Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Document Notes
Another example of the blurring of the lines between parties and institutions in society.
Highlights
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In 2006, the UFC hired Marc Ratner, NSAC’s highly respected executive director, to head up the company’s regulatory affairs division.
✏️ Grabbing a Government person to move into Producers and help corrupt the systems in place, favoring the Producer over the People. 🔗 View Highlight
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By 2016, the UFC could do business in all fifty US states. What’s more, state legislatures which had tried to introduce laws regulating the economic relationship between promoters and fighters — like California’s Assembly Bill 2100, which proposed to grant contractual protections for fighters — were deftly fended off.
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Later in 2017, the House Subcommittee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection convened a hearing to discuss a bill expanding the Ali Act to MMA. Ratner, who’d been a supporter of the original Ali Act and its application to boxing, appeared on behalf of the UFC to zealously defend the status quo. He argued, with a straight face, that the MMA was free of the “conflicts of interest and self-dealing” that had characterized boxing prior to the passage of the original legislation. In response, Congressman Markwayne Mullin (who introduced the bill) labelled the UFC “the Don King of MMA” with its “take it or leave it” contracts, and accused Ratner of “misleading the American people.” Ratner and the UFC were the eventual victors, and the bill never proceeded to a vote. At the time of writing, it has yet to be reintroduced in Congress.
✏️ Here’s where hypocrisy comes into play. The same person that supported a government regulation is now here advocating against applying it to the place he’s working, claiming the Producer is ethical and safe already anyways, so why regulate it? 🔗 View Highlight
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Station Casinos executive vice president Staci Alonso was appointed to NSAC. Three years later, in 2020, she spearheaded a successful campaign to have NSAC reduce public access to information around fighter pay. Previously, the commission had disclosed athlete purses as reported to it by promoters, giving fighters and media a critical data point regarding fighter compensation.
✏️ The inverse is just as crucial apparently. Not only do you grab from Government and put under Producer, you can take from Producer and place into Government, enabling regulations that are convenient for the Producer. Either process, but always for the sake of profit and monopoly. 🔗 View Highlight
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Blurring the lines between the two entities, Campbell outlined how Power Slap’s rules — developed by the private sector but enforced by the state — would provide “a level of integrity to the sport and provide a system that’s safe moving forward.”
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The iron law of monopoly capitalism is a lack of competition, not only in the market but in the realm of ideas. So it is with Power Slap, which has adopted a business model and competitive architectures which are identical to the UFC’s.
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The recipe of a largely unskilled and anonymous workforce, low overhead, and plenty of viral videos all but guarantees it. And with the state firmly in Dana White’s corner — where it’s been for the past two decades — expect Power Slap to be around for the long haul.