Even before these last few years of craziness, what I will never be able to get out of my mind is the story of Frank McCourt. I'm a lifelong Los Angeles Dodgers fan. He bought the team from Fox in 2004 and proceeded to treat a storied franchise in the nation's second largest city like it was his personal credit card. He didn't even use his own money to make the purchase. It was entirely with loans. He then proceeded to spend 8 years gradually bankrupting the organization until the league kicked him out and forced him to sell.
What was his loss? Nothing. The team sold for 8 times what he originally paid, not because of anything he had done, but just because television contracts for the entire league had become so much more lucrative over that time. The man put up $0 of his own money and made $2 billion by being one of the worst team owners of all time and making the organization he owned literally bankrupt.
I will never again in my life accept these econ theory gibberish about all the "risk" faced by business owners. If you own a salon or a restaurant or something, fine, I accept you might actually be out on the street. But if you're the right class of person that the banking system has accepted into the club, you can get infinite loans to buy whatever you want with no collateral, drive a business into the ground while spending the bulk of your time with hookers and blow, and make out with billions anyway.
