http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/page/UFCpay/ufc-fighters-say-low-pay-most-painful-hit-all
I think its going to be the begining of many attacks to come. Its pathetic. ESPN ultimately wants to use the government to take out their competition. The UFC needs the intellectual powers of Lew Rockwell and company to defend themselves. I’m sure the Fertittas are very smart, but I doubt they can address this issue as well as Lew Rockwell and folks.
They’re on the right track…
“They’re on the right track…”
ESPN is on the right track?
The UFC are not the kind of guys you want to piss off.
Yes, ESPN is on the right track. Attempting to use government force to squeeze your competition is the right track. 
The OP says “The UFC needs the intellectual powers of Lew Rockwell and company to defend themselves” [against ESPN trying to force them out because ESPN doesn’t want to compete].
I posted a video of Joe Rogan talking in very realist, articulate, libertarian terms about how trying to drag others down because you don’t want to compete is a socialist act. Joe Rogan is a UFC commentator. As in, the UFC is already employing the guy who just said all that. And who says he likes every single thing that comes out of Ron Paul’s mouth.
They may not have Rockwell on the payroll yet, but they are on the right track with guys like Joe Rogan. Get it?
"Attempting to use government force to squeeze your competition is the right track. "
Lol.
Well, you do have that whole “its wrong” hanging over your head. But I guess if you can ignore your conscience then you’ll be fine.
I was thinking, maybe they don’t have to pay Lew Rockwell. Lew could benefit by getting more of his message out there, and UFC would benefit by having a more polished defense against tyranny coming after them.
In that case, ESPN is a monopolist too. What competition does it have in the USA?
Actually, they pretty much all study some sort of martial art, so they have very, very high degrees of self-control. Hell, how many times do they break the rules in a competition in comparison to athletes in football, basketball, and baseball? However, if you do get into a fight with a UFC fighter, then God save you.
The only real competition ESPN has comes from Fox Sports since most local sports teams have their broadcasts on regional Fox Sports outlets.
Joe Rogan is dead on. In fact, lately, I’ve been giving that very idea quite a bit of thought. The poor, unsuccessful, disabled, etc. are more likely to assign a low importance to material success (wealth), good looks, etc. The reasons should be obvious. But I think we have to take a holistic view. It’s not just that they’re socialists, it’s that they have to find some way (psychologically) to cope with their disadvantages and that’s one way that it comes out.
I’m going to go down a rabbit-trail now. Those of you who know me know this will be a tl;dr. You’ve been warned.
Standing behind all of what Rogan talks about in that vid is a deeper, all-surpassing envy. It’s not just “I wish I had what you have”, it’s something much darker than that and I believe it is present in everyone. I believe standing behind the resentments of the successes of others is a universal, genocidal impulse.
If you woke up tomorrow to hear on the news that every other person on the planet died last night, randomly, would you be sad or happy? As long as you didn’t die and (arguably) your spouse, parents, close friends etc. I think that you’d be happy. Why shouldn’t you be happy? It’s like inflation in reverse. You’ve just been made instantly wealthier as long as you don’t sit on your ass and let the opportunity pass by.
This is what I mean by the universal, genocidal impulse. We all stand in competition with one another for scarce resources. The fewer of you there are, the more there is for me. Now, this is not to refute capital theory and the benefits of the division-of-labor and so on. But the point still stands that if you eliminate a moderate fraction of the populace (not so much as to completely break down business), the remaining people would be, by proportion, wealthier. Hence, we each secretly unconsciously desire mass genocide that spares ourselves and our family and friends. This explains why misanthropic themes in fiction are so popular with the public.
I think this also plays a role in how the general public is so easily “duped” about wars. They want to be duped. The public is like the wife who knows her husband cheats and lies to her about it but is happy to stay in the marriage so long as he never admits the truth. She wants to be lied to. The more of “them” that the government kills, the better for “us.” In fact, I think in the case of adventurist war, the human brain is even more f—d up. In the ancestral environment, a strong warrior class could literally bring home the bacon… with spare wives and slaves to boot. I think this helps explain why the American public is so willing to pretend that the US government not benefitting from controlling the oil or the poppy (heroin) in Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively. Our primitive brains are secretly saying, “Rah! rah! rah! Go troops! Bring home more animals and food for us! Bring home more women for us! Bring home more slaves!”
So, there is this universal, genocidal, imperial impulse buried deep within each of our unconscious minds and I think that it is from this wellspring that the State derives much of its power, particularly as it relates to military adventurism and police-state tactics. This is iron grip of the State on society.
Going further, I see a similarity between the Hobbesian “war of all against all” and this genocidal impulse. In fact, I think that buried impulse within each of us is what makes the Hobbesian myth so enchantingly plausible. We each secretly desire to see a large portion of everyone else to simply disappear or be slaughtered or whatever. From my perspective, you are all deadweights. You are all the obstacle to me having your stuff and producing offspring with your women. Whether we face this impulse consciously or not, we know it’s there, and the Hobbesian myth feels plausible because of it.
Of course, the difference between the universal genocidal impulse and the Hobbesian myth is that people usually don’t act out their impulse directly. We want others to take on the risks of killing, on our behalf. But this sensitivity to the risks of violent conflict is precisely the feedback which tempers the genocidal impulse. If people all have this impulse, why don’t we all go out and slaughter each other? Government isn’t the answer because people didn’t kill the species off even before there were governments. The answer is that we are wary of each other. Unconsciously, we each see all others (except family and, perhaps, close friends) as mere objects, obstacles to the satisfaction of our own ends but, at the same time, we know that those obstacles can fight back.
I believe society is going to have to primitivize somewhat from its current state. You cannot have a stable society consisting of ideal, modern human beings who are happy to be unarmed and are otherwise uninterested in defending themselves and their property from others. This is the ideal that has been promoted by the Progressives for going on a century now. We have permitted a caste of sociopaths who are morally deranged enough to act out our genocidal impulses on our behalf (allowing us to mentally wash our hands of the blood) to rise to the pinnacles of power in society. Like a cancer, they will continue to ravage society until it weakens to the point that it can no longer support the cancer and begins to collapse.
At this point, people will have no choice but to face up to reality. Reality is that our fellow man helps us more than he hinders us. He enriches me by producing (thereby making things cost less) and the only sense in which he hinders me (from stealing his property, living at his expense) is an illusion … he has what he has by virtue of his own productivity, the very productivity by which I have benefitted.
So, I think we are in the middle of an evolutionary transition that is in the process of literally rewiring the human brain. It may take a few more generations yet before that vestigial, zero-sum, tribal circuitry in the brain is shut down. Eventually, it has to be because the world we live in is very far from zero-sum.
Clayton -
That is an interesting analysis there, Clayton. Not sure whether or not I agree with it, but Nietzsche’s ressentiment is clearly visible with regards to a few socialists that I know. In my opinion I think they rely on more of an emotional basis of thought (why don’t I have what they have? I’m special, I’m a good person, I guess being a good person doesn’t reward you in this life) versus the ability to think abstractly (the market producing goods that makes society generally better off). They think that if they don’t have the money and they can’t just start off with a pool of money without having to work for somebody else means they are being exploited and that it’s unfair.
Although I know that this wasn’t your point- it gets a bit tiring to hear that people are just “emotional”- the word emotional is getting a bad rap. There’s positive and negative emotions- being insecure like you describe is a very thought-based trap someone can create for themselves which is charged with negative physical sensations. But someone can also rely on positive emotional basis of thought “Wow its so amazing that they have all that. I’m happy for them”. I mean I’m absolutely sure you understand the distinction but why not go for being specific? Like “I think people are very insecure” or “I think people are very jealous” you know what I mean? Don’t mean to be nitpicky but its pretty common to hear the write off of “emotional” when it comes to socialists- although at least you explained it with the parenthesis thought bubbles about what you meant.
As long as socialists say that capitalists have no heart…
So what? Most boxers are badly paid, have a match every five/six months but nobody takes a “bleeding heart” approach to them. It has been this way for the past two centuries or so. Nobody complains: it’s the nature of the beast. For every Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson earning millions a match there are thousands of unknown making little money.
MMA is now big and although the fanboys will hate to hear this it follows the same basic rules business-wise wrestling has followed since the days of Hackenschmidt, Zbysko and Gotch. Every promotion has a small numbers of draws (meaning fighters/wrestlers people will pay good money to see and whose merchandise will fly off the shelf). These draws make good money because they bring in good money. People come to see the man/woman who will destroy his/her opponent in under three minutes or the one who connects with the people because of his/her in-ring charisma or the one who’s being shoved down their collective throat by the promoters the most. People in the locker room know this: perhaps sometimes they will mutter all the money and success is not completely deserved but usually they know the top draws make good money because they are worth lot of money to the promotion. The best way to make good money yourself is to become a valuable asset to the promotion.
Now, ESPN has its own axe to grind in this business. Employing underhanded tactics to take down or cripple the opposition in such a competitive environment is absolutely normal. It’s vile and disgusting but, usually, government is left out. When Ted Turner and Vince McMahon had their “Monday Night Wars” in the '90s they used every dirty trick in the book against each other but the farthest they went was suing for copyright infringement. As long as ESPN and UFC don’t drag government into the picture or some busybody with an office in Washington or Sacramento doesn’t take a personal interest it’s just business as usual.
It’s a fair point, auctionguy. I wasn’t tarring all socialists or left-libertarians with the same brush, I was only talking about the ones that I know in person. But your point is taken.
But the point still stands that if you eliminate a moderate fraction of the populace (not so much as to completely break down business), the remaining people would be, by proportion, wealthier
Hm… It would have to be a very carefully-selected part of the populace, because we’re highly inter-dependent. If half the poor people disappear tomorrow then who will do all their jobs? We’d suffer a decreased standard of living because we’d have a scarcity of labor. If half the rich people disappear, we’d miss out on brilliant minds and people who know how to invest. If half the middle class disappears, there would be a gigantic shock to the demand (and supply) in the market that would cause great grief to those left behind.
Plus, I disagree that you would be happier if everyone disappeared tomorrow. Much of the satisfaction we get is social satisfaction. Ie, we appreciate the praise of others. I am not sure about you, but when I am confronted with the idea of death and the meaning of life (so to speak) I frame the question in terms of my life accomplishments. And almost all of these are social things. It seems to me that one of the main things people want in life is to leave an impact on others. One of the goals of life (if people had the capacity to do this) would be to improve the lives of others in some way or to be memorable and have monuments built for you, having you live symbolically well past the time of your death.
If everyone were to disappear, you’d have no one to brag to, no one to compliment you, no one to validate any of your actions. Morality itself, a social construct, would disappear in a puff of smoke, and having no compass of what is good or bad we also lose the concept of what is worthy and valiant and what is not. What does it matter that you have all the gold in the world if no one is there to stare in amazement at your castles? What’s the point of owning a thousand airplanes if you can only occupy one and can fly zero? Why own all the art in the world but to have it remind you of the people who once dwelled on Earth?