The pundits say that Bernie Sanders has no chance to win and that no socialist could ever be more than a fringe candidate. I say: not so fast! Americans are already socialists at heart.
It’s true. Professional football, basketball and hockey leagues have salary caps, a draft system, semi-permanent league memberships, and among other things, even$435,000 minimum wages in the NFL. Think about that. What other industries in America have this level of socialism built in? Our entire public education system pays for the training of every generation of athletes. Once in college, athletes don’t get paid, and the profits from their labor (in the sports entertainment industry) go towards funding public education. How much more socialist can we get?
Compare this to European soccer where instead of getting the 1st draft pick, the losing teams get knocked out of the league. There is no draft system that fairly distributes the players across the teams. There is no public education system that pays to train athletes for professional teams. No, in Europe, the soccer teams fund their own youth training programs, signing athletes at ages as young as seven. There are no salary caps or minimum wages. The highest bidder simply wins (which can be as high as $100 million), and as a result, there are basically 10 teams out of hundreds in Europe that win everything every year.
Permanent dynasties are exactly what American sports leagues are trying to prevent. They are trying to create a level playing field and give everyone a chance to win: and that’s exactly what socialism is all about. See, Americans already are socialists at heart.
American sports are basically a glitch in the matrix that reveal the lie in the narrative that conservatives are “pro-capitalism” and liberals are “pro-big government.” Consider that it is permanent league memberships that enable NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS and MLB franchises to force their local governments to give them huge tax breaks andpay hundreds of millions of dollars for their stadiums. Not to mention, most of these franchises have their income guaranteed for eternity because no new franchises can ever oust/replace them. Socialists aren’t always opposed to capitalist solutions, and in this instance, socialists are more capitalist than American conservatives.
We see something similar in college sports where socialists would rather treat student athletes as employees and compensate them with salaries and benefits. Socialists are fine with funding public universities with the profits from professional sports teams, but even if we are going to do this, we still have to take care of the 98 percent of athletes that don’t ultimately go pro. They need to get paid and/or be guaranteed a college education when their athletic career is over. Socialists are fine with compensating athletes with an education, but it can’t be a pretend education they get while playing a sport full time.
Of course, most Americans oppose these reforms to American sports. To this, leftist liberals need simply respond that American sports fans are bigger socialists than they are #feelthebern. So next time someone reacts to Bernie by saying socialists are evil, talk about sports.
Yoshi - Joschka Tryba 