Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Unintended consequences

As Boyes points out, the involvement by the state in college athletics leads to any number of perverse outcomes. The government regulations interacting with a government sanctioned cartel - the NCAA - leads to inefficiency and barriers to entry that perpetuate rent seeking.

Most of the institutions that are affected by Title 9 and other government regulations are state institutions or quasi government institutions. Other than Hillsdale College one would be hard pressed to find a college or university that is not a state enterprise or state controlled enterprise.

The specific example of the UConn woman's basketball team, while interesting, is not really on point. UConn woman's teams actually benefit from the barriers to entry erected by the complex scaffolding of state university and government regulation. This complex witch's brew guarantees that the powerful institutions, UConn woman's basketball may well be the most powerful institution on that campus, will perpetuate in rent seeking. This is not to denigrate the amazing achievement of UConn woman - that team has historically operated at the highest level against all ranked opposition. But the success is, in large part, a result of the government - directly and indirectly through the government sanctioned cartel - NCAA.

The real lesson of Title 9 is the discrimination that is at the heart of all government action. In the name of egalitarian equal outcome, state action leads to discrimination. And in athletics . . . title 9 leads to the elimination of men's sports (think UCal Berkeley men's rugby - defending national champion) and introduction of "innovative" women's sports like rowing that would never be present in the absence of state action. This results in both mis and mal allocation of resources . . . which tends to be typical of state action.

The US government and NCAA "partnership" is reminiscent of the state "support" of athletics in the old Soviet period - in both the old USSR and the Warsaw pact countries.

What we can learn from the UConn woman's record breaking performance is to recognize and oppose the perverse outcomes that always spring from the seedy underbelly of the state intervention that is the basis for the road to serfdom.

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