Polo & Patience
CNN Reported today:
The sport of polo needs new oversight to protect its prized horses, the nation’s largest animal protection organization said after reports that a pharmacy’s mistake with medication may have killed 21 animals. “This tragedy has brought to light the absence of drug policies and regulation within the sport of polo,” said Keith Dane, director of equine protection for the Humane Society of the United States.
This is the precise reason that our country gets in trouble. The owner of these horses just lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and if he doesn’t want to repeat this loss, he will make sure that this mistake doesn’t happen again. The vet pharmacist that put the wrong concoction together will be fined to the point that he will not make that mistake again. The league will evaluate the tragedy and move in the right direction as well. And finally, the polo community can judge a year from now if enough has been done.
Why can’t our country be patient enough to allow the “market” to correct itself? MLB has had a similar problem with steroid use and the government has been involved BECAUSE the MLB is a government-regulated monopoly (the jury is out as to whether changes would have come quicker if the government wasn’t involved). But a free-market polo league/association needs the time to adjust and regulate itself before some outside entity steps in and demands regulations.
Sadly, our country has evolved into a knee-jerk-reactionary-media-driven-mass when it was founded as a market-bearing-patience-oriented-society.