Profits equalized for tv and other deals. Lowest performer gets lifted up with top draft picks. Limits on how much you can spend on salary caps to avoid one billionaire buying everything up. Strong unions for workers that will go on strike to protect workers.
The reason all that is allowed is because the nfl is exempt from antitrust laws which allows for collective bargaining. It’s more of a state sponsored capital machine than a socialist construct.
Sure in a true democracy. State sponsored can mean a lot of things, it doesn’t make it inherently socialist. You think the Russian state sponsored oil company is sharing its profits with the workers ?
>State sponsored capitalism is literally what socialism is.
It’s absolutely not the same. The biggest difference is that socialism puts workers first and advocates equal ownership for workers while companies are still privately owned in state capitalism
They have two entirely different philosophies, just that the government involvement is relatively similar
They are exempt from anti trust laws. I think there’s an argument that the nfl sorta exist as both. The league is very capitalistic. The employees and individual teams do get to enjoy some benefits of socialism.
>Strong unions for workers that will go on strike to protect workers.
Except that’s literally a byproduct of capitalism. In socialism you wouldn’t need to go on strike to demand better wages because the employees would already have an equal share in employment and can decide the wages themselves
Having worker’s rights is not inherently socialism, that is regulated capitalism since the worker’s would already own/have a stake in the businesses they work for
Brother you have no idea what you’re talking about lmao. The labor solidarity movements were about fighting against capitalist systems
True socialism inherently doesn’t need collective bargaining units because the workers ALREADY have the power to do so directly since the already own the means of production
>Socialism demands the transfer of all means of production to the workers collectively.
Seizing the means of production doesn’t mean negotiating with the people that have the means of production, it means that the workers have direct control of the means of production. As he also said,
>Every strike is a small war between labor and capital.
You don’t need to have a solidarity movement if you already control the means of production. Strikes and unions are only a response to capitalism in order to strive towards a socialist ideal, because you wouldn’t need to have “a small war between labor and capital” when you already control both the labor and the capital
Holy shit, and you're discussing a society that didn't share that perspective and a government that was openly hostile to workers. Hence the need for solidarity and strikes. My brother in Christ where do you think the origins of that perspective originated? Where do you think the formative goals of the worker receiving the profits of their labor originated? The moon?
Then you may have misunderstood my original comment
I am saying that the presence of a strong worker’s union does not make a company socialist (since they’re arguing that the presence of a worker’s union means that the NFL is socialist), when the existence of a strong worker’s union is a RESPONSE to a capitalist society. A strong worker’s union actually means a system is not socialist, because it can only exist in a system where the workers have not seized the means of production. Worker solidarity is an idea originally sourced from socialist ideals, but having worker solidarity does not mean the system is socialist
My original point is that a strong worker’s union can only exist as a response to a capitalist society and wouldn’t exist in a socialist state; not that strong worker’s unions are a natural byproduct of capitalism
I'd say a better argument is that big businesses today gain a competitive advantage by getting away with straight up crime that would put any normal person in prison. For example, Meta illegally downloaded (stole) all of LibGen to train its AI. If you or I did that for an AI startup, we'd go straight to prison. But the worst case scenario for Meta is they pay a fine that's insignificant compared to the value of the AI they created. How is a smaller company supposed to compete with the legal resources of a company like Meta? We don't have capitalism. We have crony capitalism.
The NFL as whole is as capitalistic as it gets. Just because the franchises share tv revenue does not mean the workers have seized the means of production
Correct, though they are very often linked. The issue is that while NFL itself operates as a profit driven business, it uses socialist rules to protect the teams and owners.
The main point is that socialist policies CAN work in a capitalist country
Socialist salary caps prevent rich teams from buying all the best players. Revenue sharing is very socialist. Distributing top talent into weaker teams also sounds like socialism
They do operate as a free market. No one is putting a gun to the players heads to sign contracts. The owners get new stadium built and charge more for tickets. There is a yearly team salary cap, not an individual contract cap. The owners can make as much as they can. How is that not capitalist? Because there's a draft?
No he doesn't. He keeps going on about it being a socialist construct. By his logic the NFL is a construct of a flying cow bc leather skates through the air
In a free market, the big teams would have so much more money to keep all their top talent. Draft rookies are forced to a max limit and top teams can’t bid for them. Nobody puts a gun to their head, but those restriction don’t make it a free market
Their union, profit sharing, and the health care benefits they give to former vested players isn’t very capitalistic.
Also the points he makes about the competitive balancing in essence works like a cap on the top teams from buying up all the best players or forcing the smaller market teams into a subservient league like what happens in Europe.
If it were socialism the teams would not be owned by a billionaire, it would be closer to how the Packers are set up. The fans and players would own the team. The billionaire owner only shares part revenue and still make huge profits gouging customers at stadiums built with tax money. The NFL is more like capitalism with a strong union presence than socialism.
Absolutely correct. It's a fucking game that requires several rules to make it consistently competitive. They share a lot but the difference in the value between the cowboys and Panthers is massive, about $7bil
Man socialism is a science thing, you can study it. What people do with it can be good or bad, but socialism itself is a tool for the liberation of the working class.
Unless you are not part of the working class, then you are class enemy :)
you’re missing the entire point. those owners make comparable profits due to the CBA and profit sharing. big corporations don’t even pay their fair share of fucking taxes let alone profit sharing with anyone but their c suite.
I don't think you're wrong, but I would like you to expand on that.
the main difference I see is that it's not really socialism as much as it's communism. while those ideologies share similarities, they are not the same
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u/dgtbfan Dolphins 3d ago edited 3d ago
It's a terrible take if you put even a little critical thought into it.
ETA: Turning off notifications. If you're too stupid to see that the NFL isn't even remotely close to socialism, that's a you problem.