BY RUSSELL TURNER
WHO CARES WHO WINS
Many people who are sports enthusiasts memorize their favorite team’s star players and their accomplishments on the field. If they are a fan of baseball they will usually know their batting average and the number of bases they have stole in a particular season. I often wonder how many of the devoted fans would watch the games if no score was kept or statistics recorded. I believe that most of the fans would lose interest rather quickly; it wouldn’t take very long for the game to become boring. It is important for a team to recruit players that go the extra mile in the pursuit of excellence. Over the past few years there has been a trend where players on a team are all given participation trophies. While this practice may make some people feel good, in reality it does nothing to advance the skills of the players. As long as each player knows that he or she will receive a trophy there is no incentive to become a better player. I recently read an article about a high school in North Carolina that wanted to abolish the award of valedictorian and salutatorian from high school graduations.
One board member was quoted as saying, “we have heard from many, many schools that the competition has become very unhealthy ... Students were not collaborating with each other the way that we would like them to.” In my opinion it is absurd for a school not to recognize the accomplishments of the students that spent the extra hours studying or taking the harder subjects. In our society it has always been the people who put forth the extra effort that prospered. When I have to repair my automobile, I want to go to the mechanic that put forth the extra effort to understand the working of a car. In reality taking your car to a person that took the time to educate himself in the long run will save you money. The whole idea of this socialistic nonsense reminds me of some of the rhetoric of presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. He has been appealing to many Americans' sense of unfairness for the fact that some people earn more money, have accumulated more wealth, and are a lot richer than others. While many of the people in this nation are falling for all of this equality garbage, they do not acknowledge the unequal amount of effort of our citizens.
There is a danger in this kind of collectivist thinking. Too many people essentially hate the good for being good. They have been indoctrinated into thinking that they should be entitled to same wages or compensation for just being there as the person who put forth the extra effort. Think about this: When you need the services of a doctor, do you want the smartest and most-successful leaders with proven track records on your team? Or, do you want someone who just got a "participation trophy" for his/her mediocrity? The answer should be obvious. Who cares who wins? I do. Competition and the striving to be the best in your given field is what creates marvelous achievements. It's also what creates profits, economic growth and a higher standard of living ... which is what creates a better world for us all.
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