Economic development decisions shouldn't be the output of purely financial calculations or forecasts. Like public budgets, they should incorporate a moral influence that reflects the public's values — even if those values compete in small part with the public's fortune.
The state Legislature's ongoing debate over whether to legalize mixed martial arts in New York is ignoring this basic principle.
As state lawmakers warm to the prospect of allowing MMA in exchange for a projected multimillion-dollar annual economic boost, forgotten are the children who will be taught the important life lesson that it is not only OK, but heroic, to punch, kick and choke another human into unconsciousness.
Most lawmakers, and nearly every child development expert, understand the connection between adolescent exposure to violence and a child's future propensity to commit it. This desensitization effect is at the heart of our efforts to shield children from other violent forms of entertainment and from abusive domestic relationships.
New York shouldn't sell out on our understanding of how childhood contact with extreme violence begets future adult violence. If we do, how will teachers and parents have any credibility educating kids on the importance of nonviolent problem solving? How can any of us emphasize how wrong it is to strike another human being if moments later we gather around television sets and pack arenas to celebrate it?
As a prosecutor sworn to help protect my community, I bear witness to the effects of policies that ignores these questions.
As an advocate for children with little say in their environment and without lobbyists in Albany, the price for lawmakers' laudable focus on the economy shouldn't be the futures of our kids.
Advocates for MMA legalization don't want to focus on these futures. Their arguments prey on the economic urgency of now. To lawmakers who might be opposed to legalizing extreme violence, they sell MMA as a sport victimized by arbitrary regulation and a state that's behind the times.
But MMA isn't like any other sport, even those that involve some violence. In those sports, the violence is collateral to the goal and it's rarely intended to injure a player. In MMA, the violence is the goal. The barbaric intent of MMA is to physically impair your opponent before he or she can do as much to you.
MMA advocates are right that New York stands nearly alone in its ban of MMA. Sometimes being a leader means being willing to be the last to stand up against something wrong, not just the first to stand up for something right.
I don't say any of this as someone usually interested in limiting adult preference in entertainment. Adult MMA fans are, theoretically, more mature than children. They're more capable of separating regulated voluntary combat from unacceptable involuntary violence. If there were a way to shield children from MMA like we try to do with violent video games, movies and music, I might feel that this is an issue for adult consumers to regulate.
But society can't shield kids from the images and glorification of a sport. With MMA, it's an all or nothing question upon which New York rests firmly on the right side of history.
The arguments of most MMA opponents aren't great ones. They focus too much on the health and safety of adult fighters who choose to reap financial reward in exchange for being pummeled.
My focus is on the impressionable kids who don't have the maturity or the ability to turn the channel on MMA. My concern is for what these children will learn to emulate.
Just as kids can become desensitized to violence, we can't let lawmakers focused on the economy become desensitized to economic development of moral recession. With MMA, lawmakers can prove they understand the binary aspect of this equation and the sport's unique threat to children and public safety.
Kathleen Rice is the Nassau County district attorney.