Many thanks to Stephen L. Hall for these Monday morning words of freedom.
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There is a certain irony as I write this commentary on an article I read because that article was published on Independence Day. It is a reminder that tyranny is not merely a matter of federal government overreach, but pervades our society on all levels.
A local ordinance prohibiting property owners from using their own property for lawful business purposes solely because it competes with the profits of their cronies. In what nefarious, underhanded, and illegal black market enterprise are these lowlife business owners seeking to engage? They dare to rent their own parking spaces to the public . . . on days that the Atlanta braves are having a game so that people are not forced to pay inflated prices for parking at the stadium.
Cronyism has always fed and subsidized professional sports venues. That certainly explains Donald Trump’s fascination with them and pageants. There is a certain political entertainment class as corrupt as Hollywood or Planned Parenthood.
The combination of cronies, money, and politics is nothing new, but the flagrancy of the self-dealing in the open is an affront to decency of normal people. There is an arrogance of power which fortunately drives the corruption to the front of the public eye. And of all corrupt people, those associated with entertainment do so ever love the limelight.
The corrupt must try to capture all of illegal proceeds that they can scrape up with their grubby little hands. The corrupt organization of which this article refers is the Atlanta Braves, but they are just the most flagrant of abusers. But corruption never works alone, it must work in tandem with others. It must also be encouraged by the evasions, equivocations, rationalizations, and complacency of both the public and their victims.
In the present case, the public of Atlanta called out for a professional sports team. Sports leagues and teams are part of a state sponsored oligopoly, not a free market, capitalistic enterprise. There are an artificially limited number of sports teams permitted by the league, so cities compete for the review they expect the team to bring to the city.
Competition for teams is not a competition of the market, but a competition of the bribes. Cities give huge subsidies to the teams, from tax breaks to helping acquire the property to rerouting traffic flows to accommodate the stadium and events to subsidizing the building of new stadiums for the teams. This is in addition to the natural advantages the team derives from locating in the city or metropolitan area even without the subsidies, such as a large concentration of customers, readily available suppliers, and fans already loyal to their city.
For the state, or city, to subsidize any business, it has to get the money for the subsidy from somewhere, and that somewhere must always be the non-subsidized businesses or workers. In the case of the Atlanta stadium, the city raised taxes on the other businesses to help pay for the construction of the stadium.
Corruption is always sold on greed. This form of civic corruption is no different. Citizens and business owners are sold on the promise that the sports franchise will bring jobs, customers, spending, tax revenues, money, and all the good things they can imagine. Of course, no one could ever say how much those other businesses would have grown if they were not taxed to give their taxes to the sports team.
See large prosperous cities have sports teams. Proof that the sports teams bring enrichment and prosperity. Or is it that prosperity and wealth brings sports teams like parasitic flies? Correlation is not causation. But corruption feeds corruption; and the politicians feed off of being seen doing something for the economy as well as campaign contributions.
So we have the airport hub of Atlanta, and the city attached to that airport, which sold its citizens and businesses on the ephemeral promise that raising their taxes to build a baseball stadium would bring them increased opportunities and customers.
There is a rule in contract law: past consideration is no consideration. (Consideration being defined as that thing of value promised in exchange for the contract.)
Once the stadium was built, and elections won, what reason did the cabal of sports investors and politicians have to care about the little people whose taxes made their enrichment possible?
The city passed an ordinance to prohibit businesses from using their own property to engage in “certain” business. “Cobb County quietly passed a new ordinance banning businesses located near the new Braves stadium from selling parking spaces during events at the stadium.” That’s correct, business competition is prohibited to businesses who subsidized their competition.
Fred Beloin best articulated the gall of this affrontery, “They say they’re increasing my property value and then they do everything in their power to make sure I get no benefit out of it.” The ordinance enforces a monopoly of parking spaces, for which the stadium owners charge forty dollars ($40.00) per event.
I am reminded by this of the fact that mere peasants, and even yeomen, were forbidden from hunting game larger than a hare in the royal forests. Only nobility were permitted to hunt and they protected their sport vigorously. It was a criminal offense to be found in the forest with any arrow other than a blunt. The upper classes have their privileges.
There was a time, when Rome was young, that business and work were thought beneath the nobility. Work was beneath any man of birth and breeding. That is one of the main reasons that Rome never experienced an industrial revolution, because of the cultural separation of the scholars from the laborers.
Ironically, it is now getting to the point that one must be politically connected, of the elite, the modern nobility in America before one is even permitted to run a business or make a profit. As I have stated upon numerous occasions, there can be no political liberty without economic liberty.
Corruption like we are seeing in Atlanta strikes at the very heart of America, because it strikes at the right to use your property to conduct business. The Braves make millions of dollars, but their greed will not permit their neighbors to even rent parking spaces, lest they make a few dollars less. Those same neighbors who helped set them up in the baseball business in the first place.
Who is to blame for this blatant corruption? Certainly not just the politicians, but the voters; not just the Braves’s owners, but the businesses who supported the stadium’s construction; not just the lawmakers, but the judges who allow it; and not just the baseball players, but every fan who buys a ticket or trinket supporting such corrupt organizations.
Reward the corrupt and greedy with profits, and you are part of the corruption. Make no mistake. Sports are fun entertainment, and a wholesome business; but when any businesses becomes entangled with government, corruption soon follows.
It is the principle of paying one’s own way, whether as an individual or as a business which is the moral foundation of a capitalist society, of American society. What a pity that America’s pastime has become such a corrupt symbol of the moral corruption of America itself.
