baseball and socialism Arnold Kling, whom I picked on a couple of weeks ago, has just written what I believe to be the dumbest article TechCentralStation has ever published. I read it four times, hoping it was some sort of Swiftian parody, but -- best I can tell -- he is serious. In the name of stasism, Kling wants to "nationalize" [or whatever the local equivalent is called] baseball. This would allow him to eliminate free agency (the idea that when someone's contract ends, he should be able to switch employers). In addition, he could set players' salaries through a formula (baseball nuts love formulas), avoiding the harrowing practice of having them set by markets. ["Where Free Markets Meet Technology" indeed!] More generally, he could eliminate any sorts of improvements to the game.

Government is good at resisting change, and resistance to change is what I want for the sport.

Is government good at resisting change? Well, as Kling himself points out, cities spend millions of dollars to build fancy new sports stadiums. This hardly seems like "resistance to change." In fact, what government is good at is protecting entrenched interests. Perhaps Kling believes that baseball purism is an entrenched interest. (It may well be.) But having ceded principle for stasism, how will Kling rebut those who want "resistance to change" in education, the steel industry, farming, healthcare, or any other sphere of economic life?