Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikeg8 | Hacker News Reader

Hate the headline as it downplays the terror and brutality that cartels inflict on the people of Mexico. Nobody is holding a gun to a football player head and forcing them to play for Harvard.

Is there price fixing going on? Probably. But I don’t have very much sympathy for student athletes who had to pay full price to go to an Ivy league school… I’m sure they had more opportunities in life than the cartels give they people the rule over.

View on HN

The article doesn't mention the Mexican drug cartels at all. Maybe you're just not aware, but the word cartel has a meaning outside of organized crime and the drug trade. OPEC, for example, is a cartel of oil producing states.

> Hate the headline as it downplays the terror and brutality that cartels inflict on the people of Mexico

The word "cartel" is not exclusive to the criminal Mexican organizations.

> I’m sure they had more opportunities in life

But that reasoning applies to academic scholarships too. Every single person smart enough to get into a top school, will have more opportunities throughout life.

Just because the term is used to describe groups of organizations participating in price fixing activity doesn't mean all groups performing price fixing are equal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartel

1. Cartel is a technical term which the article is using correctly.

2. Renaming the technical term would not do anything to help the victims of drug cartels (in Mexico or otherwise.) That would be textbook slacktivism.

There's a cartel, then there's The Cartel

Reply on news.ycombinator.com