You can't restrict everyone else's freedom to make things "fair", and even if you could it would never be fair anyway. As every arbitrary restriction would be an unfairness in of itself.
In fact, part of competition lies in the desire to overcome unfairness. The other guy may be better looking than me, but if I work harder, or smarter, or show some creativity, perhaps I'll overcome that. Of course, you could argue that it's unfair that I'm smarter and more creative than the good-looking guy. That maybe the government should restrict or limit my use of that in the interests of fairness. Life is complex though, and who decides these things? What god gets to weigh them up and say, "Yes, I'll decide what's fair."
It's unfair that Manchester United has a history of success and your side doesn't. It's unfair that Arsenal sit at the heart of a capital city with a huge catchment area, whereas your club sits in a small, unknown town. There are so many differences such as these that are accidents of chance and history. And no two clubs, just as no two people, will ever be exactly level in all things.
This is life.
Now what am I getting at here? Of course, it's the recent Manchester City furore.
The two questions people are asking are:
Did City break the rules?
What should their punishment be?
However, I would argue that the more important question is:
Should we have these rules in the first place?
Rules that effectively limit how much owners can invest in their football clubs.
As above, where I was complaining about the good-looking guy, the argument is, "It's not fair that other clubs can spend more money! They should be banned from doing it!"
Now firstly, it's bad in general wanting to ban things, and wanting to stop other clubs from investing money and effort into being the best they can be. Essentially stopping the pursuit of excellence. Just as it would be pretty spiteful for me to want to ban another man from getting an expensive haircut and being the best he can be.
Secondly, the way the rules work aren't fair anyway. As clubs are allowed to spend in proportion to the revenue they generate. Meaning bigger clubs are allowed to spend and invest more money than smaller clubs. So it entrenches unfairness. It actively stops investors coming into the game and shaking things up.
Imagine you run a corner shop. You inherit some money and want to invest it in your shop to make it more successful. But then the authorities come along and say, "No, you can't invest that money, it wouldn't be fair on the other corner shops!" So you can't improve your business. Meanwhile Sainsbury's and Tesco are investing millions. When you raise that point though the reply comes back, "Ah, but they're much bigger, they can afford to invest that sort of money."
Of course, you can afford to invest it too. The money is sat in your bank. But you're not allowed to, as it wouldn't be "fair."
If corner shops and other businesses had to be ran like this it would just be silly, but that's how football is run now.
And it wasn't even originally about fairness
Everyone talks about "fairness" now, however the rules came in to stop clubs from going out of business. That was the aim. It wasn't to impose fairness, which, as we've noted, is an impossible task.
The argument was that clubs were borrowing too much money and taking too many risks in order to compete with other clubs. Resulting in some clubs going into administration. So that's what the rules were (understandably) aiming to stop.
Even here though it's foolish to think you can have a system where the threat of going out of business is removed. It's economically illiterate.
If I spend money I don't have to buy a sportscar, to compete with the good-looking rich guy who's just bought a sportscar, then I'm going to go bankrupt ..and it would be my own fault. You can't just ban everyone from buying a sportscar because of idiots like me.
Yes, it might be unfair that some people don't have a sportscar, but banning just creates a world where no one has a sportscar and no one ever can have one.
Anyway, this is what these rules are doing to the Premier League. In the pursuit of rosy-eyed fairness they're going to kill the golden goose.
They're going to smash a beautiful blue sportscar, one of their most cherished possessions, because some silly rules that were brought into being barely ten years ago say they have to.
