Keith Whaley wrote:
>> Being somewhat of a sceptic by nature, I want to see some benefit from an
>> activity like this before I feel like endorsing it. Sheer enjoyment from
>> mechanical things, I can get from stuff already in existence. The benefits
>> from present day drag racing seem to be wholly outweighed by environmental
>> and other concerns. I'm not too keen on giant jetliners, either 8-)
>
> Benefits? People are entertained, all without harm to anybody else.
> What other "benefits" are you after?
> Entertainment must reap benefits in order to be acceptable to you? Never
> heard of such a thing...
Actually, I'd say that entertainment must reap _some_sort_ of
benefits to justify whatever expenditure of resources goes into
it.
If the entertainment in question costs nothing but time, then
the enjoyment the _performers_ get out of it is justification
enough.
If it costs more than that, sometimes purely intangible benefits
("making the world a more beautiful place", "making the world a
more surreal place", "making people think", "making people smile")
are enough. In fact, I'd say that those are sufficient pretty
often.
What about when vast resources are expended (for whatever
threshold value meets your definition of 'vast')? Construction
costs of stadia[*], electric bills for night games, expensive
race cars, consumption of "large" quantities of fuel, etc.?
They sell tickets to these events, right? I don't know what
it costs to attend a sporting event or a race, so I'll pull
a number out of my a^H... uh, hat, and toss out $20 as a
convenient round number. If the intangible benefits of the
entertainment are worth a _mere_$20_ to each person who wishes
to attend, and there are _enough_ people to whom it's worth that
much, then the value of the entertainment on _tangible_ grounds
(money) is pretty [expletive]ing high to those who produce it,
n'est-ce pas?
It reaps benefits. Before you even get around to looking at
the R&D side effects, or the bread-and-circuses aspect, it
reaps benefits. I live in a capitalist country, and under
capitalism, "it makes money" is a justification.
Are there flaws with this? Oh yeah. Pollution was mentioned,
along with (before it was pointed out that the cars in question
run on alcohol) the suggestion of consumption of nonrenewable
resources. So we look to whether a "tragedy of the commons"
situation is present, and if so we elect a government willing
to tinker with the rules (hey, we're capitalist, but not
laissez-faire capitalist) to adjust the costs based on the
things society as a whole wants to protect. So if motorsports
wound up producing enough pollution to register against the
backdrop of commuter traffic, we'd probably eventually put
some sort of pollution tax on motorsport events to change the
economics of the situation. (Perhaps I make this sound easy
or automatic -- it's neither automatic, nor easy to figure out
how to apply fairly. But the system does move in that direction.)
One of my personal bugaboos is how much professional athletes
are paid compared to how little schoolteachers -- who directly
influence our children and our future -- are paid. But looking
at it as a capitalist, I have to say that the problem is not
with the owners of the sports teams who are willing to pay so
much, nor with the school systems who have so little to pay,
but with my culture _in_general_ which _economically_values_
(i.e. "vote with our pocketbooks") professional sports more
than teaching, no matter what we _say_ is more important. In
a capitalist economy with our current values and spending
habits, a football player objectively _is_ "worth more" (in
salary) than a schoolteacher, because the football player produces
more revenue for his employer than the schoolteacher does.
The teacher may be _philosphically_ more valuable, but
(INSHO unfortunately) is not _financially_ as valuable
because our culture has this funny disconnect between what
we say we value and what we act like we value -- what we
_reward_.
If you want to measure "useful work done" as a justification
for the fuel/pollution costs of race cars, jetliners, rail,
passenger cars, bus systems, etc., you have to start with a
definition of "useful work", and the numbers you get will
directly reflect the inherent bias in your definition. In
terms of "humans moved from point A to point B", the race
has a net effect of zero. In terms of "dollars earned for
the operators", the race has a value that depends on whether
you're looking at the car owner or the track owner (in some
cases the "usefulness" in financial terms is _negative_ for
the car owner). If "usefulness" is determined in terms of
effects on other parts of the economy, things get complicated
but kind of interesting. In any case, you can't quantify
your comparison until you first define your metric. And it's
not clear (to me) that one metric is inherently the "correct"
one; rather, it seems that each answers a different question
and you have to know which question you really mean to ask.
And when you figure the intangibles into the value (which,
since we're talking about people, *is* important to at
least think about, though nearly impossible to _quantify_
meaningfully), not only do things get fuzzy, but you have
to be careful not to impose your own aesthetic tastes on
the entire field you're looking at. There are plenty of
things that I don't like but must grudingly admit provide
aesthetic and/or spiritual value to others.
I'm not a "value relativist" in most things, but neither
am I a moral-absolutist in all things; questions like "are
various entertianments 'worth it'?" are valid places to apply
relativism.
-- Glenn
[*] The cost of building a stadium for professional sports
is obviously "worth it" to someone; that doesn't mean I'm
convinced that it's worth it to the _city_government_ who
often winds up paying for a lot of it. (Obviously, there
are reasonable people who disagree with me.)
