Another distinction worth making: there are games that are being played for their own sake, but only within their legitimate domain, and then there are games being played in ways that trade off success in other games people ordinarily play. Financial fraud and cheating on tests are instance of the latter, but so are war and professional sports, where athletes/soldiers often do things that wreck their long-run health in order to win a local contest. Bans on performance-enhancing drugs / chemical and biological weapons are attempts to limit this sort of osmotic effect of transferring resources across membranes, without altering the underlying incentive type. By contrast, consider the original Olympics, and Greek city-state warfare, which for the most part (excepting late Sparta) managed to remain domain-specific. This is very different from “not trying hard”—Greek amateur hoplite armies held their own against a massive Persian invasion including a large number of professional soldiers.
Agreed. The modern Olympics used to mandate amateurism, and while this was originally classist in nature, it evolved into a means of preventing other excesses. (That said, amateurism is now gone from the Olympics for every sport other than wrestling). College sports in the NCAA currently have a weird pseudo-amateurism where student-athletes are not supposed to be compensated for their skills so as to prevent undue focus on athletics, but perks and benefits (of varying degrees of subtlety) are very obviously still present.
Another distinction worth making: there are games that are being played for their own sake, but only within their legitimate domain, and then there are games being played in ways that trade off success in other games people ordinarily play. Financial fraud and cheating on tests are instance of the latter, but so are war and professional sports, where athletes/soldiers often do things that wreck their long-run health in order to win a local contest. Bans on performance-enhancing drugs / chemical and biological weapons are attempts to limit this sort of osmotic effect of transferring resources across membranes, without altering the underlying incentive type. By contrast, consider the original Olympics, and Greek city-state warfare, which for the most part (excepting late Sparta) managed to remain domain-specific. This is very different from “not trying hard”—Greek amateur hoplite armies held their own against a massive Persian invasion including a large number of professional soldiers.
Agreed. The modern Olympics used to mandate amateurism, and while this was originally classist in nature, it evolved into a means of preventing other excesses. (That said, amateurism is now gone from the Olympics for every sport other than wrestling). College sports in the NCAA currently have a weird pseudo-amateurism where student-athletes are not supposed to be compensated for their skills so as to prevent undue focus on athletics, but perks and benefits (of varying degrees of subtlety) are very obviously still present.