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Comment by lexs | Hacker News Reader

NBA players association, actors guild, writers guild etc are famous examples of "rewarding high performing employees"

> NBA player association

I disagree. The NBA players association looks out for the mid level role players (who make up a vast majority of the league) over the highest performing players. The top tier of NBA players are essentially "underpaid" compared to their worth due to maximum salaries. This makes room for mid level guys to make 10-15 million per year. If there was no maximum salary there would be a massive bidding war for the top tier players, and the remaining small slice of pie would have to be split among everyone else.

Judging from this post, I’m not sure you fully grasp how basketball works nor the underlying concept of “team sports.” Even MJ needed 4 other guys on his side to win.

While it may be true that team sports need multiple players, several players have currently signed "supermax contracts." Since they signed a maximum contract, their team would be willing to pay them more, so they are underpaid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_salary_cap#Supermax_contra...

If you call US$ 201 million underpaid, sure. Or maybe US$ 229 million.

This is a ridiculous amount to play ball, if that cap means that mid level players get a decent life I think it's more than fair enough. I don't think a salary cap of a couple hundred millions of dollars would stop any human being innovating to get to such a job, I'm sorry.

Every one of those also famously enforces a closed shop for the positions most people have in mind when they think of "high performers".

It's interesting that those are all effectively monopolies on the talent. I wonder if that just counters the brain-drain the parent comment was referring to since high performers can't leave the union for a non-union role.

I'd argue those are more like cartels than unions.

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