A fair amount. How much of my work life did I earn millions of dollars per year? Zero. It's just not the same.
Which is why I called it a. And here's the thing, people are gonna get their feathers ruffled when college athletes start flexing their muscles and creating their own situations. Mainly Old, white, good ol boys who have been exploiting black athletes in the guise of paying for school. Again, it's modern day slavery and exploitation and how can one blame another for not wanting to be a part of that and controlling their own destiny?? Fuck those exploiters!
I like college for learning, but if you have a potential NBA body, is it better to spend 30% of your day practicing, playing college ball and maybe getting hurt, with 70% on studying for classes you will never use; or 100% of your day getting stronger, quicker with less chance of injury. And playing against a bunch of much bigger older guys in the G-league seems like an even better way to get hurt.
That's probably an awkward way to say it, but I'll try to clarify it. Here's a list of RP's guys. https://basketball.realgm.com/info/agent-client-list/Rich-Paul/258 Maybe to say they all have "chemistry" issues is taking it to far but he certainly has interesting clients. I'm not saying anything is "bad" or "wrong" with any of these guys just that I think they'd be considered a challenge to deal with. Draymond Green, AD, JR Smith, the Morris Brothers, John Wall.
http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/26821790/lakers-20-failed-reboot-nba-crown-jewel You have to read down a ways, but it talks about Paul stirring the pot in LA.
Except this isn't investment. It's labor. There's a reason that people engage in labor, rather than everyone being investors--labor is supposed to be a contract where the terms are spelled out, rather than a bet. And many people need certain money now, rather than potentially making money down the line. I find it disingenuous to act like labor and investment are identical and should be compared directly. They each have separate goals and neither is appropriate for everyone in every case. For many collegiate athletes, the money would actually make a huge difference to their lives. There have been horror stories of players not having enough money to eat properly while playing in a March Madness tourney that's making incredible sums of money for other people. Brushing that off as "investment" is a terrible way to apologize for it, IMO.
WTF? I replied to Dviss about something else....and your post shows up as a quote. What's that about?
We'll have to agree to disagree on this. Labor, like time, goods, and money, is a resource. Like any resource, it can be exchanged for another, or it can be invested in hope of a greater return. People invest their labor in unpaid internships all the time, in hopes of reaping a greater return down the road. Business owners invest time and labor in a business, hoping for a return. Farmers invest labor in hopes of growing a product. None is a perfect analogy, but your claim that labor is necessarily supposed to be a contractual exchange for wages is unconvincing to me.
Oh, you must have at some point hit reply on my post, either by accident or on purpose and then decided not to--the system keeps whatever you've hit reply on in your "multi-quote list."
Um.. I'm not joking and it's fucking true. Sounds like you're getting butthurt about the wrong thing. And frankly, I don't care how you feel about it.
Your second two examples are people working for themselves. I don't think that bears on the more general situation of working for others. It's true that unpaid internships exist, and interns are, indeed, working for free. What you seem to be arguing is not that collegiate athletes aren't working for free, but that they're getting an ancillary benefit--which is the case in every job. Anybody working a job is gaining more experience--that doesn't mean they're not working for free if they don't draw pay.
