Interesting link, although different scenario, I wonder how many would take PEDs if there were few known side effects, or unknown side effects. Going on recent history in cycling and other sports I’d say it’d be closer to 90 – 95%

Thanks for the links: I’ll have to watch them this weekend.

For sure, there are the normal redistributions applied to professional sportspeople. I suppose I’m just curious that our notions of fairness here aren’t ‘fractal’, in the sense that the societal judgments aren’t then applied to the individual disciplines. You might say that we’ve already done the redistribution, but the ‘fair’ level is unlikely to be constant across different fields, so why is there no adjustment?

Imperfect information is always a problem, although the evidence shows that they’d probably have made the same decision with full information: http://leastthing.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/goldman-dilemma.html

Re: doping, is there not an issue with new drugs that may have unknown future (possibly fatal) side-effects? Allowing a doping free-for-all may end up with a bunch of dead athletes, just like when EPO first hit cycling in the early 90s. In this case the rewards may not go to the most gifted or hardest working, but possibly to those prepared to take the greatest risks. Or are all costs of fatalities fully internalised by the (potentially young & impressionable) athlete making an uninformed decision?

Finally, if you’ve an interest in drugs in sports, I recommend this:
Trailer

Full doco

Indeed. The difficulty is that you are really just switching from genetic talent to genetically determined response to drugs.

If doping does more to help the lower tiers than to help the top tiers, and it then can induce ordinal changes in an all-doping equilibrium, then your egalitarian result holds. Empirical question then.

The different notions of fairness are exactly what I’m getting at here. Nobody describes cycling in the ’90s as fair, but affirmative action for most parts of society is considered to increase fairness.

Good point about the haematocrit limit; although, in cycling, it was certainly considered more exciting back then. Just think of Riis’ crazy attacks to drop Indurain, Pantani soloing over Les Deux Alpes, Armstrong’s Look on L’Alpe d’Huez: every cycling superstar is feted for their superhuman efforts until they’re caught. Similarly, nobody in bodybuilding or pro wrestling seems to think that the use of drugs diminishes the sport; if anything it makes it more spectacular!

Not true: response to doping is not equal to initial talent, I think. You can’t infer post-doping rankings from pre-doping rankings.

I doubt any who followed cycling over this period would say things were fairer. If anything it just shows that once one area has been exploited people will just move onto the next most effective method of increasing performance. In cycling this resulted in corruption and more illegal activity.

More fun: think of the nootropic drugs. Same result.