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Comment by Kevin_S | Hacker News Reader

Come on.... this argument that athletes should make less is ridiculous.

I took this to mean that glassblowers should be paid more, especially the best ones in the world.

If it was known 10+ years ago that Caltechs glassblower made 300-500k a year, you can bet they wouldn't be in this situation now.

The million dollar salaries for baseball players entice entire generations of kids and teens to at least "try" the sport. It keeps the good ones motivated and the few elite athletes a payout for a lifetime of work.

We could argue whether this is all worth it for entertainment, but you can't argue with the compensation model, it flat out works. It attracts and retains the absolute best people in the world at that specific job.

You are underestimating the value of fun. Team sports are more fun that blowing glass.

You clearly haven't spent much time in a glass blower's shop. The torches alone are freaking awesome and it's a pleasure to watch the tradesperson at work.

Maybe, but hobbyist glassblowers exist.

Explain please? It seems rather backwards to me, and with some unpleasant societal implications, that a pro sports player (so a subset of entertainment) is more highly compensated than someone who holds an even rarer skill set (in a subset of science).

An argument I've heard made is that professional athletes have compressed careers: for example, the median major league baseball salary is 1.5 million per year, and the average baseball career is ~5-6 years. This is actually on the high end, as Googling indicates that NFL numbers are much lower ($900k median over three years). It also doesn't factor in time spent in the minor leagues, which has a much lower payout.

So if you spread the contract out over ~30 years or so, the numbers look far different.

[1]: http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/15126571/study-mlb-averag... [2]: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070709131254.h...

Yeah, but the professional athletes can have other job while their baseball career is over. It's not like they need to make enough money in baseball, because after they're done they'll starve. I'd happily compress my software engineering career to 5-6 years to make $1.5M/y, where do I sign up?

It is unfortunate, but that's how the market works. What alternative is there besides the government imposing salary floors and ceilings?

> It is unfortunate, but that's how the market works.

And we as humans control "the market". It's not some abstract impossible-to-reason-with force. The better that we understand this, the better our economies will work.

Markets in whole are irrational and very difficult, if not impossible, to reason with. They also tend to react poorly and in unforseen ways to direct interference.

> that's how the market works

I'd say instead "that's how the market DOESN'T work" since clearly there are a lot of market failures - master glass blowers being just an example.

Why do you need an alternative to these perfectly viable solutions?

Because sports are entertainment, and people have expressed a willingness to part with more money to watch athletes than universities have expressed to pay glassblowers...

Yeah, ridiculous. How could we live without them? They are the basis of a decent society, unlike scientific research.

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