I mention this because this time out, I'd like to talk about economics -- but don't panic, kids, because i'll ultimately tie this whole thing to soccer. Really.

This weekend, while thumbing through the New Yorker, I came across an article about an obscure economist named Friedrich August von Hayek. A Nobel Prize winner, Hayek was almost willfully out of fashion his entire career, for proposing the idea in the late 1930s that free markets "were not just political constructs ... but remained the best way of coordinating scattered information."

This of course, was at a time when welfare states were being erected across Europe and Russia, and Hayek's tracts came off as right-wing invective. Yet, today, most economists accept that capitalism remains the most efficient way to organize a society; the idea that a central planner can more skillfully control a system than allowing individual decision makers to allocate resources and labor has been discredited by the fall of socialism and communism.

Now, maybe I'm a little nuts, but in this week of labor disputes at the U.S. Soccer Federation and the imminent start-up of the new Major League Soccer season, this article struck me as being particularly applicable to the woes that soccer faces in America. A central planner? Hmmm ... sounds like Sunil Gulati, doesn't it? MLS woes? Smacks of the stagnancy we saw in the welfare states.

You see, the funny thing about this particular economic theory is that it can be applied to any business or information system: the Internet has triumphed because it is decentralized and offers rapid response; the markets of Europe have ultimately proved to better off without heavy state control. And, yes, the same thing applies to soccer. While every other industry has ceded central control to the marketplace, the business of American soccer remains dangerously centralized, with power concentrated in two locales. The result is a stagnant league and a declining interest in the sport.

MLS has lacked essential credibility from day one, for the unspoken reason that few trust the single-entity structure to deliver the best of the sport. The league has been careful to paint the single-entity structure not as the best way to bring soccer to America, but as the best way to dilute risk. However, sport -- like all capitalist activities -- is full of risk, and psychologically, I would venture that that diminishment of risk has resulted in a correspondent diminishment of value.

[The USSF also treads this ground, by offering things such as severance pay (unheard of for other nations' national teams) and the prospect of a union to its women's team. Again, here we have the reduction of a national side to that of a club, with the result that the pool remains stagnant. And, of course, with almost all "development" in this country overseen by the USSF, that line also remains impotent due to its own inertia.]

Some have expressed the view that all soccer really needs to survive in this country are patience and stadiums. They may well be proved right, but I find it hard to swallow the idea that people will come out to see what is essentially a poor simulacra of a sport because the stadium is shiny and new. Ultimately, people pay attention to sport because of the teams and the players, but teams can't develop into full-fledged entities of their own if they are perpetually tied to the league office.

Let's face facts: Media interest in the sport is at an all-time low despite following the successful 1999 Women's World Cup and the resurgence of the men's national team. No sports editor worth his salt takes MLS seriously, because it comes off as a jury-rigged minor league. Everyone notices that few new players enter this closed system and by now even stalwart fans have to be sick of the endless trades between teams. The fact is, there is no "magic formula" that is going to allow all the teams to succeed, and no matter how many times you trade Roy Lassiter, it's not going to make much difference.

With the way things are going right now for this sport -- badly -- MLS has to take some risks. I've written before that the league has to spend some money, and spend it fast. It needs to look to what other leagues do, and try to hire some talents to make this league a legitimate player. But MLS won't be a very attractive investment -- either for a labor force or for dollars -- if it doesn't make its teams independent. Yep, some might bury themselves under the weight of their own idiocy. Let 'em -- that's the cost of a free market. But without that freedom, there can be no growth, and without that, the whole thing could die.