I Feel Better About the NFL Now

It was recently reported in the news that the National Guard has paid hundreds of thousands of tax dollars (each) to various NFL teams in return for the displays of fascistic military pageantry that plague and despoil these sporting events.  This makes me slightly optimistic since it means there is a chance that at least some NFL owners are not actually military fascists but simply like making money.  On the downside, it is yet another ripoff of the taxpayer.

There is actually an economic lesson here as well:  The core philosophical argument for taxation is the “free-rider problem.”  The story that is told in all the “mainstream” economics textbooks goes like this:  There is a large pent-up demand for government “services” like the National Guard, but stingy and anti-social citizens will never voluntarily contribute enough money to supply adequate quantities of these “public goods.”  Therefore, coercion, intimidation, and the threat of long prison sentences must be employed to force them to pay up — or else.

According to this theory, there would be no need at all for any government advertising of any kind, since the problem is supposedly stingy citizens, not insufficient demand for the “service.”  The fact that the National Guard uses tax dollars to advertise, as do ALL OTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, gives the lie to the phony “free-rider problem” theory of taxation.

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