Why we need rules in sports and business
Imagine a football match with only one accepted rule: Goals count! Everything else is variable, basically decided by the strongest team:
- Size of the playing field: variable
- Goal or side lines: for what
- Penalty and/or goal area: for what
- Size of football: variable
- Size of goal: variable
- Location of goal:variable
- Number of players in starting line up: variable
- Number of substitutes during game:variable
- Playing time: variable
- No difference between outfield players and goalkeepers
- Players could kick or throw the ball
- Foul: what's that?
- Referee: what's that?
The ball is always in play, anything goes and the game is over, once one team maximizes its number of goals and the other team gives up.
Undesirable to say the least and that is why football, like any other sport, needs meaningful and accepted rules as well as referees to enforce these rules. The same applies to business, especially on a global scale. It is not only about profit goals, but like in sports, business needs additional rules, standards and sanctions. The referee in this case can only be politics, i.e. governments. The problem is that business is more and more of a global game, but there is no global government or other institution with the authority to enforce the rules and impose the sanctions on a global scale. Looking back at the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, we must realize that besides the mistakes made by BP, politics failed and is failing. Not only that, the free market economy also failed.