Michael Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the role of formal rules and informal rules in sports. Many sports restrain violence and retaliation through formal rules while in others, protective equipment is used to reduce injury. In all sports, codes of conduct emerge to deal with violence and unobserved violations of formal rules. Munger explores the interaction of these forces across different sports and how they relate to insights of Coase and Hayek. ATSRTWT!
UPDATE: A.R. comments over at the podcast about the "greatest scandal in the history of cricket." Just being able to type that phrase made my whole day. "Cricket scandal" is an excellent start to any paragraph. And then the scandal does in fact turn out to be extremely interesting. Reading the first paragraph of this, I realized that I am painfully ignorant of cricket. But this is a bit easier to understand. This is more serious. And very interesting. Thanks, Aswin!
UPDATE II: Ghostbusters! "More like a guideline than a rule..." at 0:14. WARNING: NSFW! Her request is rather indelicate. (Nod to WH)
2 comments:
I just realized that everything I know about
cricket came from a song by The Kinks.
There are even rules about fighting when you are fighting a war. You might be interested in this:
Trench Warfare 1914-1918. The Live and Let Live System.
Book Description
The story of the great battles of the First World War has been told by historians, journalists and others. The shock and slaughter of the Somme, Verdun and Passchendaele are a major theme of most books. Large scale battles, however, comprised the smaller part of soldiers' total time in combat. For 90% of that time soldiers fought small scale battles . These small conflicts were violent, continual and involved complex weaponry and specialised tactics. Yet, during small battles, soldiers could and often did, make choices not possible during large ones. From these choices, there evolved between enemies a curious culture of live and let live which constrained the war culture of kill or be killed in fundamental ways.
About the Author
Tony Ashworth was raised in the Ithon Valley and educated in Radnorshire, Sussex and the Universities of Leicester and London. He has served with the Royal Air Force and lectures in the University of Wales, Cardiff. He now lives in the Vale of Glamorgan
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trench-Warfare-1914-18-System-Strategy/dp/0330480685/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377502302&sr=8-1&keywords=The+live+and+let+live+system
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