THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

just curious, but is the implication that any time an owner or owners pocket the value added by an employee above what they are paying him it is inherently unfair?  would it also be unfair if the owner is contractually obligated to pay someone who is not adding at least that equivalent value to the company/franchise?

It’s only unfair in that the player had no chance to bargain under an agreement he was not a party to.  Crosby was not part of the union, a union that bargained away rights of players about to enter the union.  That’s the part that is unfair.

yes, that is definitely unfair in the ‘life sucks’ sense of the word.  the only remedy i can think of is have, or start i guess, rival leagues so that a guy like crosby in that situation will have more leverage or some choices as to which players union or league he wants to enter (although theyred be nothing stopping the player’s union from bargaining with multiple leagues).  economies of scale unfortunately don’t seem to favor multiple nation (continent-wide) pro sports leagues.

How can you ensure someone gets compensated “fairly” when it is impossible to know the amount of value they generate until after the fact? 

The increase of value of the Penguins franchise after they won the lottery was nothing more than a guess as to his impact, so you can’t really say his compensation should have been pegged to that guess, can you?

ALL value is future, be it stocks or your salary.  The value of anything is the present value of all its future earnings.

So, I can say that winning the Crosby lottery increased the valuations of the Penguins by 30MM$, and so Crosby was an undervalued asset relative to his salary.

If Crosby was a free agent, he would have gotten a 30MM$ signing bonus, plus his rookie salary.