Can Governments Anywhere still Govern?

Can Governments Anywhere still Govern?

I saw several polls this week which generated the topic above. First was a poll showing Bill Clinton was twice as popular as any of the recent Presidents.  Then came a poll which indicated that Obama was at his lowest support level. Then came a poll which showed Hilliary Clinton had some strong poll opposition. Then there are the endless polls which show Congressmen have such really low poll support and The Tea Party is at it’s lowest level. And so it goes, many people seem anti anyone in both parties. A strong majority is not for anyone. 

The question naturally arises, well just what political leader in power has strong popular support anywhere among the American public, and in most cases their own country? In other words, for those who say Obama is a weak and ineffectual President, what current leader in power anywhere do they consider a strong, effective leader? Clearly, across the globe, there is widespread and intense opposition to just about any political leader. In countries where you ‘love’ the leader or face the consequences personally, the ‘democratic’ vote for the leader is quite impressive——North Korea, Russia, China, Iran, etc. Those elections are about as suspenseful and thrilling as American Corporate Board member elections. There is never a lot of debate or suspense there either. Many stockholders, like myself, don’t even bother to vote in these elections. Nor do I vote on that part of a general election ballot where it says in a non partisan way “vote for 6 judges” and there are a whole bunch of candidates.  I don’t know a single thing about any of them. On what basis am I voting for a candidate? One would need to find a way to stand out someway. If you ever see the name Reginald Van Honschinvel III on the ballot you will realize I have decided to run in that race. Of course it might be more successful to run as Bozo.

Considering all of the above it is clear that people are dissatisfied with the direction things are going almost everywhere—except for the 1-5 percenters in all countries. Life for them is going pretty well, at least financially. In terms of personal contentment, that is another story. The ‘Donald Trumps’ of the world don’t seem to be of the zippidy-doo-Daa-Day, tip-toe-through-the tulips, contentment type. They pile their money higher and higher and yet most of them, if they really smiled or laughed, would probably fracture their faces in the process.  Like who would really want to spend any time in the company of Trump, Limbaugh, Palin, Koch Brothers, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and so on. Not to worry, all of them would be more comfortable on a date with a large mirror. 

If all these polls can be believed, and I believe they can, then more and more of us are becoming dissatisfied with life in general. How can this be when we are surrounded morning to night with endless gadgets designed to amuse, educate, and make life physically easier for us? Even the poorest can own many of these gadgets. Those of us who have it ‘made in the shade’, are well aware most others do not, and are suffering. My own nature, that of a self made semi-hermit, is designed to wall-off so much of the misery in which so many others wallow. Yet the truth is clear-enough, one cannot be completely contented when so many others, others who are essentially good people, cannot be contented. 

Humans have a genetic ethical nature, and this potential probably varies like any other human characteristic. It is the development of this ethical potential which determines how contented we end up in life. When the least fortunate no longer count in our world, this attitude comes with a cost, and the cost is an inability to achieve much contentment in our own lives. 

Genetics may not mean everything, but it means a lot. Our environment may not mean everything but it counts a lot. The place and era of our birth may not mean everything but it means a lot. The Golden Rule may not be obligatory, but it means almost everything---if any peace and prosperity for all are to be achieved. Responsible reproduction may not be a responsibility the human species has yet evolved to accept, but humans, like any other species, are now paying a price for overpopulating our globe, which does mean everything for civilized living. Our environment may not mean everything in the absence of overpopulation, but when overpopulation occurs and natural resources remain limited, well, the shit then hits the fan, and everybody, everywhere, is going to find themselves in the midst of a chaotic and merciless competition for these limited natural resources. It has always been Mother Nature who corrects overpopulation. Humans, at this point in the evolutionary process, have the intellect to understand overpopulation, but are blindsided personally by emotional and cultural tradition. No one is going to tell us how many kids we can have. Very well then, Mother Nature will deal the consequences. Most of us know that the Middle East has forever been a cauldron of revenge and violence, and when the violence erupts gas prices soar. But that doesn’t stop many of us from buying gas guzzlers and then becoming apoplectic when the price of gas goes up. Like who could have ever envisioned such a situation happening? Duh.  

Governments are failing us now because the Golden Rule is rapidly being replaced by pure self serving politics and faith based inherited, or marriage adopted, religious fervor. Governments are failing because too few are willing to sacrifice in any manner for the good of all. After greedily borrowing ourselves into huge debt, no one is amendable to everyone paying off the debt on a graduated scale with the wealthy paying more than the poor. Instead, each political party is determined that the base of the other party is going to pay the piper. The wealthy now can control elections, corporations having now been elevated by the Supreme Court to the status of being people. The party that wins cannot implement their programs because the minority party can block most legislation. In other words, the losers demand they get their way or next to nothing will be passed. Thus, we now have a democracy in which neither party can govern. Not good. Perhaps we need a democracy in which the winning party gets their way on everything, and if the people don’t like the results then a different party can be voted in the next election, and then they get to do everything their way. An evolved checks and balances too often just freezes everything in place, creating a blueprint for disaster and endless frustration. 

Most people seem to have this vague feeling things are not well almost everywhere. And most everyone feels hopeless and powerless.  Below are some pertinent quotations: 

"Incompetence is vanity and PR and people who talk about 'massaging' or positioning' or 'spin control'. It's a society that celebrates style over substance, image over reality, credentials over experience; a society that embraces the credo of the Philadelphia sheriff John Green---'Fake it till you make it'; a society devoted to consuming and acquiring, to self-fulfillment and self-indulgence, a society infatuated with money, power, sex, and drugs; a narcissistic, solipsistic, materialistic society saturated with advertising, dominated by entertainment, and living only for the here and now." Art Carey (American editor and author) 

"But though the world roars and rages about us, we must secure our peace of mind, a quiet place of tranquility and of order and of purpose within our own selves. For it is doubt and uncertainty of purpose and confusion of values which unnerves men. Peace of mind comes to men only when having faced all the issues clearly and without flinching, they have made their decision and are resolved.....'You came into a great heritage made by the insight and the sweat and the blood of inspired and devoted and courageous men; thoughtlessly and in utmost self indulgence you have all but squandered this inheritance. Now only by the heroic virtues which made this inheritance can you restore it again.'  It is written, 'You took the good things for granted. Now you must earn them again'. It is written, 'For every right that you cherish, you have a duty which you must fulfill. For every hope that you entertain, you have a task that you must perform. For every good that you wish to preserve, you will have to sacrifice your comfort and your ease. There  is nothing for nothing any longer'......So here we are today. We are where we are because whenever we had a choice to make, we have chosen the alternative that required the least effort at the moment. There is organized mechanized evil loose in the world. But what has made possible its victories is the lazy, self-indulgent materialism, the amiable, lackadaisical, footless, confused complacency of the free nations of the world. They have dissipated, like wastrels and drunkards, the inheritance of freedom and order that came to them from hardworking, thrifty, faithful, believing and brave men. The disaster in the midst of which we are living is a disaster in the character of men. It is a catastrophe of the soul, of a whole generation which had forgotten, had lost, and had renounced the imperative and indispensable virtues of laborious, heroic, and honorable men." Walter Lippman. (American reporter, political commentator)

"We have built rockets and spaceships and shuttles; we have harnessed the atom, we have dazzled a generation with a display of our technological skills. But we still spend millions of dollars on aspirin and psychiatrists and tissues to wipe away the tears of anguish and uncertainty that result from our confusion and our emptiness....The closed circle of pure materialism is clear to us now---aspirations become wants, wants become needs, and self-gratification becomes a bottomless pit. All around us we have seen success in this world's terms become ultimate and desperate failures. Teenager and college students, raised in affluent surroundings and given all the material comforts our society can offer, commit suicide. Entertainer and sports figures achieve fame and wealth but find the world empty and dull without the solace of stimulation of drugs. Men and women rise to the top of their professions after years of struggling. But despite their apparent success, they are driven nearly mad by a frantic search for diversions, new mates, games, new experiences---anything to fill the diminishing interval between their existence and eternity---the way to serve yourself is to serve others; and that Aristotle was right, before them, when he said the only way to assure yourself happiness is to learn to give happiness." Mario Cuomo. (U.S. Governor)

"Only when the last tree had died

And the last river been poisoned

And the last fish been caught

Will we realize that we cannot eat money."  Cree Indian saying

"We now communicate with everyone, and say absolutely nothing. We have reconstructed the Tower of Babel. and it is a television's antenna (and lots of other gadgets).  A thousand voices producing a daily parody of democracy, in which everyone's opinion is afforded equal weight, regardless of substance or merit.  Indeed, it can even be argued that opinions of real weight tend to sink with barely a trace in television's ocean of banalities."  Ted Koppel (American broadcast journalist)

"Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws.  'You speak of-- ' said Egremont, hesitantly, 'THE RICH AND THE POOR'." Benjamin Disraeli (British statesman)  

"No nation can last, which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart.  It must discipline it's passions, and direct them or they will discipline it, one day, with scorpion-whips.  Above all, a nation cannot last in a money-making job; it cannot with impunity,--it cannot with existence---go on despising literature, despising science, despising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on Pence."  John Ruskin (British writer).

"In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole." Teddy Roosevelt  (American President)

"HOW MANY TIMES CAN A MAN TURN HIS HEAD, AND PRETEND THAT HE JUST DOESN'T SEE?" 

Irsay Is No Isolated Fluke

Irsay Is No Isolated Fluke

I read where Irsay, one of the wealthy owners in football, is likely to get a 6 game suspension for something like drunk driving. I suspect most general managers and head coaches just wish most of the drunk with money owners would just get drunk daily and disappear somewhere with a hangover. So I guess a suspension for 6 games would be the next best thing for this media revered owner. Of course they are all media revered, or their flagship station will be cut off from lucrative media contracts with the NFL. 

I thought drunk driving is something citizens deal with solely in a courtroom unless driving is what they do on their job. Like what relevance is it whether an owner gets drunk to the actual game of football? I can see perhaps if a general manager gets drunk or a coach, but then in that situation it would seem an ownership decision what to do about it. What does suspension mean?  He can’t attend any games?  He can’t have contact with anyone on the team?  

I do understand that any owner in the league can be ignorant about football, senile, their only accomplishment in life to have inherited a lot of money, or have earned their wealth in predatory or devious ways, or have the personality of a Donald Trump, or be as useless as a witch’s tit, along with not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, BUT they just can’t get drunk or be racist. Why would players agree to play for a racist owner?  Oops, that’s right, the players don’t get to choose, they are drafted or traded, and given contracts binding only to the player. They can’t just switch employers like in normal professions. 

In any business arena where the corporation polices itself, most or all, injustices or abuses, or financial rip-offs are protected and the only crimes addressed are those which are bad for the public image. So this 6 game suspension will mean what? I guess that Irsay cannot drive drunk. Usually the courts handle drunk driving cases and are the sole source of legal punishment, like losing one’s driving license, or a fine, or whatever. None of this is particularly painful for the owner of a professional sport team. It would have to be quite a fine to be felt by one who makes millions of dollars a year off a $2 billion dollar team. Most probably have chauffeurs so not being able to drive is hardly a hardship.  Of course the NFL has it’s own legal system complete with a Judge and Jury guy hired by the owners. Now what could be a fairer system of justice than that?  Well, one might say, they are big on illegal drug use. Really? Which owners are ever tested for drug use?  Well, one might say, they are just going after performance enhancing drugs which give a player an unfair advantage. Like marijuana? That could get the player suspended for years. But the player whose off the field activities endanger the well being of others via drunken behavior, assaults, theft, sexual improprieties, etc. can remain playing, with team paid security guards around them 24 hrs to protect the public as in the case of Dez Bryant of the Cowboys. 

Who is Jim Irsay anyway?  How did he get to become the owner of the Colts?

For a start Jim Irsay made some early good decisions. He chose the right parents, one of whom owned the Colts. Jim went to good schools and graduated from college in 1982.  Two years later he was named Vice-President and General Manager of the Colts. This was another good decision on his part, a very good business decision that practically anyone else could never pull off at that age. His resume for the job must certainly have been an impressive one to run a professional football team. Remember, in America anyone can earn such accomplishments. Well, maybe not in football ownership.  How Irsay earned his parents is just puzzling, but however he did it should make us admire him even more. 

Myself, if I were going to hire someone to be Vice President and General Manager of a professional football team, Jim Irsay would not make the initial cut. But that is just me. Perhaps one really does not have to know much about football to be General Manager, one could simply hire consultants. But if that is true, and probably is, why does Jim Irsay get this plum? Why not have a lottery to pick any ole die-hard football fan to get this wonderful opportunity?  Or maybe just pick any name out of the phone book, preferably one in which my name is listed. On the other hand I would just think the cities in which the team play and all the fans deserve a much more professional football owner of their team. Americans long ago rejected royalty to run the country and yet today Professional Sport teams are set up with that exact form of administration of their beloved sport teams. Long live these ‘Kings’, no matter how stupid, senile, unfair, etc. they may be. A lot of Kings eventually got deposed or hanged etc. Not that it would be my nature to put such an idea in anyone’s head. 

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/nfl-has-quite-an-extensive-list-of-demands-for-the-super-bowl-host-174827650.html 

The above is just another example of wealthy professional football owners blackmailing cities to sustain their franchises in a manner royalty deserves. Just remember this: half of all professional football income goes to the players and half to the owners. There are 32 owners. There are roughly 1600 players. The gross income is listed at 9.6 billion dollars a year. That leaves 4.8 billion for the 1600 players and 32 owners. If I do the math correctly that leaves each franchise 150 million dollars income to spend on non player salaries. Before any city could be blackmailed into funding stadium construction or paying the above expenses for a playoff game, it seems reasonable that the owners would need document where all this 4.8 billion dollars went. Congress created the laws which let this corporate monopoly be exempt from anti-trust laws and why doesn’t Congress at least make this wealthy good ole boys club prove why the public anywhere has to be bilked any more money to support their royal kingdom? When enough is never enough any responsible government need step in. Maybe responsible government is a thing of the past. It seems like that today---no matter what party wins the Presidency, their policies will not be put in place and nothing gets passed in Congress unless it is the will of those who lost the election. What a mess. One thing is for certain. Congress will not remotely act to provide professional sports with regulations that make them responsible to the fans, players, and cities where they play. The players may be at the professional level with their talent, but the owners, with precious few exceptions, are hardly the cream of the crop.

Probably at least 80% of the public would vote to leave football ownership as it is. Just like those who support the Tea Party, a high percentage of whom are poor, prejudice against all sorts of people, hate diversity, and want the government out of their lives, support the party even though they themselves suffer greatly from the trickle down economic theory of the party leaders.  Of course little can top those who gathered to support some wealthy rancher who uses public land to generate a huge profit, and himself fumes at all the lazy worthless ‘trash’ living off public subsidies. Of course he has a right to use public land for his own business operation and the solution perhaps to those without jobs and income would be for all of them to just move on public land and raise cattle. Problem of poverty solved. Perhaps a lot of us are just a tad slow, not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but if the Red States understand the best form of governance why are the red states all the poorest states, with the highest crime rates, and little excellence in most any category——why are all these poorest states all Red States?  Perhaps it is true—misery loves company. 

I make this observation all the time and will continue to do so.  When any species overpopulates its habitat, the obligate predatory activity by all members of the species to survive in a healthy fashion will become increasingly vicious, self centered, violent, mean spirited, winner take all, barbaric, and the death toll from this contest, all over access to enough natural resources to survive, causes major adjustments in the evolutionary process. So far, humans cannot accept this evolutionary fact applies to our species, and so like lemmings, we race ever so  faster to the edge of the cliff. Every year now it gets worse, with more and more humans suffering misery of various sorts, conflicts everywhere soaring, and the death toll mounts.  Mother Nature is now at bat, and no longer waiting in the on-deck-circle. The bright side is that the evolutionary process never ends, and the future, with new species or improved older species progresses, sometimes after lapses of hundreds of thousands of years, but the genius of the process has always prevailed.  

A Perfect Day

A Perfect Day

I suppose the goal in life is to have as many ‘perfect’ days in a year as possible.  ‘Perfect’, of course is relative. I recently watched a down and out street ‘bum’ come out of a downtown train station with a paper container of fries, announcing to anyone, or everyone who could hear him, that “I have me some fries and they my fries,  don’t no one ask me for some, they mine and don’t ask me for money cause I spent it all to get these fries.”  The irony, at least to me, is that this guy with so little, was the most contented guy in the train station, at least for the moment. He certainly acted like it made the ‘perfect’ day for him. 

As with everything else in the evolutionary process, change and time are the only constants. We all change—constantly—and this means a ‘perfect’ day changes over time too. Humans often make real efforts to prevent change, and with little success. We take vows to ‘love until death do us part” but change over the years may make such a vow inoperable. Love, of course, cannot be forced.  It just happens. And the same individual life changes often limit the length of friendships, relationships on a job, hobbies, priorities, music tastes, personalities, and so on. 

The perfect day at twenty is not the same as a perfect day at 70. And the perfect day for one person is not a perfect day for another. BUT, there does seem to be some general criteria needed for a perfect day. If we don’t plan carefully in the present, there will not likely be many perfect days in the future. It starts with understanding ourselves, itself a life long endeavor, especially since we ourselves change with time—some more than others. 

We also need to come to some sort of perception as to our role in the evolutionary process. Many take the easiest route and simply one way or another, often via genetic inheritance of an organized religion, to decide that success in life (contentment) depends on a personal relationship with God. Any kind of rationale observation of life refutes this notion.  To go this route, for the most part, simply leads to endless frustration and often ends up with disappointment (“why God has Thou forsaken me?). If God were really calling the cards on a personal basis He is then responsible for the most  horrible events in life that happen to particular individuals or groups. For this to be true ethics simply doesn’t exist. That God does not exist is equally preposterous. For every gift there must be a gift-giver and our own planet is clearly a wondrous and amazing gift. The process which has been evolving now for billions of years must be a process created by God who is responsible for the laws which govern the process. It does not do much good to declare if we cannot  be  of central importance to the process, that the process is no good or unfair.  A more realistic understanding would be that we ought to be grateful for our chance to be a minute part of the process, even if it was by chance, and that as a human we have the ability to plan out ‘perfect days’—IF we are lucky enough via our environment and have enough help from others.

To achieve contentment (maximize ‘perfect days’) we need to live some degree of an ethical, fair, tolerant of diversity, contemplative, sharing, truth seeking, non self serving life. If we are all God’s children in the broadest sense, then we need act like it. When we think of family values it ought to be in terms of God’s family and that would include all evolutionary forms. We could do worse than to worship nature, if worship is to mean have respect for all of God’s gifts through the evolutionary process. We need to have principles which govern our actions and thoughts, principles which include the Golden Rule. 

What constitutes a perfect day?  It starts with good health—and those who ignore preventive health measures are often destined to pay the price down the road. Assuming good health, it also requires adequate rest. A day begun without enough sleep is not a good omen for a perfect day.  Addictions of most any sort eradicate any chance of a perfect day. Addictions by nature are compulsive disorders and compulsive behavior can never lead to contentment. Economic and physical security impact greatly on any chance for the perfect day. When all this is in place, a perfect day is a logical goal. 

Perfect days don’t come to us, we ourselves need generate a perfect day. Perfect days come later in life after we have had time to understand ourselves, the evolutionary process, the role diversity plays in evolutionary advancement, and our ethical potential has developed to the point where we substantially follow the Golden Rule as our ethical mantra.  

While it is good to be sociable and have friends, it is also necessary to be able to amuse oneself. Those who cannot entertain themselves, but always need others to entertain them to gain contentment are in for a tough road in the long haul. Social interactions involve a good deal of tit for tat and the balance is usually precarious. Someone often starts to think they give more than they get. In a world of human diversity no generalizations can be made regarding the right level of social interactions with others. Each person has to figure out where they best fit into social endeavors. 

Probably everyone who enters the terminational years, which start at varied ages, thinks in terms of having as many ‘perfect’ days as possible. What follows is my own plan I devised to accumulate as many ‘perfect’ days as possible before taking that great leap into the unknown.

The Golden Rule establishes my ethical boundaries for all others, and all situations.  We almost always know what is right, but too often find a zillion reasons to do otherwise. We also understand that many of our personal blessings came to us by chance, coupled with assistance from others at key points along the way. Life is never a level playing field, and our obligation is to help level the playing field for the least fortunate so they too can have a chance to have some ‘perfect’ days. We can help the less fortunate through direct involvement, financial involvement, or giving of our time to help organizations already existing to help the less fortunate. I chose financial involvement and decided that for every dollar I spend on myself for the basics of life, another dollar most go to the least fortunate. That way others count as much as myself, which is one aspect of the Golden Rule. For those with expensive hobbies, addictions, and materialistic priorities this is a difficult premise. For me it is relatively easy because I have no expensive hobbies or addictions. The only aspect of my life I spend any notable amount of money on is to make a modest home decorated in such a way that this self-made semi hermit has a lodge-like atmosphere into which my pensive activities have the right atmosphere.  A ‘perfect’ day for me, given my own nature, involves hours of wandering around in nature, or a urban neighborhood, a morning of writing down my thoughts in the form of musings, interacting with others via internet over a wide variety of topics, time to prepare a sumptuous meal, or eat out for a particular food specialty, time for reading all sorts of nonfiction, netflix (documentaries, movies, stand up comediennes, and nature videos). If I work on any projects in my condo unit I rarely work on them more than an hour or 2 at a time.

Daily, I take care of a former feral cat, and once a week I entertain a horse named Riva. Statistics show people with pets live longer and that, I reckon, is good up to a point. I think for most people, if in decent health, that around 85 is a good time to croak. Living in a large condo unit with a lot of good hardworking people provides me with sufficient interaction on a daily basis with others. The rest of my time I enjoy being a hermit—almost always wandering around by myself observing and mulling things over. I pretty much do what I want each day, when I want, for as long as I want. Wandering around for me is what yoga, meditation, running, traveling, expensive hobbies, social bells and whistle hooplas, etc, are to others. I am always in the most mellow mood after returning from my wanderings for the day.  This mellowed out mood lasts well into the evening when the rest of the world is slumbering. About 2AM I turn in, listening to my favorite music before dosing off. 

That I suppose, for me, is a ‘perfect’ day. Except, a ‘perfect’ day is not possible. For there to be a ‘perfect day’, if we are sensitive or real enough about our duty to the less fortunate, there would have to exist a more perfect justice for those shackled with less ability to achieve a more ‘perfect’ personal day. While we can be ever grateful for every ‘perfect’ personal day we have for ourselves, there can be no denial of this non-reality for so many others. The biggest draw back with modern media gadgets is that we can be exposed every day to man’s cruelty to man and his entire natural environment, including other species and natural resources. 

We do not live in a perfect world but evolution does produce, over eons of time, a more ‘perfect’ world. If God had created a perfect world, change would not be a necessity, Time would not change, and diversity non existent. Everything is so relative to everything else. How could we, for example, know happiness if sadness did not exist?  How could we have hope if nothing ever changed?  How could we plan a better life, if life was already the best possible?  Thus, no matter how much contentment we may achieve in our personal life (never perfect contentment), others do count. Via the Golden Rule others do count. Our own obligations to the less fortunate are real, not imagined, and human ethics is an innate human trait, not something passed down via inherited religion. There are ethical people in all cultures, in all ethnic groups, in all religions, in those without any attachment to organized religion——in all human environments everywhere. 

The phrase ‘no pain, no gain,’ has always intrigued me.  It seems applicable enough to most everything in life. But late at night, feeling a deep gratitude for my blessings—mostly by chance and with the help of others in my life—and feeling a profound wonderment for God’s evolutionary process, and yet overwhelmed with sadness at the plight of so many other people, other species, and elements of our environment, I am reminded that contentment is not a pure sensation. Contentment is a mixture of competing emotions and dependent on just how much of our own life has been focused, in one way or another, on those least fortunate, not those most like us, or those closely linked genetically to us, or those kindest to us etc so on. To paraphrase Lincoln: “Let us have faith that right (duty attended to) makes might, and in that faith (obligation), let us, to the end, dare to do our duty (to the less fortunate) as we (learn) to understand it.”  Success here is about the only kind of success that really gives our lives meaningful contentment.

Sports, Winning, and Age

Sports, Winning, and Age

When young, at least for me, professional sports was an important part of my life. Back then it was the Brooklyn Dodgers and Duke Snider who were my heroes. The games, especially the World Series, were extremely intense and exciting.  There is nothing like youth to reach emotional peaks about a lot of things. It kind of taught us how to have hopes and the thrill of winning. When young, winning sometimes feels like is it everything. Some people never lose that mentality. 

I coached for two years in High School out in Packer country.  Like Lombardi, another hero at the time, winning was going to be everything, and I managed to coach with that mentality. At the high school level, and even the college level, a lot of coaching is motivational.  Professional players have their own motivation—their salary and career are on the line. And high school kids easily (well maybe not so easily) can be made to focus everything on winning—like all of life will be a failure individually and collectively if we don’t win. With this coaching mentality the teams did substantially improve their win/loss record and standing in the conference, but it also got me fired. Winning at all costs can indeed come with a cost. Motivation is a game of emotions and the emotions spread out amongst teammates, parents, other coaches in the school, and administrators. Administrators hate commotion, confrontation, and debate. Therein lies the time bomb. 

I never coached again and went another direction in my life, but professional sports remained a big portion of my life, just like with many people.  I followed teams intensely and, especially in the playoffs. Old age, as it changes many things in life, often changes the intensity of rooting for a team to win. At some point in life many, including myself, begin to wonder just what is so important about ‘our’ team winning? It doesn’t change anything about our own lives whether our team wins or loses. When the Chicago Bears have a game, the pre game show goes 3 hrs before the game starts. And grown men debate loudly, energetically, and sometimes angrily about who is going to win or which player is better than another. One could, and some do, spend a Sunday from about 9AM to almost midnight attuned to professional football games.  That’s 15 hours of football in one day. 

Listening to these pre-game shows and endless days of post game analysis perfectly illustrates the inanity of it all. The best predictors of who will win football games hover at around 60% success rates, lower in any playoffs. That alone tells us that predicting football games is hardly any science or based on knowledge of the game itself. Yet these pre and post-game shows portray all these ‘experts’ pushing varied perceptions with the intensity and volume of someone who really does have the inside scoop. They throw stats, they put individual players on a pedestal and character assassinate other individual players based on unnamed sources, and back their analysis and predictions with the certainty of an Einstein with scientific results of a study.  Yet someone like me, who knows little about the mechanics of football, can sometimes out-predict them over a season on who will win what games. It is very common, when people start arguing about professional sport teams, players, and coaches—for the arguments to get very heated, angry and often personal. It will all start off with opinions about individual perceptions until, having exhausted any ability to force the other person to see things a particular way, the old last resort to blame the intelligence or life experience of the opponent as the reason why one is right and the other is wrong, and then that becomes the final proof.

Football analysis and predictions are much like the stock market. Most all the reasons put forth by the experts on the stock market come after the stock market closes. If the market goes up, the good things which happened in the world become the reason.  If the market does down, then any bad news that day is the reason. 

Not too far back the main reason any individual stock went up or down a given day depended on the performance of the company in question.  Today, while that factor is still in play somewhat, most stocks on a given day go up and down in unison. The market today is not driven by individual company performances but by factors which an average investor cannot control, but are under the control of the ‘big professional investors who have computer programs which drive the market.  Because the big boys can control market movement they can instantly sell high and buy low with an accuracy that makes them wealthy—extremely wealthy. While the market game can be controlled by the clever computer programs, sport results cannot be controlled by anyone. Most of the factors which control who wins in football, if the teams are fairly close in talent, are beyond predictability. And it is similar in a lot of other major professional sports. 

  

I still like to predict who will win or lose, much like we might buy a lottery ticket to see if we win, even though lotteries are for people who can’t do the math.  I rarely watch entire games anymore.  The reason is simple——why would I deliberately choose to be tensed up for 3 hours over a game?  Young people love to be all stirred up, charged up, and be highly opinionated about a game which is often decided by a host of factors which are not controllable by the coaches or players. So picking the winners and checking up on who is winning periodically is about as involved as I choose to get. Frankly, I prefer, at the end of the day, to have learned something of substance than to have been preoccupied most of the day with a game, the results of which, have no bearing on my life or my level of contentment.   Any contentment from our team winning a game is certainly of temporary duration. I reckon it can take our mind off serious situations like a death, or a financial problem, or a family problem, etc. But, when the game is over the serious problems in our life remain. 

In retirement, if we get lucky and have decent health, and no major financial problems etc., then being so wrapped up emotionally in a game serves no purpose. I tell people that I am not looking for excitement at my age, just some peace and quiet and contentment. The smartest older people concentrate on just staying out of the way, off the playing field of life, and into the bleachers to simply watch the theatre of it all. Of course there was a time, when we were in our productive years, in which  almost all of life was trying to make things go our way.  We got told often enough in our productive years that we should not sweat the small things.  By the time we reach retirement most of us are well aware that most everything is a small thing. I don’t react much anymore over what professional team wins or loses, but I do get emotional when I see individuals or groups happy over something or suffering in situations that are beyond their ability to control. 

Most people never have all that much going for them from birth. Surprisingly, when I was teaching, most often the students who were the most conscientious, cooperative, engaging, personable, honest, trustworthy, dependable and unselfish were those struggling under the worst environmental situations. In that sense our ghettoes produce some of the worst and best humanity in life.  Many of these people, for whom I had the most admiration, never went too far in life—not because they had no potential, but because their problems were so numerous and pervasive to their lives that they eventually tired and gave up, accepting careers well below their abilities. With great effort and manipulation, one could help such an individual over particular hurdles, but rarely all of them. If we all did what we could with all our mostly unearned blessings, the playing field for these less fortunate would be more level and they could sail through life with fewer and more leap-able hurdles. But of course, we are all, to varying degrees, too self-serving, too wrapped up in our own pursuit of money, titles, power, etc, to collectively alter the playing fields enough for more of the less fortunate to have greater chances to succeed. It is not just the plight of the less fortunate that makes me feel sad enough to feel like crying, but watching individuals or groups succeed in getting more justice makes me emotionally happy enough for them that I again feel like crying. Thus old age, to someone like me, is really a mixture of sadness for many others, happiness for those less fortunate who achieve some justice, and gratefulness for the many blessing I have received in life, most of them unearned and include the invaluable support from others along the way.  Gratitude is a huge ingredient for a contented retirement, as is the personal effort in time, money, or direct intervention, to help those most in need. To the extent we share our excess wealth with those least fortunate in life we can achieve various degrees of contentment. 

Sports is about winning, but life is about gratitude, helping the least fortunate, and adopting the Golden Rule as the ethical basis for life. Winning in sports is irrelevant,  while the rest (above in this paragraph) is exceptionally relevant to any personal contentment in life. 

Professional Sports Has Become a Predatory Nightmare

Professional Sports Has Become a Predatory Nightmare

With the Clippers being sold for $2 billion dollars, professional sports in this country has become as big an example of American capitalism out of control as the Corpocracy created by the Supreme Court. 

Even more amazing is that the general public, for the most part, actually supports this demise of their own financial circumstances. To top all this off, the states which suffer the most from this accumulation of our national wealth in the hands of 1-5% of our population are all Red States—the very states which provide the political pillar to support the situation. Recently, a list was published regarding the ten dumbest states in the United States. The list was arranged  based on three factors: the % of populations with a Bachelor’s Degree; the median family income; and the average SAT score.  Everyone of them was a red state. These are the states which endorse getting the government out of the picture, to let the wealthy police themselves, whose supporters let their own financial status be basically determined by handouts from trickle down economics. It hasn’t worked for a good 50 years, but they insist, in the name of freedom, that the wealthy should suffer no regulations, and no limit to the accumulation of our national wealth into the ever greedy hands of the wealthy. 

If huge corporations, which have competition, fare so well without regulations or limits, imagine how professional sport leagues, with no competition, wallow in the insanity of it all.  Just about everyone complains about these corporate excesses and predatory advantages over the middle class and the poor, as just about everyone complains about ticket prices, salaries, and abuses by the wealthy owners of our professional sport teams—BUT, with logic that belies understanding, society looks upon their own predators with revered envy. 

Let’s start by understanding that the the $2 billion dollars to purchase the Clippers came from the rest of us, as does all the corporate amassment of huge wealth in the hands of the owners.  And the amount of wealth amassed by the wealthy is growing in exponential fashion with no end in sight. For the wealthy to amass even more wealth, it cannot come from the poor—they don’t have it to give, and for it to come from the middle class it has to push more of the middle class into poverty. There is no other population for the greed of the wealthy to target. 

If the structure of professional sports in this country (at least in football, baseball, and basketball) is half as bad as I portray it, then how should it be revised?  Congress has the power to revise it just as Congress gave these sports exemptions from the anti-trust laws, and almost all the tax laws.  It may have made sense way back when but it no longer does now. So below is a starter for how professional sports in this country should be structured. 

It starts with the premise that Professional Sports should be set up as a public service to our citizens. The Super rich have enough play-toys for their own amusement and status symbols without forcing the public to pay for billion dollar team play-toys and hundreds of millions income per year.  Sterling will now receive a 16,000 % increase in profit when the team is sold for 2 billion dollars. That’s a nice investment, an investment opportunity fairly available to anyone with 2 billion dollars to spare, as fair as laws which prohibit anyone from sleeping under bridges. The wealthy can't sleep under bridges either. Perfectly fair.  

The Government needs to step in and create leagues which are regulated—with limits on profits—and the profits returned to the public sector, including the cities in which the teams play—or at least cities in general. There would still be a bargaining table—-with the government, the player's union, the cities in which the teams play, and the fans, represented at the table. For a start the best players should be paid well, very well, and all players put into 3 or 4 categories based on their stats from the year before. It just helps team solidarity if players are being roughly paid equivalent to their current performance stats. There is no good reason why Aaron Rodgers makes 40 times as much as those in the bottom tier.  Let’s say, simply for example, that $10 million dollars/yr is a good figure for the best players, however we decide is the best way to designate the best players.  And maybe the lowest players should be paid $800 thousand. Again, these are just examples not any attempt here to claim what the two salaries should be. After we have established fair and generous salaries at different levels, then the salaries should rise or fall with inflation. That would take care of all the endless bickering over salaries and bring some fairness and sanity to player salaries.  

And of course the contracts would be binding by both sides and be year by year. There would be no more taking young players and literally forcing them to sign a multiyear contract at low salary, a contract binding only to the player.  Currently, during bargaining sessions, the only real debate is just how much of the income goes to the owners and how much to the players. Greed will always drive the financial benefits to the owners and players upward and the public then pay for the greed—-paying more and more public money for players and owners, already some of the wealthiest citizens in our country. This concept of letting the wealthy continue to accumulate more and more of the country’s wealth in their own hands is a long term disaster, and always has been in history. That is one of the reasons empires always collapse. The other is the financial burden of supporting an empire, of some sort, abroad. 

With salaries in hand, the players being rewarded handsomely and fairly based on last year’s stats, then all the profits currently soaked up by the owners would be available to help our our cities, or any other agreed upon needs of our society. Just the 2 billion dollars to buy the Clippers would certainly help a lot of cities with education, infrastructure, whatever. Just in football, with 32 teams, that is $64 billion dollars.  Now add baseball, basketball, I guess hockey etc. and the amount becomes huge. 

If fans were included at the bargaining table what might they push?  Probably a fairer distribution of tickets. There would still be skyboxes for the wealthy, but a certain percentage of the tickets would likely be available to the general public, maybe by lottery, to ensure an average family could afford to go to a game once in a while.  And season tickets, the kind corporations hand out to clients, would be a thing of the past. I will hedge a bit here, since I suppose, if the stands were filled with too many die-hard working class fans, maybe the emotions would soar too high and we have riots like in Europe during soccer games. Those there to a game simply because some corporation gave them a ticket are less likely to get over emotional. There are fans like me who prefer to watch the games on TV in the comfort of my recliner, but those who enjoy going to a game should have a possibility of doing so. Professional sports should be for all the people, not just the affluent. 

What about free agency?  How would that work if there are salary schedules? Clearly switching teams would not change a player’s salary. I suppose if one team needs a kicker and another team needs a pass rusher then a trade could be made on that basis. And there would still be the national draft every year for players. I am not convinced a player needs the right to go anywhere he wants after X years. They could, of course, asked to be traded for any number of preferential reasons.  But in the absence of it affecting their salary it is not clear it becomes any kind of right. 

The system being presented here puts a lot more emphasis on the draft. A team that had the good sense to draft a quarter back like Wilson, which Seattle did, would be rewarded for their brilliance by not having to play contract games with the player year after year. The player would instead be paid fairly year after year based on his previous year’s stats. Fair is fair. Of course the teams with the worst records would still draft first. That helps equalize team quality throughout the league. 

So far here we have a system which is fair to all the players, and the fans, and the cities in which the teams play, and the taxpayers. Currently the owners grab roughly half the pie and the players the other half. Under this new system that half of the pie now goes to the public where it best can be used. I will not get into the particulars of where all of this would go. Maybe it goes to education in major cities where education is the least financially supported (because of property taxes as the source of revenue) or to infrastructure, or the environment, or health care etc. 

The most common reason people give for letting wealthy people own teams, and all the money which can be generated by such ownership, is that they hate letting government govern anything, because government is inefficient. That, unfortunately, is an inherent problem with governments, no doubt.  However, do we really want the wealthy owners to get all these billions of dollars to spend at their discretion or do we  want our government to get all these billions of dollars to spend on the public areas mentioned above? Hell, if they wasted billions, there would still be billions being spent on the public good.  It sure seems like a no brainer to me. 

What has not been mentioned is just who decides who the Head Coach is, or the general Manager for the team? Maybe each team would have a Board of Directors comprised of former stars of the team. Maybe the Mayor of the City would select the stars to be on the board. We certainly don’t want the Mayor to pick the Head Coach or General Manager since we might end up with Mayors chosen on the basis of how well the city pro football team is doing. God forbid that. And the Mayors would probably choose the board members carefully because they want the team to do well. Remember, the Board members do not decide where the profits go, they just choose the Head Coach and the General Manager.  This would certainly be better than having wealthy owners, half of them senile or ignorant about football, picking the Coach or General Manager. In many cases the owner simply inherited the team. How qualified are they likely to be? I am still bitter because my parents never left me a professional sport team to own. If I had only chosen different parents. 

Of course all of the above needs to be tweaked here and there, and perhaps most everywhere, but the benefits to the players, fans, and society seem clear enough.