Writes a friend: "Recently an article posted on this website by Joe Sobran took issue with the popularity of professional and college football. He isn't the first anarcho-libertarian to take issue with sports. The late 19th century libertarian writer Herbert Spencer condemned contact sports as encouraging violence and militaristic attitudes. However I think that professional football provides a good metaphor for how anarchy would work in modern societies.
"The development of technology increases the overall material wealth of any society and the skills needed to maintain that technology increase the economic value of it's laborers. So left to a state of nature the societies would gradually have an increased incentive to both abstain from violence and to resist violence in order to protect what they've developed.
"A good example of this is Somalia. When it's government effectively collapsed in the early nineties the country was full of violence( the level of violence now doesn't exactly make it my number one pick for a vacation spot) but as the Somalis have developed systems of finance, roads, and a telecommunications network the level of violence has decreased.
"Compare that to professional football. Back in the earlier days of the NFL there were players on teams whose job was specifically to injure the star players of the opposing team( an example of this is 'The Hammer' who used to play for the Kansas City Chiefs), the helmets only had one bar and little padding, the uniforms had less padding, etc.
"Then as the players began to specialize more in individual positions the game became more exciting and thus more popular and profitable. The owners then had a greater incentive to protect their primary investments( their players) so they pushed the league( a voluntary organization) to put new restrictions for players' conduct on the field, added more padding, etc.
"Here in the U.S. we already have a well developed system of technology. Unfortunately we also have rampant government military violence and restrictions on freedom. If we'd like a better way to use our skills and technology perhaps we should look to the success of the NFL and the magic of the market."
