 – 45 million people.
Both countries have lately been ruthlessly pursuing capitalism and moving away from socialism. They have been doing this by necessity: socialism is a FAILED economic model and will result in the STARVATION of a country’s population. If you want to feed 1.3 billion people, then you had better go capitalist for better allocation of resources, and this is exactly what China has been doing.
China just surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy. How did they do that, Bill Maher, sophist? With capitalism, bitch.
Socialism does not work, and the human brain needs to absorb this incontrovertible fact.
Maher, Moore, Penn, and all the other celebrities who have gotten rich off of capitalism are always spreading the lie that socialism is what we need. I do not see them spreading their wealth among their fellow citizens…it is always somewhere else in the world. Socialism does not necessarily allow you to choose where to share your wealth….In fact the government handles that for you. So if they are true believers why not offer our government the opportunity to spread their wealth to the people of this nation?
It will never happen it is a theory they spew but never follow. Why? Because without capitalism they would not be rich bitches.
Great point – they’re doing pretty damn well aren’t they.
I think for most of those activist celebrities, 45% of their charity is driven by ego, and the other 45% is driven by guilt over a hypocrisy that they must know deep down exists. Otherwise why, as you say, not do more at home?
At least corporations keep a large part of their charity local.
Charity is not socialism and socialism cannot be construed as charity or philanthropy. Socialists are only charitable with other people’s money…after they take their share (profit).
As any organization organization grows, be it a individual, private or public, inefficiency grows proportionately. That inefficiency leads to graft and corruption feeding the greed of the perceived benefactors.
Great points Bob, and beautifully said