Market Economy to Market Society The Game of Life and Tiebreaking: By: Nasim Smadi

In his popular lecture to an American high school, Bill Gates said: ‘Life is not fair; get used to it,’ as if fairness means equal opportunities for success in business. However, it turns out that all kinds of sports suffer from the dilemma of "unfairness," especially in an age when money can buy, literally, everything: goods, services, people, fame, status, statues, and triumphs. Dr. Michael Sandel, a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University published a book entitled, What Money Can’t Buy that warns about the dangers of commoditizing everything: emotions, values, culture and humans.

After reading Sandel’s books, I became sure of Bill Gates’ mistake about justice. Life is fair in all aspects: political, economic, social, and psychological cycles. But its harmony gets distorted by artificial laws that violate natural orders and intrinsic feelings. What convinced me more was reading A Short History of Nearly Everything, a great book by Bill Bryson, to discover that the universe would eventually disappear, gradually, over tens of billions of years, as a result of the .of its entire system!

At the World Cricket Championships (WCC), as I read in “The Guardian” and heard on CNN that England defeated New Zealand due to their grounds, crowd and vague rules that not even players of both sides could understand nor believe. These are rules that only the organizers understood!

I do not understand the rules of the game and cannot stand watching it, but the victory of the English was dictated by rules and regulations rather than merit, skill, fitness and talent. This is what happened almost the same day at the Wimbledon tennis tournament with the victory of the Serbian "Novak Djokovic" by a new change in the game rules.

The tie-break rule that settled for Djokovic at the expense of Federer was first applied this year, and then has settled the longest match in the history of the tournament, and the star walked empty handed.

The match statistics confirm Federer's preference, which scored 218 points against 204 for Djokovic, and won 36 games against 32 for his rival.

Can you believe this? Yes, that's what happened because of new rules that set a maximum limit of 24 games before resorting to tiebreak. The three sets won by Djokovic were settled by a tie-break and two points. While Federer won the second set by five games, not five points, and the fourth by two games, not two points.

Why is this happening?

Dialogues that include policymakers and philosophers are taking place all over the world; global logical discussions aimed at making the laws more equitable, but there are many challenges, especially the power of money and how the logic of the market dictates the logic of truth. Even to say that Egypt's recent exit from the African Cup resulted from the intervention of one of the soccer brokers who imposed certain players on the team despite the coach’s will.

From here on, the sports federations cannot sacrifice the excitement and pleasure of the fans, the spectators and the powerful commissions, so as not to lose their huge revenues. In the sense that sport is not entitled to win over "business" deals, and that it is imperative to continue the transformation of the whole world from a society managed educationally, morally, and culturally, to a market managed mechanically and financially.

By turning market economy to market society, capital remains victorious despite the failure of capitalism, and the market is separated from the economy in order to formulate a world devoid of behavioral economics values that tries to protect it from AI and digital values. But we remain optimistic that wisdom prevails over agendas and philosophy prevails over computers, so that it is impossible for mind to prevail over the heart with a tie break.

There will be genuine universal principles that money cannot buy, including happiness, love, honor, honesty, integrity, courage, trust, truth, friendship, respect, allegiance, loyalty, street smartness, sense of beauty, and sportsmanship itself!

Nasim Smadi

Editor, Best Book Briefings

www.bestbookbriefings.com