THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I wouldn’t describe it as slavery, as the players willingly enter a contractual relationship with the NCAA.  But I do agree it comes awfully close given that the NCAA and the various professional sports organizations are running a cartel with respect to the labor market.

Still, it’s a pretty important difference in that slavery often involves coercion where absent the coercive force, the slave’s expected utility from the relationship is negative.  On the other hand, the expected utility from playing college sports is positive.  That the NCAA is an unregulated monopsony simply means quite a lot of the surplus value from the relationship goes to the NCAA.

> On the other hand, the expected utility from
> playing college sports is positive.

In the case of college football, that’s open for debate.  Obviously, yes, there’s a chance that you get a multi-million dollar NFL contract.

But what are your odds of suffering permanent brain damage?

Odds of suffering permanent brain damage?  If you’re talking about the kind that would greatly effect your lifestyle, then I’d say very low.  “Minor” brain damage?  I’m not sure, but given that many NFL players are willing to make the trade-off fully aware of the risks, who am I to say it wasn’t worth it?

Be aware that it’s entirely consistent to regret the decision ex post and yet have expected positive utility ex ante.

"as the players willingly enter a contractual relationship with the NCAA”

Is it willingly, if you are not permitted right to counsel?

College players often had some form of counsel when making their decision to enter college.

In any case, even if college players are not aware of all the downsides involved, and even if in their minds they’ve exaggerated the upside, it’s still hard for me to conclude college players in general get no positive utility out of playing college sports.  Remember that the alternative is usually no change at playing professionally.

Whoops, that should be “no chance.”

Is the neutral utility determined based on what their situation is in a given market, or what their situation is if the market was free and open?

If they play by the rules (tie their hands behind their back), they get a positive outcome.  If they don’t play by the rules (hands are free, but no one else’s is), they have negative outcome.

But, if everyone stopped playing by the rules, then the guy who lets his hands be tied will have negative outcome, while the rest of the guys will form their own league outside of NCAA (like, for example, the Junior hockey leagues in Canada, which are NOT school affiliated) and have a positive outcome.

Your position is basically similar to the prisoner’s dilemna.  If all the prisoner’s agree with the warden, life will be positive, regardless of how much personal liberty they sacrifice.

I agree basically with everything you said and wish the players in your linked story well.  I’m not advocating that players simply accept their clearly unjust (relative to an ideal world) treatment by the NCAA.  I only argue that I don’t think it amounts to slavery because despite the injustice, players still obtain an overall benefit from the relationship, however meager it might be due to cartelization.

It’s not my “position” that’s the prisoner’s dilemma, it’s the whole situation, as you’ve ably described.  Collective action is always the problem in breaking cartels.  So it would be nice if the government could see that the sports cartel is just as harmful as any other.  The “government” includes the judiciary, but making a constitutional argument that it amounts to slavery probably would not work.

This is really exactly like prison reform.

Once a prisoner gets out of jail, is he really going to care about prison reform?  And, if he knows he’s going to be in jail for 2-5 years, and that it’s going to take 4-10 years to get resolution (if ever), is he going to bother to fight anyway?

This is also like kids living at home.  They’re not going to negotiate with their parents too much.  Eventually, they’ll move out, or run away.

The NCAA knows this.  Unfortunately, there’s no Andy Dufresne to force the justice system to respond with the full weight of the law.

I’m not an Insider subscriber, so I couldn’t read the article. 

A few thoughts, though, on the general subject matter.

The Constitution expressly prohibits both slavery and indentured servitude.  Indentured servitude is basically slavery by voluntary contract.  So the “oh, they agreed to it” argument is not availing. 

Nor, of course, is the “they get a benefit out of it” argument.  Slavery proponents used exactly that argument every minute from when the first slaves were enslaved through . . . well, I imagine there are some still using it.  “They were given food and shelter and were well-treated” is not much different from “they are given a free education and a chance for a pro career.” Well, except that the education is often short-circuited in the name of practice and the chances of a pro career for many are minuscule.  Everytime I see one of those Mid-America Conference games on a Tuesday night, I really wonder who’s getting an education. 

I honestly think the coaches are even worse than the NCAA, if that’s possible.  They of course have all their 13th Amendment rights and they use them to screw the very athletes they’ve recruited. “Come to Old Siwash U. and play for me” until the day I get an offer from Enormous State Univesity and Siwash tries to hold me to the letter of intent that expressly says I am picking an institution and not a coach. Plus, a lof ot the surplus value the athletes create goes directly into the pocket of the coaches because the rules don’t let it go into the pockets of the athletes.  No one is watching those coaches shows.

The slavery equivocation is starting to get ridiculous.  If slavery really was net beneficial to the slaves, then slave-owners wouldn’t have found it necessary to use physical force to coerce their slaves to stay.  We can at least recognize the NCAA doesn’t use hired thugs to keep their players under contract, nor do they use hired thugs to get players to enter college in the first place; any player at any time can quit and do something else.  They don’t precisely because playing under the NCAA’s strict rules still is net beneficial.  Yes, yes, a competitive labor market would be much, much better.  I don’t disagree.  But it’s not slavery.

As for the legal argument, the 13th amendment bars slavery and involuntary servitude.  You technically can contract out yourself to be a “slave” (i.e. an employee), but note that your “master” (i.e. your employer) cannot use physical force to keep you around.

I don’t buy the “net benefit” argument.

That’s the same kind of thing a wife holds onto as her abusing husband beats her every night.  If she leaves, then, who knows, it could be a net negative to her, as the husband at least gives some sort of protection from the even worse human beings around.

I’ll disregard the fact that the sexual relationship “market” is not quite as “market-y” as the labor market.

It’s not difficult to assume that any decision by anyone is ex ante a “net benefit.” Even slaves who decide not to escape from their masters; after all, there’s a large risk of being caught and tortured or killed, so staying is quite the benefit.  But like I explained above, we as a society are unwilling to recognize escape from physical coercion as a “benefit” when it comes to transactions.  Same goes with psychological coercion, which coupled with physical coercion is most likely what’s driving the preference of the battered wife who stays with her husband.

The market for sports player labor is not known for physical or psychological coercion.  What seems to be driving students to stay in their situation is the promise of lots of money at the end.  That’s hardly slavery.  The only thing despicable about the whole thing is the fact that the NCAA is running a labor monopsony and basically extracting a huge chunk of the surplus value and creating dead-weight loss.  But rest assured, there is surplus value (i.e. a net benefit).

Addendum.

Examples of other labor markets with monopsonists where the “victims” still derive a net benefit:

1) medical residents
2) grad student research assistants
3) federal prosecutors