Anyone still alive who played any part in the Brooklyn Dodgers’ 1957 move to LA owes America an apology. This is because one of the Brooklynites traumatized by the move was a young Bernie Sanders.
“I did see in that case about the greed of one particular company,” Sanders said, “And that impacted me.”
Thus, whilst not solely responsible for Bernie Sanders becoming America’s most prominent socialist, the Dodgers escape from New York was what led Sanders to view successful businesses as the enemy. Therefore, it is truly poetic that the recent dispute between baseball owners and the players’ union, which delayed opening day, has inspired Sanders to introduce legislation repealing the Major League Baseball (MLB)’s century-old exemption from federal antitrust laws.
Contrary to the claims of those like Sanders, MLB’s antitrust exemption does not protect it from competition. There is nothing stopping any entrepreneur and/or investor from starting their own league to compete with the MLB. The reason they have not is because no one has figured out how to offer a product more appealing to baseball fans than that offered by MLB. This is the same reason why, even though both the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the National Football League are subject to antitrust laws, neither organization has ever faced serious competition.
And in terms of sports entertainment, they all compete with each other. Don’t like MLB, but you still like sports? I think you’ll be fine.
Listening to Sen. Sanders, one would think that baseball owners are raking in overindulgent profits by using their “monopoly power” to gauge the working American with high-ticket prices. But the average price of a baseball ticket is less than the average price of a football, basketball, or hockey ticket.
Professional baseball, like professional football, has alienated many fans by pandering to the “woke” mob. In particular, many conservative fans were outraged by the MLB’s decisions to move the 2021 All Star game from Atlanta to Colorado to protest Georgia’s voter integrity law.
The major league’s decision to move the All-Star game also prompted conservative senators Ted Cruz and Joss Hawley to introduce legislation repealing baseball’s antitrust exemption. The two will no doubt support Sen. Sander’s legislation.
Conservative support for subjecting baseball to antitrust laws is part of a disturbing trend on the right: embracing increased antitrust enforcement in order to punish “woke” businesses. They’re letting spite get in the way of their principles. The main target of these “Bernie Sanders” conservatives is “big tech” companies that ban or suppress conservative views on their platforms. Pro-antitrust conservatives argue that big tech has become so powerful and influential that they are impervious to market forces. But if the existing components were so untouchable how come Facebook lost over 1 million users last year?
It also seems odd that conservatives – who rightly argue that big tech companies are too close to, and thus too eager to please, progressive politicians, bureaucrats, and special interests– support laws and policies that would give politicians and bureaucrats more power over tech companies. It is also ironic that the so-called “pro-free speech” regulatory right wants to violate the First Amendment rights of tech companies by forcing them to allow their platforms to be used for views they, and many of their users, find distasteful. This could backfire on conservatives by, for example, enabling leftist’s federal bureaucrats to force a traditional Catholic Facebook page to provide a platform to Catholics for Choice.
Conservatives tempted to join Bernie Sanders and other Democrats in giving government new powers over baseball, big tech, or any other industry say these businesses are too big to rely on market forces to limit their power. They forget that history is full of examples of “untouchable” monopolies that were driven out of business by new companies offering products that better satisfied consumers. Remember from the 50s to the 70s, IBM was the untouched leader in computers. So much so that the US Justice Department brought a major antitrust case against them in the 70s.
By the time the case was dropped, IBM had already begun losing market shares to Apple and Microsoft.
Pro-regulation conservatives should also remember that federal interventions in the marketplace can benefit big business by imposing costs that bigger players can afford but can cripple their smaller companies. Antitrust laws also make it difficult for small businesses to attract the capital necessary to grow as investors will be leery of giving money to a business who has a government-imposed limit on their growth.
The free market is the only way to ensure the next Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates gets their turn at bat.
