How Barry Bonds is like a businessman on speed

08Aug07

Thought experiment. Consider the following two businessmen.

• Businessman A gets an insider tip about company X and makes a fortune selling its stock short.
• Businessman B takes lots of illegal amphetamines, which enables him to work 14-hour days for weeks on end, and, in particular, to carry out supremely exhaustive research on company X’s industry, which eventually leads him to believe that he can make a fortune by selling company X’s stock short; and so he does.

Do you feel differently about A and B? I think most people would call A a cheater and B something else — even though both businessmen did something against the law, which gave them an advantage that was not available to their competition, and as a result got rich.

I think Barry Bonds is more like businessman B than businessman A. Steroids aren’t magic pills that make you better at hitting a baseball. If I understand correctly, they enable you to work harder, to rest less, and to develop your skills to a point beyond what you — in Bonds’s case, beyond what anyone — could do unaided. It’s definitely unfair. But is it cheating?

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