On the soccer pay controversy.

Many people are implicitly assuming a labor theory of value when the say the men's and women's teams should be paid equally. That is a false theory, so there's no reason we should assume they should be paid equally.

But to say they should not necessarily be paid equally says nothing about who should be paid more.

In perfect markets, everyone's paid according to their marginal product. There's a reason LeBron James makes more than most other pro basketball players, even though they're "doing the same job" he is.

I have no idea how to figure out the marginal value of soccer players in the extremely imperfect market of national sports teams, and neither do you.

As a rough proxy we can compare the value of men's and women's teams, hence how much value the team (as opposed to any individual player) produces by looking at their revenues.

The men's World Cup brings in more revenue than the women's World Cup, so to whatever extent FIFA is paying players for World Cup appearances, it's reasonable that the men get paid more.

The women's U.S. national team reportedly brings in more revenue to the U.S. Soccer Federation than the men's national team, so to whatever extent the U.S. Soccer Federation is paying them, it's reasonable that the women should get paid more.

So men reasonably should earn more when they make the World Cup, but when they fail to make it, as they have this time around, the women should earn more.