Why Hockey Players Support Helmet Rules
Oct. 17th, 2011 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsThe "experimental ecology" website has an interesting article called "Why do hockey players support helmet rules, even though they choose not to wear helmets when there is no rule?"
The answer, it seems, is that everyone perceives the helmet as a handicap. They would all like to play a game in which it is more likely that they all come out in one piece and without traumatic brain injury, but they're unwilling to do so if only they are handicapped, and the other fellow not. Therefore, they accept the rules, and even vote to empower an authority (the National Hockey League, in this case) to enforce the rules uniformly.
It seems to me that this is a perfect place where sport shows up the libertarian versus command economy dichotomy: we would all like to live in a state where we're more likely to make it to old age than not, but only by voting to empower an authority to enforce the rules necessary to make that happen do we get something approaching justice. That's the purpose of government.
(You kinda have to admire the desperate libertarian argument that, because excellent players are a statistically small portion of all players, " the secret preference of a majority of hockey players for a helmet requirement is simply signalling that most mediocre hockey players are hoping to handicap everyone, on the chance that the better ones will suffer most." That proposal is empircally testable: was there a drop in performance after the adoption of helmet rules, and did degrade the best players' performance proportionately? If not, this is a ridiculous handwave.)
The answer, it seems, is that everyone perceives the helmet as a handicap. They would all like to play a game in which it is more likely that they all come out in one piece and without traumatic brain injury, but they're unwilling to do so if only they are handicapped, and the other fellow not. Therefore, they accept the rules, and even vote to empower an authority (the National Hockey League, in this case) to enforce the rules uniformly.
It seems to me that this is a perfect place where sport shows up the libertarian versus command economy dichotomy: we would all like to live in a state where we're more likely to make it to old age than not, but only by voting to empower an authority to enforce the rules necessary to make that happen do we get something approaching justice. That's the purpose of government.
(You kinda have to admire the desperate libertarian argument that, because excellent players are a statistically small portion of all players, " the secret preference of a majority of hockey players for a helmet requirement is simply signalling that most mediocre hockey players are hoping to handicap everyone, on the chance that the better ones will suffer most." That proposal is empircally testable: was there a drop in performance after the adoption of helmet rules, and did degrade the best players' performance proportionately? If not, this is a ridiculous handwave.)
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Date: 2011-10-17 10:48 pm (UTC)the darwin economy
Date: 2011-10-18 12:26 am (UTC)command economy versus free market
Date: 2011-10-18 01:52 am (UTC)