mook

I'm generally in favor of athletes trying to get into the NBA as soon as possible. it's in their best interest.

however, it's not in my best interest as a consumer of NBA entertainment. it doesn't make the game more enjoyable to me watching Travis Outlaw fumble around for four years until he figures out how to dribble a basketball.

the problem with Minstrel's monopoly analogy is that monopolistic behavior typically punishes the consumer. that's not what's happening here. this monopolistic behavior actually punishes the supplier (young basketball players) for the benefit of the consumer (the fans). I'm perfectly fine with that.

personally, I think there should be something called the LeBron James rule. during the entire draft, only one high schooler can be selected. if you aren't that one guy, you have to wait until you are twenty to be eligible for the draft again. that way a truly phenomenal NBA player like LeBron doesn't have to wait.

this maximizes the benefit to the consumer, which is really all that matters. we don't have to wait for Greg Oden to waste his knees in college for a year to get eligibility, but we also don't have to sit through the countless Travis Outlaw/Jermaine O'Neal wasted years.

sure, I sympathize with the poor inner city kid wanting to lift his family out of poverty. (this, by the way, isn't what happens much of the time. for every Telfair, there's also a Kobe Bryant or Darko Milicic who grew up in a typical middle or upper class family.)

but the NBA doesn't exist to make extremely talented poor high school kids wealthy. it exists to provide an entertaining product to its fans. if it can do it better by eliminating everyone (or almost everyone) under 20, it should.

andalusian

Nicely done. Sums up my opinion as well. Add the fact that this rule actually helps an NBA competitor (the NCAA) - and the entire monopolistic behavior falls apart.

mook

You make it sound like all monopolies are inherently evil and inherently un-American.

As a fellow liberal, I assume you don't have a problem with wind mills or solar energy. What if your local utility (a monopoly that's existed for decades in America) decides to buy 20% of its power from green energy, and it passes on the cost to the consumer? The consumer has no choice but to buy it, and it's punishing hard working coal miners. That's very monopolistic behavior, but is it immoral?

When Microsoft, who has had a virtual monopoly on operating systems, decided to sell Windows 95 on only CD, thus excluding 3.5" floppy manufacturers, was it exerting its monopoly to the detriment of consumers? Not really. People complain about nearly everything Microsoft, but that was actually kind of nice.

Much, but not all, monopolistic behavior is bad. But that doesn't mean we should always assume it's always bad. The key is to evaluate harm. Raising the age to 20 harms a very small number of teenagers, while benefiting an equal number of older players AND benefiting the consumer.

If I were 19 and I could play like LeBron, I'd be pissed as hell at Stern. But I really don't see why anyone else should be.

BlazerCaravan

I'm glad some smarter people than I were able to tackle that argument. It was really sticking in my craw.

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The kids are all right!

Coatesvillain

The NCAA in no way, shape or form is the NBA's competitor.

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Phinally!

Minstrel

Of course you are, it's in your best interests. And Stern is perfectly fine with it, too. Asking someone who gains a benefit or takes no harm if they are "perfectly fine with it" is pointless...why wouldn't they be?

The point is the injustice to the adults who are being artificially barred from their industry. The medical and law professions have overarching authorities preventing employment without certain qualifications solely because unwary consumers could have their lives destroyed by an unqualified practitioner. The same is obviously not true in the NBA, so having such a force preventing willing adult workers from hiring on with willing employers is completely unethical.

The fact that it doesn't hurt the consumer is not a problem with my claim of monopoly. The most populist argument against monopolies is that they tend to hurt the consumer, but that doesn't have to be true. Using monopoly to hurt the workers is just as bad and potentially worse. You only depend on the NBA for entertainment...the athletes (workers) depend on it for their livelihood. Outside of professions that hold people's lives in their hands, there's really no ethical reason to bar adults from employment with willing employers in any legal industry.

__________________
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do what common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
And dance and drink and screw
Because there's nothing else to do.

andalusian

Really? Two different entities, both showing high-caliber basketball games, competing for the same TV time are not competitors? You think that NBA TV ratings do not take a dive during March madness? Please...

HKF

Actually you are wrong and I will explain why. Not as many people watch March Madness as you think. What people watch is the first two days of the tournament and then the diehards keep watching the Second Round and beyond. Usually once a team goes out, people stop watching.

Also no one watches championship week besides diehards and people in that area. I have been off this entire week looking to find people online to talk about these games and no one is watching them unless it's their favorite team.

I think because the media focuses on the tournament during this time of year doesn't mean that everyone else is focused on this time of year. For example, I doubt anyone but myself and Coates were watching the America East championship (not including AE fans on this site). Well UMBC won if you didn't know.

By the way that's why you hear that upsets are fine, but not TOO many. Once the name teams are out, people stop watching.

__________________
My favorite NBA players: Deron Williams * Kobe Bryant * Carmelo Anthony * Ben Gordon * Joe Johnson * Kevin Martin * Tim Duncan * Kyle Lowry * Thad Young * Amare Stoudemire * Dwight Howard * Josh Smith * Brandon Roy * LaMarcus Aldridge * Rudy Gay * Al Horford * Brandan Wright * Craig Smith * Renaldo Balkman * Wilson Chandler

2008-09 Favorite Rookies: Jerryd Bayless (POR), Roy Hibbert (IND), Greg Oden (POR), Chris Douglas-Roberts (NJN), Joe Alexander (MIL), Patrick Ewing, Jr. (NYK)

College Basketball: "Where 7-Foot Bigs Foul Out Happen"

Minstrel

Monopolies are generally unethical and un-American. Your example of power companies as monopolies is an exception due basically to having no other option. Having multiple power companies in an area would be unfeasable, in trying to get power, potentially, from any power company to any home. The solution is to allow monopoly but also regulate them extensively to prevent them from resorting to harmful monopolistic behaviour.

Yes, it would be and I'm not even sure it's legal, due to the regulations on power companies. The ethical way to do it is for the government to make it a ballot initiative. If the people of the area vote in favour of it, it should be included in the regulations on that power company that they must buy 20% green energy, and the regulations should involve a price hike to cover that (which would be spelled out in the voted-on initiative). In this rare example of required monopoly, regulations prevent the monopoly from wielding monopolistic powers.

Rights violations can't be analyzed by utilitarian harm principles. To use a purposely extreme example, is it okay to allow enslavement of a few people, as long as many more people are benefited by them (including consumers)?

The Bush administration defended torture with a similar argument (implicitly): torturing (harming) a few suspects could save many many more people.

These sorts of issues absolutely aren't a matter of toting up total harm and total benefit and seeing which comes out greater. No matter how much it benefits others, you must have ethical basis for limiting the rights of others. There is no ethical basis here, for taking away the rights of adults to gain employment with willing employers.

__________________
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do what common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
And dance and drink and screw
Because there's nothing else to do.

andalusian

Please, the NBA is not an industry. It is a small fraction of the entertainment industry and within the fraction of sport it is a large fish in an even smaller fraction called basketball. This is like saying that a company like Google is "the search industry" and can not dictate how to hire employees. It is like saying that Quicken is the industry of personal finance software or that Fred Meyer is the industry of big retail shops in Oregon and Washington that offer groceries and gardening supplies and have "Fred" in their name. Hey, lets take it further, the NBA should not limit the people it hires as it's basketball players to ones that are actually good in basketball - they are obviously limiting my options, as a crappy basketball player, to make millions playing basketball - what a monopoly...

There is some kind of idea that making absurd amounts of money from basketball is an entitlement - which it is not. If the NBA believes that they would be better served by only accepting people that are a little older and better seasoned in the game - and it benefits the NBA and the paying customers - it should be fine. Colleges only accept people that achieve specific academic requirements, you can not practice medicine unless you prove that you know what you do and go through a process. The NBA is basically enforcing a minimal preparation for the people it is willing to employ. I do not see any real issues with it.

andalusian

CBS paid 6 billion dollars for the right to show the tourney for 11 years. 6 Billion dollars. This does not include whatever ESPN and any other network pays for the other NCAA events. If you do not think that this is a serious sporting competitor to other sporting events - I would really like to hear what you consider a competitor, especially for the NBA - since it is basically the same game.

HKF

They play the same sport, but they are not competitors. NBA is a global game played from November to June. College basketball gets notoriety during March and March alone. Why are you focusing on what CBS paid? And how does CBS get that money back? By going to commercial every five seconds during the tournament.

__________________
My favorite NBA players: Deron Williams * Kobe Bryant * Carmelo Anthony * Ben Gordon * Joe Johnson * Kevin Martin * Tim Duncan * Kyle Lowry * Thad Young * Amare Stoudemire * Dwight Howard * Josh Smith * Brandon Roy * LaMarcus Aldridge * Rudy Gay * Al Horford * Brandan Wright * Craig Smith * Renaldo Balkman * Wilson Chandler

2008-09 Favorite Rookies: Jerryd Bayless (POR), Roy Hibbert (IND), Greg Oden (POR), Chris Douglas-Roberts (NJN), Joe Alexander (MIL), Patrick Ewing, Jr. (NYK)

College Basketball: "Where 7-Foot Bigs Foul Out Happen"