Last Response for the Day: The top growth industries in the US today are sports stadiums and prisons both of which involve--as usual--the socialization of costs of producing increasingly concentrated and centralized privatized profits. The NFL and other "sports" leagues are also essential components of the overall expanded reproduction of the essential soil and ideological edifices of capitalism. The wholesale commodification, gladiator-like spectacles, obscene salaries and resource allocation priorities, star system etc is concentrated capitalism reductio ad absurdum/nauseum. One person I know described football as "simulated gang rape with guys on opposing teams wearing tight pants, patting each other on the ass and trying to get into each other's "end zones." An interesting extended metaphor indeed; perhaps a bit salacious or even Freudian. But the bottom line is that all of these stadiums (like the new "SAFECO" stadium in Seattle already going way over cost with more please to the taxpayers to pay for the infrastructure of games and sports unaffordable for most of those whose taxes pay for the construction) produce severe distortions in resource allocations, land prices and complementary infrastructure (roads to and from the stadiums and parking areas always top of the line with infrastructure elsewhere left to wither) and any "trickle-down" or "spread effects" are marginal if at all in terms of reaching the really poor and dispossessed and unemployed. In Seattle, the vast vast majority of workers at the Kingdome live no where near the dome (they are imported), very few, only a select few, of the local businesses get any revenues from the local multiplier effects or any customers staying after the game or coming before the game, so that the supposed income, employment, tax revenue and construction multiplier effects mare marginal for those near the stadium and overall, when factoring in opportunity cost--alternative uses for those funds--the net socialized costs bring few socialized benefits or revenues. But the whole value system associated with commercialized sports under capitalism is, in my opinion, sick, twisted, perverted and can bring nothing wholesome to the society at large; only more ugly commodification of people and things, violence, injuries and ostentacious decadence for the ultra-rich in their select boxes, obscene advertising rates for 15-second spots (passed on to customers) and just nothing of any real value to the many. Jim C -----Original Message----- From: Jim Devine [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, June 30, 1999 3:45 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:8650] the NFL and urban development Henry wrote: >Jim, > >Shrinking the size of the economy, even parts that are heavily subsidized, >reduces growth by definition. We must not confuse fair distribution of cost >and benefits with the aggregate size of the economy. >Full socialization of the NFL would be a better solution. What you are >objecting to is the socialization of cost without corresponding socialization >of benefits. >The problem of Yankee stadium is not that it is located in the Bronx but that >it does not benefit the Bronx. Moving it to New Jerzy will hurt the NYC >economy. Lincoln Center is located in Manhattan, and benfits Manhattan. The >NYSE is located on Wall Street and it benefits Manhattan and NYC in general, >the profiteers live in Manhattan, and the staff live in Queens. >The progressive elite can wait for the revolution but the poor cannot. I contribute too many missives to pen-l and I'm no expert on urban development. What do others on pen-l think? Should LA subsidize an NFL team to locate here? Is it a good idea for other cities to do so? Does it promote the _type_ of development we want? Should the poor hook their fortunes to Al Davis and the NFL? (The possibility of "full socializaton" seems off the agenda.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
