[Jeff Higgins]

Why is it there is essentially only one industry left in America whose hiring, retention, and pay practices are completely unregulated by law? Only one in which racial and gender quotas are universally agreed to have no place? Only one in which the business owners and their hired managers have sole authority to hire and fire however, and whomever they please? This industry provides the highest pay and incentives available to employees anywhere in the world, and yet is completely unregulated with regards to who it chooses to employ and how long it chooses to employ them. It is purely performance based.

This industry is none other than professional sports. An industry where winning and losing matters not to anyone outside of that industry. Yet, in industries where "winning" and "losing" do mater a great deal, business owners and managers have had their freedom to hire and fire based purely upon performance hamstrung to the point of irrelevance. They are told, by government regulation, what their cross section of employees must include. They are forced to hang on to non-performers that happen to fit into one of the many "protected classes".

So, in the whimsical world of professional sport (where is really doesn't matter one iota who wins and loses), we find the last bastion of performance based employment. In the real world of competitive business (where it really does matter), we have chosen to place performance lower on the scale of priorities than other factors.

Can we remain competitive in our new "global economy" under these conditions? Could it be time to return to a more performance based culture in our industry, school admissions, and the like? Have we spent enough time trying to lift up targeted groups? If not, when will that day ever come? Will it ever come?