Why The Green Bay Packers Are Objectively The Best NFL Franchise

I don’t know much about football, but if I know one thing it’s that tI don’t know much about football, but if I know one thing it’s that the Green Bay Packers are objectively the best NFL franchise – and perhaps the best American sports franchise, period.

And this has nothing to do with their players (I couldn’t name any!), their coaching (ditto!), their track record (I’m utterly ignorant), or the skill with which they play (I’ve never seen them play, and even if I did I couldn’t tell skilled play from unskilled play).

No, the Packers are objectively the best NFL franchise because of their ownership structure.

You see, unlike every other NFL team, the Packers aren’t owned by some billionaire – they’re owned by their fans and the city of Green Bay. That means that when the city invests millions in a new stadium, the city isn’t borrowing money to enrich a billionaire, but rather its investing in an asset it owns. An asset that the people of Green Bay own. It means that the Packers can’t move to another town or threaten to move unless the city bribes them into staying. And it means that when the people of Green Bay, more than the people of any other American city, root for their hometown town team, they root for their hometown team.

To illustrate all the problems with the non-civic ownership, I’ll talk a lot about the Raiders. I’m not picking on them – they’re responding to the same incentives that every privately-owned NFL team has, and doing the same stuff all the other teams do. Only the Packers couldn’t do what they’ve done.

The Stadium Scam

Professional Athletics, especially the NFL, is incredibly profitable – and it nevertheless receives a variety of government subsidies, both explicit and implicit. The most visible of these subsidies is the public money spent on stadiums.

These subsidies are not trivial. New stadiums cost hundreds of millions – and cities have repeatedly picked up part of that cost. For instance, the Oakland Raiders move to Las Vegas was accompanied by the an agreement with Clark County and Vegas to build a new $1.8 billion stadium, (which will almost certainly end up costing more after the inevitable cost overruns). The public (in the form of Clark County and Las Vegas) is paying 750 million dollars (40% of the sticker cost) through a special hotel tax. And in exchange for this what do the people of Vegas and Clark County get? Some share of the rents, some revenue sharing from the stadium? No. They get nothing. They have taken on a 750-million-dollar liability in order to give the Raiders and the NFL a 750-million-dollar asset. This represents a transfer from the people of Clark county to the millionaires and billionaires who own the team. I can’t even call this crony capitalism – its simply looting. Raiders indeed.

For context: Clark County has a very serious homelessness problem. Given a 3.5% discount rate (about the coupon rate on Clark County bonds), an asset with a PV of 750 million dollars is equivalent to 26.25 a year indefinitely. That would be enough money to permanently house 20-30% of the approximately 6,400 homeless in Clark County.

Defenders of the deal will argue that this giveaway is justified because the stadium will increase economic activity and so bring in more tax. This is true, but it’s true of literally every other business and private-sector investment. If I start running a food truck, while I operate the truck I’m increasing economic activity and generating more tax revenue. That doesn’t mean that the government should pay for 40% of my truck in exchange for nothing! This is special pleading of the worst kind – the franchises and owners making this argument are essentially running a scam, hoping for a giveaway from the government.

Public ownership would make all the difference here. If Las Vegas / Clark County had bought the Raiders, then paid to build a stadium, and then moved them to Vegas, they would be investing in asset they owned. They’d being taking on liabilities in order to acquire assets – a normal sort of financial decision. Not the bullshit giveaway on display in the Raiders deal.

The Problem of Relocation

There’s a lot of civic pride and loyalty tied up in sports teams – but this feeling is not mutual. The Oakland Raiders are not, really, the Oakland Raiders. They are the Raiders that happen to be in Oakland. In 1982 they moved from Oakland to Los Angeles. In 1995 they moved back to Oakland. In 2019 or 2020, they’ll move again, this time to Las Vegas. I wonder how long they’ll stay there? 

This problem of relocation is tightly tied to the stadium scam. Privately-owned sports franchises can and do threaten to move unless their local governments shell out for shiny new facilities. These threats have repeatedly been carried out, and with franchises burning their bridges with local fans in pursuit of greater profits.

For example, consider the Baltimore Colts 1984relocation to Indianapolis The Colts left after a decade of feuding with state and local government over a new stadium. Their owner wanted free stuff from the government, didn’t get it, and so he ran off to Indianapolis.

In 1969 the city of Baltimore announced they would seek higher rental fees for the old Memorial Stadium. The Colts owner at the time, , had been threatening to move for some time and complained that the old stadium was inadequate and wanted the city of Baltimore to build a new stadium. In 1972 the city unveiled its proposal to build a new stadium (the “Baltodome”) which would serve both the Colts and the Orioles.. They estimated this would cost the city $78 million – about $470 million in 2018 dollars. Interestingly, earlier that year, the ownership of the Colts changed hands in a deal that valued them at $16 million (1972) dollars – meaning that the city could have bought them out and turned this stadium giveaway into an actual investment.

The Maryland legislature and the Baltimore comptroller were not on board with straight giveaways. Despite Maryland spending significant public money on stadium improvements, Irsay wanted more public investment (i.e. free capital improvements) in the stadium, so he began to shop around various cities, looking for someone who would bribe him into moving.

Things came to ahead in 1984. Baltimore didn’t have the money to give away a stadium to the Colts, but there was legislation in motion that would give the city the right to seize the team using eminent domain. So Isray quickly packed up and snuck off to Indianapolis under cover of darkness. Indianapolis had bribed Isray with the promise of a $12.5 million loan, a $4 million training complex, and a new $77.5 million training complex – worth $30 million, $10 million, and $188 million in 2018 respectively.

All this bullshit rigmarole wouldn’t have happened – couldn’t have happened – if Baltimore had owned the Colts. Maryland or Baltimore investing in new stadium for the team wouldn’t have been a fiscally indefensible giveaway to wealthy owners.

Civic Ownership or Corporate Ownership?

Cities are financially (through the stadium scam and other mechanisms) and emotionally invested in their sports franchises. I think that this is a, on balance, good thing, since it fosters civic pride and a shared identity, brings in money for cities, and, of course, sports are a recreational activity that people enjoy watching and participating in.

The problem with private ownership of sports franchises is that is that cities are financially and emotionally invested in assets they don’t control. Private ownership is corporate ownership. It means that the team will always be acting to maximize its profits – even if that means betraying the love and loyalty of its fans, or extorting financial concessions from fans or politicians (who might be worried about being blamed for the move) by threatening to move.

Do we think the owners of a business will put civic pride before profits?

Public or civic ownership, by contrast, solves this problem – the people of the city have control over an institution that they are all emotionally invested in. The mentality, loyalties, and identities around a sports franchises aren’t like the mentalities and identities and loyalties around usual private businesses. People think, talk, and feel as if these teams are cultural or civic institutions – because they are.

That’s how sports franchises should be run as as non-profits or under public ownership. Like the Packers.

Why I Support a Land Value Tax

I’m firmly convinced that a land value tax  (LVT) is the best way to finance local government.

Here’s why:

• The land value tax is efficient. Unlike other taxes (including property taxes) it can’t alter behavior, since the supply of land is fixed. A tax on alcohol sales results in less alcohol being supplied, a tax on gas less gas being supplied. But no matter the price of land, there is the same amount of it (at least for areas away from the coasts – and rising sea levels are hardly are response to property taxes!).
• A land value tax taxes rents. In economics, rents are payments that don’t incentivize additional production or economic activity – and thus, from the perspective of society, something akin to wasted money. Again, the supply of land is fixed! All payments to owners of land on the basis of land value (as opposed to structure or improvement value) are rents.

• Caveat: I’m not going full Georgist here and calling for the abolition of private land ownership. Because, for example, I believe that private landownership is justifiable for reasons of allocative efficiency.

Now why is a land value tax the best way to finance local governments?

• The value of land is “location, location, location”. Thus a LVT aligns a city’s financial incentives with good government by making desirable city a city with the greatest tax base. A well-planned city, with qualitypublic services, amenities, transit, responsive local government, etc. will have higher land values than a poorly-run city.
• This incentivizes density (if that’s what people value), transit-oriented development (and good transit planning), etc. and punishes any overly-restrictive zoning laws.
• It also encourages allocating resources within the city to where they will do the most good – since land value is function of the quality of public services, especially education. For example, $100 more spending per pupil in CPS in the South Side of Chicago will probably go a lot further than the same increase in the North Side. Thus, from the standpoint of maximizing the tax base, a city would be incentivized to allocate resources where they get the most bang for their buck.

• The second virtue of a LVT in the context of local government is that it puts the burden of paying for the city on the people who benefit most from the city – the businesses and individuals who locate there. Unlike a sales or gas tax, which raise money from non-residents, a LVT raises money by taxing assets located immovably within the city – and then spends that money providing services to enhance the value of those assets.

Now I anticipate some critiques and counterarguments (lets debate this!), so let me make some points ahead of time:

• I’m aware of the problems (especially in Chicago) in assessing property values. Tax assessments should be updated when properties are sold, but often aren't. Land valuation would be a similar challenge, although I think it would actually be easier since there is less variation among sites than structures. (e.g. "Why is my 20000 sq. foot lot assessed at a different rate than my neighbors?") It should also be noted that property tax assessors already assess site value.
• There are variety of mechanisms for getting more accurate assessments. For instance, a structures value could be estimated from insurance premiums against total loss. I may expand on this in a later post.
• Additionally, many of the criticisms of a LVT are also true of property taxes. But you have to tax something to pay for the city, and I think that a LVT is the best option. Even if you aren't as in the tank for a LVT as I am, you should compare it to raising equivalent funds from a property tax as a question of practical politics.

Something Topical

I don't usually write topical posts, but I just saw something that stuck in my craw. This latest executive order from the Trump administration is not good.

In a nutshell, it changes the procedures for the hiring and firing of administrative judges in a way that undermines their independence.

In the old system administrative law judges were hired from a list of "generally qualified judges" and had to go through the usual procedures of civil service hiring - competitive selection and examination, background checks, etc.

That changed.

Now agencies can simply appoint (and fire!) administrative law judges without going through any of those proceedures. The executive order justifies this change by citing a 6-3 US Supreme Court decision earlier this year that held that administrative law judges were "officers of the court" not federal employees.

All of that you could have gotten from reading the first link here. Now let me explain why this is bad. 

By volume of text, the bulk of the law in the US isn't statutory (i.e. Congress passed a law) but administrative (Congress delegated rule-making authority in some area to an executive agency, with a certain mandate). Think regulatory agencies like the EPA, the SEC, etc.

When people want to dispute fines, regulations, any matter relating to administrative law, that ends up before an administrative law judge, who is to quote Wikipedia: " a judge and trier of fact". These proceedings are bench trials (that mean no jury). 

So if the EPA alleges I poisoned Lake Michigan and fines me, and I dispute this, an administrative judge decides the punishment I'd receive if guilty, and whether or not I actually poisoned the Lake. Creating the potential for a shamelessly corrupt official to dismiss the EPA's case against me with alternative facts - or decide against me regardless of the facts.

Now administrative judges have always had this power. But before abusing this power was less of a concern - they were career civil servants, insulated from political pressures and subject to the normal constraints and scrutiny placed on civil servants - and protected from arbitrary firing like other civil servants.

Now the President or his appointees can appoint or fire them at will. Bribery is illegal, of course. But you could still sway the decisions by appointing crackpots who believe whatever B.S. passes his desk, as long its on the side of business ("Arsenic is an essential mineral", "kids need lead to grow up healthy", "humans aren't causing climate change").

TL;DR, the administration is undermining the independence of a judiciary, and creating a lot of opportunities for graft and misconduct. You don't have to be a cynic to think they'll take advantage of those opportunities.

Constitutional Totalitarianism (draft, comments welcome)

It should really not be possible to set up a totalitarian dictatorship without violating the letter of the Constitution at some point. But I’m pretty sure you can – given control of the White House and Congress.

Note that it is entirely possible under current law to control the Congress and Presidency with mere pluralities of the vote. Assuming no faithless electors, for instance, its possible to become President with only of ~25% of the electorate.

So, the Party has managed to win control of Congress and the Presidency by the narrowest margins – and immediately sets about engineering permanent 1-party rule.

• The opposition might try to stop you using filibusters, etc. Just eliminate any procedures that may create problems for you and protect the minority – you’re not going to need them.

• Pack the Supreme Court – nothing unconstitutional about that, and this prevents anyone from making inconvenient “violating the spirit of the constitution” appeals.
• Remember the point of this exercise is to do this without actually breaking any laws. Or at least without violating the Constitution – after all, Congress can change the laws.
• Use the “Kansas Plan” to pack the House and Senate.
• Hell, you could stop here, since an aggressive Kansification could allow me to simply amend the constitution however I’d like.

• Use the income tax to seize all income and then use tax code to manage the whole economy
• This is a kludgy workaround compared to GosPlan but it’ll have to do.

• Create some universal, unavoidable felony, and selectively enforce the laws to purge whoever you like
• Like the federal judiciary, legislators, etc.
• E.g. make breathing a felony
• Note that while you can’t directly suppress speech here, you can, by an amazing coincidence, just happen to arrest anyone who criticizes the government too loudly.
• Prosecutorial discretion is actually a tremendous tool of tyranny in the wrong hands. In the Party’s hands, of course, it will only be used for good.

• Since the Constitution doesn’t explicitly guarantee a right to vote, simply make it so that only members of the Party are permitted to vote.

The ten-trillion-dollar question in international development

Disclaimer: I am not an expert, so if get anything facts wrong feel free to correct me. Please read me generously, and know that I say nothing maliciously. Feedback is welcome!

So a while back I attended an interview with Arvind Subramanian, Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India.

And I was NOT impressed. Because whenever people asked him questions adjacent to (nobody asked him directly) the ten-trillion dollar question, he punted, shrugged, or gave non-answers.

Excuses like the "democracy tax" (if anything, functioning democracy should encourage economic growth) and "China is a special case" came up. But what is special about China? S. Korea, Taiwan, Singapore & Hong Kong traveled along similar development paths. And if there's a country similar to China in terms of economic fundamentals, its India.

And so the ten-trillion dollar question is this: Why China, and not India?

Because if I had to bet on which country would be richer today in 1960, I'd bet on India.

First the similarities: Both are large, populous, ancient countries, with long traditions of state authority and shared culture & identity. Both were incredibly poor in 1960. And both were economically exploited by Europeans for a century or so.

In 1960 India had been independent for about 20 years. Prior to that, India had been a British colony. This meant that there was legacy colonial infrastructure, a national government, and economic, educational and other connections to the developed world. An export-oriented development path like the one China is taking now. During the During the Second World War the worst India experienced was the Bengal Famine - which while horrible really doesn't come close to the devastation China experienced before and after WWII. And overall, India's colonial history while terrible, seems much less traumatic and destructive to me than China's "Century of Shame".

Between 1831 and 1950 China was the battlefield where not one, but two of the deadliest conflicts in human history played out. First, the Taiping Rebellion, which lasted 14 years and killed an estimated 20-30 million people. Compare that to the contemporary Indian Rebellion of 1857 which lasted less than 2 years and killed around 1 million people.

And then there's the period between 1927 and 1950. This includes the Chinese Civil War, which killed 8 million people, and was interrupted by the Second World War, (in China, the Second Sino-Japanese War) which killed between 17 and 22 million civilians and millions more military personnel. I'm not going to exhaustively document all the damage and destruction the Second Sino-Japanese War caused China, but I'll just note that the Japanese pursued the so-called Three Alls Policy: "kill all, loot all, burn all".

And then, China was under the control of the Communists, whose economic policy between 1960 and 1980 performed about as well as India's license raj. Which is frankly pretty impressive - in a bad way. India got all the poor economic performance associated with a Communist centrally planned economy


and none of the upsides of Communism in public health:





or education. In 1949 China and India had similar literacy rates, between 15 and 25%. By 1982 the gap between China and India was 20% points, with Chinese literacy at 65% to India's ~41%.



So the ten-trillion-dollar question stands. And while I have thoughts as to the answers, I'll ask the question first.

Sunshine Patriotism

I am ashamed to be an American.

How is that I can be ashamed to be an American?

“These are the times that try men's souls: The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”

Thomas Paine The American Crisis (1776)

I can be ashamed to be an American, because I can also proud to be an American. That pride and shame come mixed together is right and correct. How could I lay some claim to a share of America’s glories and triumphs, our virtues and victories, if I do not also claim a share too of our defeats and failures, our vices and shames? I personally am not responsible for any of these things. Only a person of low and contemptible character would behave in such a way, a sunshine patriot who abandons any cause or loyalty the moment it becomes difficult, who spurns any love that might become complicated. It is easier, I suppose, for such a person to pretend there is no tension between the good and bad of American history, that ours is one of uncomplicated moral rightness and that the American state or the American people have never been in any way villainous, and to subscribe to a simple-minded version of events in which “We” are the “Good Guys” and “They” are the “Bad Guys”.

But I am not such a coward, and cannot turn away from uncomfortable truths. It is a fact apparent to all who care to know that American history is replete with the successes of American science, technology and industry, with triumphs of American arms, and a culture with as much reach and influence as any other in the history of humankind. We put a man on the moon! There is no place in this world far from American soldiery, no place where American music cannot be heard. (Whether this a good thing is another question entirely…). But history is a bottomless well of horrors, and our well might be shallower, but o! how horrible the horrors are. I’ll not trouble your stomachs by describing to them to you in any great detail, a simple list should suffice to remind you.

The violence and endless broken promises with which Americans have dealt to indigenous peoples, the brutal and savage institution of slavery, and the long train of racial injustices that spawned leading up to the present day, the oppression of women, the closing of our borders to people in need, the internment of Japanese-Americans, our involvement in foreign nations, first in Latin America and then throughout the world, which betrayed any humanitarian or democratic impulse to greed, hunger for power, and a pursuit of bloody-handed empire. I cannot ignore these things for the same reason I cannot ignore the sky.

In truth, I do not feel proud to be an American. I cannot make a ledger of virtue and vice, sum up the good and the bad, and hold that America is a thing to proud of on the net. I am not the sort that thinks one can erase an act of evil with an act of kindness – undo perhaps, but erase; never – and what has been done, the suffering that has been caused is to much for me, my heart is to weighed down by shame to feel much pride.

But there is hope. I think that there is some strain of virtue in America, a history too of good intentions and high ideals, and I hope that these things will in the end win out. I am not proud of America today, but it is my hope that I will live to see the America made by the victory of those ideals. An America I can be proud of.