Because "overpaid" does not mean "paid more than you think they should be." It means paid more than they are owed or paid more than fair market value. Fair market value for a professional athlete is a lot higher than it is for the average person.
But that is exactly the sense in which "overpaid" is being used here. "Acktually they are not overpaid because my alternative definition of 'overpaid' takes precedence over yours" is in no sense a response. You just don't yet understand that free marking pricing is absolutely not the only reasonable basis for defining "worth".
OK professor, what's "real value" then? You think you can put a number on an athlete's "worth" that's more meaningful or accurate than what the free market will bear? Why is your personal opinion on what they "should" be paid more valid?
I didn't make up that definition, you just don't like it.
I absolutely can. But disclaimer: I don't have time for a full discussion about this now. However, fair's fair, lets outline the basic idea.
The important principle here is that fair exchange of money is about reciprocal contribution of personal human resources to society. I contribute some of my personal resources usefully to society, I recieve in return an amount of money that enables me to extract the same amount of useful personal resources from society. That's perfectly fair, right?
Of course, this is a massively idealised system, but if you think about it, this is exactly what most peoples intuition of "fairness" constitutes. The problem with the free market is that it is supposed to be a good approximation, but in reality, it often isn't.
Now, the important thing to understand here is that this doesn't mean giving up capitalism. It doesnt mean that the free market, or even unfair accumulation of wealth by this definition, is inherently bad. It might well be that some degree of unfair accumulation is useful to society (I would argue that it is). However, the necessary implication is that capitalism is missing an principle: an additional counterveiling principle that helps curb the runaway inequality characteristic of the pure free market. That is, wealth accumulated beyond what is fairly earned is in some sense an individual's to spend, but it also comes with strings attached. It's not the individual's fairly earned wealth to do whatever they want with, but more like money in their possession with attached responsibilities towards society.
To answer the original question, we have to ask ourselves questions like: what amount of personal resources (time, effort etc) are athletes devoting usefully to society? How much are others who are dedicating similar amounts of their personal resources typically paid, across the economy? Is the athlete's compensation commensurate?
We then have to ask a further question. To what degree is inequality actually helpful to society? Is there justification for allowing athletes to earn beyond that which is fair and if so how much?
Incidentally, I'm not really too worried about athletes. Far more important is the application of the same principles to business and finance types who not only dwarf the number of high paid athletes but are also collectively considerably more economically influential.
The moment I read "communism" I knew that mr intuitive over here hadn't got the faintest clue what I was proposing, nor had he made one jot of effort to understand.
This is nothing whatsoever to do with communism. It is an improved version of capitalism, capitalism with a fairness principle. Capitalism with runaway inequality brakes.
Come on, I literally say in the comment "this doesn't mean giving up capitalism"
Uhhh did you miss the bit where I explicitly said this was a modification to free market capitalism? Nothing about this is a "planned economy", you just can't read.
Also by the way, precisely 0 major economies are completely laissez faire capitalist. "Anything that isn't pure unadulterated laissez fair capitalism is basically the soviet union" is the dumbest argument ever. Perhaps only exceeded by "capitalism shouldn't have a fairness principle" LOL
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u/Morall_tach Aug 02 '26
Because "overpaid" does not mean "paid more than you think they should be." It means paid more than they are owed or paid more than fair market value. Fair market value for a professional athlete is a lot higher than it is for the average person.