www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Untreatable fever hits Papal household

World Cup "fever," that is!

From Catholic World News:

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Pontifical household divided on World Cup loyalties

Rome, Jul. 03 (CWNews.com) - Very little work will be done in the apostolic palace on Tuesday evening, July 4, as the staff of the pontifical household gathers to watch the World Cup semifinal match between Germany and Italy.

Pope Benedict XVI, a native German, now the bishop of an Italian diocese-- has made no public statements about his rooting interests. But his private secretary, Msgr. Georg Ganswein, has told reporters that the Pope will be impartial.

Msgr. Ganswein, another native German and an avid sports fan, makes no such claims about himself. He will be cheering unabashedly for the German team, while informed sources say that most of the administrative staff of the pontifical household will back the Italian side.

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The other semi-final match features France and Portugal, guaranteeing an all-European Final!

South America's Argentina and Brazil were earlier defeated in the quarterfinals, as well as England, another European soccer superpower!

Amado

Here is today's Mises.org article:

"Register now for Commerce and Culture: A Seminar with Paul Cantor, July 24-28.
Separation of Sport and State
by Tim Swanson
[Posted on Wednesday, July 5, 2006]
Subscribe at email services and tell others.


"I hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense." -
H.L. Mencken

We do not have to loathe sports as Mencken did to see his point.

When it comes to international sports, common sense is being ignored and tossed to
the wayside.

Consider the World Cup.

The scarce resources involved in implementing many of the events involve state
intervention.

For instance, the government of Ghana will reportedly give each member of its
national soccer team $20,000 for each game they win. This award is being financed
through taxes collected via coercion. In addition, various levels of German
government (city, state, and federal) provided over ?600 million to fund stadium
construction and maintenance for the event.[1]

Yet given the level of enthusiasm and even hysteria that follows the World Cup, is
it not obvious that this industry would be viable if funded on a purely voluntary
basis?[2]

Other notable examples of jingoism include the 1936 Berlin Olympics involving the
Nazi �bermensch as well as the kidnapping of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich
Olympic Games. In addition, as it has been argued before, the construction of
stadiums serves as a backdrop for inspiring nationalism and regionalism, with the
net effect of buoying state intervention (through taxes, subsidies, zoning, and
eminent domain).[3]

There is no need to look further than your local recreation center, as funded and
administrated by the local government. They sponsor baseball, softball, soccer, and
a dozen other sports activities for kids. Their parks are owned and operated by the
city and paid for by your tax dollars - all the better for instilling an early sense
in kids that the state is their benefactor.[4]

Why are these run at taxpayer expense? Any number of excuses are offered: tradition,
civic pride, economic viability. All the rationales falter. Local churches and
fraternal organizations preserve tradition and culture and they are private. Cities
across the country take pride in many commercial institutions. As for economic
viability, entrance and parking fees, concession stands, team sponsorship, and
advertisers could cover costs, especially since coaches and players are all
volunteers at this level.

On what basis are they not immediately privatized? Private companies could build the
parks, run the concessions, manage the teams, and provide all related services - in
the same way developers put together huge commercial towns of shops and
amusements.[5] They do not do it now because the city crowds out the competition.

From State Intervention to Organizational Inefficiencies

John Hagel's seminal piece on Unbundling the Corporation dissects some of the
problems plaguing vertical integration in an ever increasing world of
specialization. In essence, he proposes that in an era of decreasing transaction
costs - which he calls "interaction costs" - firms should move towards specializing
in core areas, rather than diverting productive resources to unrelated activities.

Vertical integration is simply another name for the aggregate of "public goods"
provided by governments. The state continually takes on responsibilities and
enterprises that could otherwise be done through the specialization of private,
independent firms. Unbundling in this case would be another name for privatizing and
deregulating industries.

It has been similarly noted that "Web 2.0" has and will continue to be a tour de
force in the area of higher education, effectively Unbundling the University - a la
carte degrees, an end to accreditation cartels, open access journals, digital
libraries, etc.

For instance, in order to finance their athletic and intramural programs, many
colleges typically levy a universal fee for each student.[6] This is a classic case
of "That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen" as the subsidy not only
redistributes wealth that could have otherwise been used in other productive manners
(e.g., engineering lab equipment, or simply not charging at all thereby allowing
students to use the monies in alternative endeavors) but it also erects an
artificially high barrier to entry for outside competition (e.g., privately funded
minor league and semi-pro teams).[7]

$18
Similarly, unbundling musical clubs not just from schools but also from the
tentacles of state financing could also be surmised (e.g., subsidies paid by
coercive taxation to city orchestras and official art districts).

In addition, unbundling the monopolistic chess club, the thespian club, the juggling
club, and 4-H are all practical applications of this concept. Even the formal
endorsement of the Boy Scouts from Congress gives the organization a
government-granted monopoly on boyish outdoor shenanigans and erects artificial
barriers to entry that other private organizations must now endure.

While unbundling should not be undertaken for the sake of merely doing it, its
economic ramifications have such profound long-term effects on business models that
it should not be ignored. (Remember: the state is also a business, but it operates
through principles of coercion and not P/L.) Nor does this mean that the traditional
pomp and circumstance of athletic events will falter.

As the late, Rodney Dangerfield put it, "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke
out."


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Tim Swanson is a graduate student at Texas A&M University. He would like to thank
Jeff Tucker for his comments and suggestions. Send him mail. Comment on the blog.

Notes

[1] At least ?620 million in either direct financing or loan guarantees was provided
by these governmental divisions. For more information, visit the FIFA World Cup
section hosted at Yahoo and visit the stadium information at each location.

[2] Membership with FIFA is entirely voluntary as it receives funds voluntarily from
its members, donors, sponsors, etc. In fact, they are actually profitable as they
receive millions annually in both membership dues and licensing fees. Furthermore,
FIFA itself does not coerce people to attend, but the way it organizes events almost
always involves the state (via stadium construction). It is the same kind of problem
that the IOC faces with setting up venues based on the nation-state paradigm. In
fact, for the most part, no tax dollars go to fund the US National Soccer Team
itself as it is all sponsorship and membership based (they are a non-profit
organization). For more on FIFA, see Foul! by Andrew Jennings.

[3] Two more recent examples of subsidized stadium construction: (1) On July 1, 2005
Sedgwick County Kansas started collecting a one percent sales tax for the next 30
months. The Sedgwick County Arena will be a 15,000 basketball seat, multi-purpose
entertainment arena, with a cost of $184.5 million. As of this writing they have
collected over $58 million. (2) If you rent a car or stay in a hotel in San Antonio
(and in many other cities with professional sport franchises), note the "Spurs Arena
Tax" which collects approximately $15 million annually.

[4] Who is to say that playing a contact sport such as football or wrestling should
be encouraged in the first place, let alone subsidized by the state? Currently there
is a movement by ne'erdowellers such as Jack Thompson to try to link aggressive
behavior with "violent" video games - this despite any clear, objective longitudinal
research on the matter. Yet the debate surrounding aggressive tendencies and contact
sports such as football and ice hockey - where physical aggression is encouraged,
institutionalized, and empirically known to manifest itself off the field - is
seemingly non-existent. See also, Wired magazine's article on managing a guild in
World of Warcraft.

[5] Another topic that could fill volumes is the use of state-monopolized services
(e.g., roads). This circumstance has sometimes given rise to "partnerships" in ski
resort towns such as Vail and Aspen, along with theme parks managed by Six Flags and
Disney World. Similarly, all-inclusive mega-resorts found along the Las Vegas Strip
and seaside resorts maintained by Club Med may strike subsidization deals with the
state. These deals usually surround infrastructure development (roads, walkways)
where there is no private enterprise due to State monopolization. Such was the case
in planning the new San Francisco Giants baseball stadium as it included $15 million
for roads and sidewalks provided by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, which is
fully funded via taxation. Contrast this with the Mexican government, who
artificially spearheaded the development of the beaches of Cancun during the 1960's
and '70s. Their pet program cost Mexican taxpayers millions, with projects ranging
from roads and sidewalks to water-treatment plants and an airport - some of which
was destroyed by Hurrican Wilma last year.

[6] According to their Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act on file for the 2004-2005
fiscal year, the University of Colorado at Boulder allocated approximately $1.5
million in student fees to fund their varsity athletic programs. Similarly, in the
same time frame, nearly $1.7 million in student fees was dispersed to fund varsity
athletics at the University of Texas at Austin. For information on other schools,
visit the Department of Education Office of Post Secondary Education website. Or for
faster results, simply type "EADA" and the school name into a search engine.

[7] Does this mean the end of Big Sports? Not necessarily, as franchise owners can
use innovative methods from individuals like Mike Veeck as a case-study to
effectively adjust their business models and remain profitable."