Players Unions and the Economics of Warfare @ BtB

Marvin Miller, former executive director of the MLBPA, helped secure the current state of labor peace in Major League Baseball by declaring--and winning--the war against ownership. On the other hand, the NFL seems to be slipping into a new era of labor unrest. How do we get from labor war to labor peace? The answer is no different for economic warfare than it is for armed conflict and international security.

If I may borrow a bit from political science, there's a theory that non-violent disputes escalate to the level of armed conflict when rivals overestimate their own resources, underestimate their opponents' resources, and underestimate their opponents' resolve. Likewise, peace can only be achieved when both opponents reach agreement on these issues. Unfortunately, the information required to reach a consensus on this data can itself only be generated through war itself.

Continue reading at Beyond the Box Score...

(Photo credit: AP via SB Nation)