Staring into the roid

I've discovered another issue on which I part ways with libertarians.  Steroids in sports.  To me, this sort of dismissive attitude seems misplaced.  To buy the basic libertarian case--that Sammy Sosa is simply exercising his freedom to take advantage of pharmaceutical progress, so quit hassling him--you have to ignore a few glaring counterpoints.

First, all games rely on rules, which are nothing if not constraints on behavior.  Major leaguers are forbidden from using aluminum bats, for example.   And Blackjack players are forbidden from counting cards.  Are these violations of liberty?  No.  Is steroid prohibition any different?  No.

Second, today's users are simply not playing fair.  If Barry Bonds has been surreptitiously hopped up on performance enhancing drugs all this time, then his home-run heroics are a fraud.  If Sosa, Giambi and McGwire were juiced--or creamed, or whatever--they they suck, too.  Not only for the betrayal and deception (known in sporting circles as "cheating"), but for violating the ideal of a "level playing field" that make sports interesting in the first place.  Which brings up the next point.

What if they did lift the prohibition on performance enhancing drugs?  That would level the playing field, in a manner of speaking.  But it would also eviscerate sports by turning it over to the guys in white lab coats.  Who wants to see baseball--or any sport--devolve into a contest between pharmacological molecules?  If the entire margin of victory is determined by which performance enhancer is more effective, that's what we'll have.  In the long run, nobody wants to watch a bunch of roided out gorillas smack baseballs into the next county.

Now, I agree that the government should steer clear of this entire issue, and I'm turned off by anti-steroid crusader John McCain's zeal to use the coercive arm of the state to keep sports pure (and seemingly to sanitize every other venue of human interaction, as well--witness the the disastrous effects of the campaign finance "reform" law that bears his name).  But I totally get why the baseball owners want to test their employees for drugs.  They should exercise their liberty to do so.

Comments

[arcadefire]

you misunderstand libertarianism if you think it says that employers - like the MLB - can't set rules about drug intake. Now, some libertarians might argue that the MLB shouldn't create that rule, but libertarians (generally) wouldn't argue that MLB is not within its rights to set those rules.

[John Schrock]

Good point. I'm sure libertarians would respect whatever rights and obligations the owners and players included in the contracts they sign with each other. But many voices in libertarian circles seem to support steroid use on transhumanist grounds--that using technology to transcend human limits is an individual right that should not be tampered with. Others seem merely in denial about the downside. For example, Reason's Matt Welch argues that, "[i]n an era when testosterone and other hormones are being used safely to treat various illnesses, isn't it time to ask why, exactly, they can't be used to help men who use their bodies for a living recover from the daily strain as they reach retirement age?" This strikes me as a bit naïve. (He then goes on to wonder aloud if Barry Bonds really did take steroids by accident.)