But, if the important observation here is that athletics’ cons outweigh its pros when everything is summed up, why not make that argument rather than this tertiary argument (the supply of competitors is too big) that applies equally well to situations where the opposite conclusion is drawn (competition in business innovation)?

http://www.snailracing.net/

On balance, we have two forces pulling in opposite directions, and the amount of athleticism could either be too great or too small. My guess is that in most cases, it’s too small since we both agree there are probably too few business innovators, athletes have less incentive to innovate than business innovators, and people respond to incentives.

Ben: I’m sure you’re right about the opposing forces, but I’d make the opposite guess about which one wins (in the case of athletics). A technological innovation can get copied and improved on in many ways by many industries, whereas an athletic innovation pretty much adds value only to the athletics industry. (And even there, it’s ambiguous, since doubling the speeds of all the runners doesn’t clearly make the race any more exciting.)

Either way, athletes (particularly snowboarders) are innovators in the same way as business innovators, except that athletes don’t enjoy any patent protection. Steven’s arguments here apply equally as well to business innovators, yet he still believes there are probably too few business innovators. Therefore, there is little reason to think that there are too few athletes just because this argument applies to them as well.

I don’t see any difference between the curling and snowboarding events. In both cases, you simply have to beat the other competitors to win. Both are type A. In a type B tournament, you’d have to set a world record, or something, to win.

In fact, business innovators are awarded legal monopolies on the use of their ideas while other athletes are free to, and in fact encouraged, to copy the innovations of other athletes with little delay.

On balance, we have two forces pulling in opposite directions, and the amount of athleticism could either be too great or too small. My guess is that in most cases, it’s too small since we both agree there are probably too few business innovators, athletes have less incentive to innovate than business innovators, and people respond to incentives.

Put another way, I think most athletes tend to be participating in type-B tournaments from Neil’s example. Curling seems very likely to be a type-A tournament, but snowboarding seems clearly more like a type-B tournament. And, I’m guessing more parents are proud to say their child is an Olympic snowboarding than an Olympic curler.

“Do we need additional economics professors as well?”

Steve’s original post inspires the following answer in the same vein:

First, we must answer the question: where do economics professors come from? Of course, they’re supplied by other economics professors. (Although there’s another theory that they are spawn of the devil, but the multiplier used in these studies is questionable.)

Now, whenever you want to know if you’ve got too much or too little of something, you should start by asking: “What incentives do the suppliers face?”.

Economics professors, for example, face pretty perverse incentives: Their rewards are independent of either the value students receive from their educations or the price (salary) paid to economics graduates when they get their first jobs.

Grow an economics graduate worth $100,000, you’re paid X; grow an economics graduate worth $10,000, you’re still paid X. Grow 10 economics graduates, you’re paid X; grow 100 economics graduates, you’re still paid X.

But the economics professor industry is more complex than the orange growing industry.

Economics professors have a second line-of-business: published research. Unlike their education line-of-business, there are strong incentives operating here: tenure awarded based on the quality and quantity of published research.

Since there are no incentives on the education side of the business and a powerful incentive on the research side, economics professors invest heavily in conducting and publishing research and ignore their education line-of-business.

That is until, they receive tenure. Then the incentive for production of research disappears.

So, where does this leave us?

* In the education line-of-business, since there’s no incentive to educate students, no education occurs. Therefore, there’s no return on economics education investment; even one economics professor is too many.

* In the research line-of-business, there’s a powerful incentive for as-yet untenured professors to publish research, and there are more untenured professors than tenured positions awaiting them. Also, there’s an inadequate supply of siginificant questions to be researched (with corresponding data and analytical tooks) to meet demand. As a consequence, much of their research efforts will be wasted, and too much irrelevant, flawed, and trivial research will be produced. Therefore, there are too many economics professors.

* As for tenured economic professors, since there’s no incentive to produce anything, one tenured economics professor is too many.

* Finally, in a market in which there are too many economics professors, some will explore other markets in which to sell their wares, such as public policy-making and partisan politics. Fortunate for them, there are long-established (some of them 60+ years) and well-funded buyers in this market (think tanks, the oldest and best-funded being conservative or libertarian). Unfortunate for them, the analytical tools and data sets available to economists are too crude to shed light on most public policy and political issues. Also, most policy makers, politicians and the public lack sufficient economics knowledge to know what these economists are talking about.

Since in this market economics professors’ products are of little value to consumers, there are too many economic professors, especially of the conservative and libertarian variety.

Boottom line: there are WAY too many economics professors.

:)