Perhaps you've heard about American basketball player Le Bron James' new contract:  $98 million for two years of play.  Surely somewhat of a record for professional basketball.  Is Le Bron worth it?  I guess it's in the eye of the beholder. The Lakers clearly believed it was, that even though James may be past his prime, he still has the ability to draw in crowds and sell tickets.  After all, that's the bottom line:  revenue.  Other teams probably think it is, too, as they might have done the same for their stars.  For the same reason.

    Le Bron does many good things with his money.  Among other things, he has established a foundation that assists struggling students in his home town of Cleveland.  But that's not the point, really, is it?  The larger issue is that James's contract simply serves to underscore the inevitable end of the capitalistic enterprise:  the market will pay people for what it thinks they are worth.  You or I may disagree with the amounts, but that's the logic of the free market system.  It's an amoral system:  there's no right, there's no wrong.  It's all about what the market deems a worker is worth.

    And I suppose that's fine.  To a point.  But assessing salaries based on individual acumen in fact reduces people to what Karl Marx decided about them over a century ago:  machines that produce and nothing more.

    That's the ultimate irony, isn't it?