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zinger alert
Yeah bro, Lebron literally is proletarian (he may not be at this point due to his wild success, but as a stand in for any other basketball player in those leagues, YES)
Sports dudes will train their entire life to play professionally for a decade, maybe two? And then they have to make that money last the rest of their life because of the damage playing can do to your body. Many couldn't work if they wanted to. It's why the basketball players Union is so important for them, even if it tends to skew towards the top, it gets folks way more money than they otherwise would which can set them and their family for life.
And, respectfully, if you've ever met the kinda guy who owns laundromats, they tend to be fuckin rich dickheads.
Damn, it's almost as if sports guys make enough money to transition into the bourgeoisie (like Jordan buying restaurants and car dealerships and MiLB teams, licensing his name out etc) or have to work doing something else.
Damn, it's almost as if sports guys make enough money to transition into the bourgeoisie
The pay is upper middle class for most players but we only really hear about the handful of super stars that have fat contracts and tens of millions in sponsorship deals. Only a tiny percentage ever make enough to transition out of the working class.
The vast majority ending up with broken bodies and working at a used car dealership the rest of their lives. These men and women were born with bodies that are statistical flukes and not made for a long healthy life due to their exaggerated size. We then ask them to do extreme things with their bodies and push limits that human beings shouldn't be able to cross. This is why players unions that can secure lifetime medical benefits for former players are so critical in professional team sports.
This is why players unions that can secure lifetime medical benefits for former players are so critical in professional team sports.
Especially for sports like American football, where brain damage is so prevalent.
The last part of that reply is unironically yes. Or at least Lebron would be a petty bourgeois if we look at his investments and business portfolio.
Yeah that comment is a mess. I'm not even a sports guy but a quick search suggests that LeBron James is at least a partial owner of 5 companies. Literally the first link on DDG. Maybe it was prole in the past but he's def part of the owner class now.
Just prefacing this by saying I am not making a funny ironic post at all, I am dead serious.
Am I wrong in thinking even the highest paid sportsmen are part of the proletariat? They are effectively using their bodies for their employers to generate capital, in some cases having to risk their lives (boxing, rugby, NFL, extreme sports), whilst those employers effectively do nothing but manage the capital these athletes generate and get the majority of the money. Yes many athletes are multimilionairres, but they are the people that make effectivelty most of the money for the multi-billion pound (or dollar or euro) businesses to function.
You are not wrong, and they don't really own the means of production. The owners still make the most money if there is money to be had. Any pushback from the players about exhaustion due to ever increasing amount of games is met with cries of overpaid primadonnas.
Players in lower leagues are often exploited financially. Especially if foreign.
Hard to keep in mind sometimes, but yeah lot of actors and athletes are well off but unless they got their own brands or companies they are still workers
It gets complicated by the fact the really famous ones get a lot of money from liscencing their likeness and things like that, which is clearly bourgeois, especially when it's for like a 2k game or something and the model being made doesn't need their labor input at all.
But generally we can call them labor aristocrats in the sense that the super rich ones are definitely paid in part out of the labor value of other workers.
capitalism doesn't exist because we are still in feudalism. Societal change didn't happen at the throwing of a switch so it didn't happen
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Evolutionary biologists looking at this like
barzoople