Though it varies from sport to sport, there are admirable traits taught by athletes in the different professional sports we have in our country. Some of those admirable traits are teamwork, sportsmanship, competition, and overcoming obstacles. But there is a bad trait that the athletes in most pro sports share. That bad trait is due to the influence of the free market on those sports. That bad trait is the pursuit of self-interest only when negotiating one's contract.
It isn't that all athletes do that. But is not only an acceptable option for all athletes, it is expected. And why that is a bad influence is because the more that people only seek their own self-interest in a world with limited resources, the greater the cost that seeking self-interest is to those at the bottom of the totem pole.
We should note that it is one thing for a poor person to seek his/her own self-interest only. That is justifiable because a poor person is seeking to survive. But for all too many, the more wealth one has, the more that one seeking self-interest only is done for the sake of one's status. An acquaintance at one of the churches I go to told me that a millionaire's acquaintance of hers told her that they want to make more money in order to out earn some other millionaires. That making more than others is what gave that person significance. Who cares if others must live in deprivation or be exploited in order for the wealthy to compete with their own kind? Such is the attitude that the Free Market teaches us. For it is the Free Market that tells us that seeking our own self-interest is our only moral obligation. And what follows that belief is the maximizing one's personal profits ethic. That ethic is a cannibalizing ethic in that it devours all other values that could stand in its way.
We could mention who gets financially shortchanged when players seek as much money as they can get. The first to suffer are some organization employees. The non-player pay for some of the pro sports organizations can be low with little chance of promotion. Then the fans who live on lower wages also suffer because they are financially locked out attending professional sporting events. And some working class fans also suffer because they cannot go as often as they would like because of the total cost of attending a single game.
But in the end, it is society that suffers most here. As with other forms of entertainment, we see that many of those who earn some of the highest financial rewards in society are merely entertainers. That both shows and influences a society's priorities. And those priorities help influence how many young people look to establish careers in the entertainment industries.
However, what causes society to suffer the most comes from how more and more people start to believe that seeking self-interest is one's only moral obligation for them and thus practice the maximizing personal profit ethic. Nothing divides Americans more than to have to compete with all others in order satisfy one's own self-interest and to maximize one's own personal profits. And it makes more of us like those who garner millions or even billions of dollars but who feel deprived that some one else is making more than they do. When those who are held in high esteem act that way, more and more people, especially those who are easily influenced, imitate them by embracing the same self-serving values.
Martin Luther King saw that one of the basic flaws in our society was that we were a 'thing-oriented society.' That is that the majority of people valued things such as gadgets, property rights, and the profits more than they valued other people. And when that occurs, especially in a highly competitive society, more and more people will suffer significant deprivations as is indicated by the ever growing wealth disparity in our country. In addition, an apathy over the suffering of others overtakes us because we would rather let others suffer than for us to miss out on any thrills that things provide for us.
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