Yankees co-chairman Hank Steinbrenner has some harsh words for Major League Baseball’s revenue-sharing system.
“At some point, if you don’t want to worry about teams in minor markets, don’t put teams in minor markets, or don’t leave teams in minor markets if they’re truly minor,” Steinbrenner said. “Socialism, communism, whatever you want to call it, is never the answer.”
At the Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin objects to Steinbrenner’s diction:
That said, comparing MLB revenue-sharing to socialism is absurd. Socialism is government control of the economy, not a private arrangement to divide up profits from a joint enterprise. You might as well say that a law firm is “socialistic” if individual partners don’t keep all the profit generated by the clients they bring in, and instead have to transfer some of it to the other partners.