Olson Can Explain Why the Chicago Bears May Become the Hammond Bears

As an avid Chicago Bears fan, I, along with the entire city, am experiencing Olson's worst nightmare. Currently, the Bears are leveraging both Illinois and Indiana against each other in negotiations for a new stadium, despite the entire fanbase wanting to stay in Chicago. In 2021, the team purchased a 326-acre site in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and in 2022 unveiled a nearly $5 billion plan for an enclosed stadium. However, the team's infrastructure requests at the Arlington Heights site amounted to roughly $855 million in taxpayer funds. A property-tax bill the team supported passed the Illinois House 78–32 in April 2026 but ultimately failed to become law. Meanwhile, Indiana lawmakers advanced legislation clearing the way for a Bears stadium in Hammond, Indiana, giving the team additional leverage against Illinois. Illinois leaders are now preparing another proposal for the veto session beginning November 17. Taking a step back, fans who want the Bears to stay in Chicago are all anxiously awaiting the next headline and praying we don't move to Indiana. But therein lies the problem: we are largely spectators, while the Bears are actively organizing, lobbying, and negotiating to secure the best possible deal for themselves.

This situation closely follows Olson's theory that small, concentrated interest groups have a much easier time organizing around their economic interests than large, dispersed groups. The Bears have enormous financial incentives to lobby and negotiate with both states, while the potential costs of public subsidies are distributed across millions of taxpayers. Public opinion illustrates this disconnect. A 2025 University of Chicago poll found that 68% of Chicago residents considered keeping the Bears in the city important, yet 65% opposed spending any public money to accomplish that goal. In other words, while residents collectively value keeping the team, relatively few are willing to support the financial commitment necessary to pursue it. This is Olson's free-rider problem: individuals have little incentive to organize and contribute toward a collective objective when they can benefit from the outcome regardless. Meanwhile, the Bears have no collective-action problem. They have a concentrated financial interest, the resources to organize, and the ability to play two state governments against each other. Ultimately, it is the Bears who will have more influence over the stadium's future than the millions of fans and taxpayers who just like Olson, are laying awake at night.

"A message to every billionaire megadonor, every trillionaire megadonor." - Talarico

After thinking about the midterms on Tuesday, I wanted to apply our discussion of interest groups to Elon Musk. Musk is essentially an interest group by himself. As the world's richest man, he has the financial resources and political connections to pursue favorable legislation for his companies. He moved his businesses to Texas for its business friendly policies and lower costs. As Stigler 71 explains, acquiring favorable regulation requires votes and dollars, and Musk has tried to supply both. 

This year he spent at least $474 million supporting Republican candidates in the midterms. However, his preferred candidates lost several major races, including Ken Paxton's Senate race and Greg Abbott's gubernatorial race in Texas. Nearly half a billion dollars later, Musk has very little to show for it. Under Abbott, his companies received billions in tax incentives and benefited from legislation giving them advantages over other businesses. One shameless example was when Texas rewrote its corporate laws to give his Starbase operation the legal right to shut down a nearby public beach and highway. With the incoming administration promising to end preferential treatment, Musk will likely lose a large amount of money.

 Olson argues that smaller, concentrated groups have an advantage in political organization because their members have more to gain from collective action. Musk takes this idea to its extreme. He has the resources of an entire interest group without worrying about free riders or coordinating thousands of members. Yet, this election demonstrates that money alone cannot guarantee political influence. Perhaps this is enough to give Olson a little peace of mind. Even the world's richest man cannot simply buy the political outcomes he wants.

La Dolce Vita? The Economics of Italian Train Strikes

Last semester, I studied abroad in Florence, Italy. During my time there, I experienced numerous train delays due to strikes organized by unions.

It wasn't apparent then, but now I see that how Friedman's rulemaker and umpire regulates different interest groups dictates how they are able to behave significantly: Italian labor unions have significantly more influence than in the US.

 

Another factor impacting union behavior is the number of members and groups involved. There are six transport labor unions participating in strikes tomorrow for better pay and working conditions; a higher group size leads to a greater probability for an employee to find a group tailored to their individual preferences. This differs from the US, where there is on average one union that functions as the "exclusive bargaining unit" for a given workplace. In Italy, union membership comprises around 1/3 of overall workers compared to only about 10% of workers in the US.

 

The costs of the strikes can fall on several different groups, from one as large as one of the rail companies that suffers great monetary losses to one as small as study abroad students like myself whose trip was delayed.

 

Non-union members still receive contract benefits if labor unions' strikes are successful, which creates a free rider problem because people can receive the benefits union members pay for through their time striking and instead receive wages from working on the day of the strike. People can also be members of the union and do the same, but there is likely more social pressure from within the group incentivizing members to strike. 

Although the free rider problem is more prevalent in large groups, when a union engages in protests it is more effective as group size increases. The transport unions, for instance, are more effective because they're composed of individuals working at train stations across Italy rather than a single station. The selective incentives from union membership include personal representation, discounted legal assistance, and fee reductions for tax returns.

 

No individual benefactor exists like in a privileged group to influence the contractual change that achieves the optimal amount of rent in a way a large group can in a protest.

Why Care About Corn?

The National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) is an interest group that has over 40,000 dues-paying corn growers in the U.S. and has affiliated organizations in 27 states. Their main mission from their website is “to help protect and advance corn growers’ interests.” Specifically, the organization focuses on ethanol, trade, biobased economy, farm bill, and animal agriculture among other issues. To make an impact, the organization promotes research in these areas, advocates and lobbies on behalf of corn farmers, and spreads educational content for corn producers. The cost of membership for members differs from state to state, but it typically ranges from $20-$50. Along with benefits from the organization's political efforts, members can expect to receive other selective incentives, like access to exclusive webinars and reports with insights by NCGA’s chief economist, college scholarships for children of members, and discounts at Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s.

Currently, the organization is fighting for year-round E15, which the organization says would increase the demand for corn by ~2.4 billion bushels annually. With this increased demand, the price of corn would increase, directly benefiting all corn farmers. An estimate for the benefit of year-round E15 to a farmer who has equal parts corn and soybean is $5 per acre and the average corn farmer has 278 acres of corn, so the estimated benefit per corn/soybean farmer would be $1,390. Unlike the selective incentives mentioned earlier, these benefits would not be restricted to members of the organizations, so the benefits are available to all 500,000 total corn farmers in the United States. Based on these numbers, this means that there are a significant number of farmers who are able to free ride off of the benefits of the NCGA’s lobbying efforts, considering there are only 40,000 paying members. 

Lastly, looking at how this would impact consumers, it could actually lower fuel prices at gas stations; however, it is likely that they could see higher food prices due to the pass through from higher corn prices. It is also known that E15 provides worse mileage than alternatives which counters the benefit seen at the pump. Ultimately, the small costs are spread across many people, and they are also hard for people to see, which creates very little incentive to organize an effort against corn farmer interest groups.

The Persistence of the Penny

Soon, the days of making wishes in fountains, "take a penny, leave a penny" dishes, and the many idioms involving pennies will come to an end. This is all because as of November 12th of 2025, new pennies are no longer being minted. The stat that it costs over 3 cents to make each penny had been thrown around for nearly a decade before the penny began to meet its demise. This is because of one corporation's lobbying efforts: Artazn, a zinc company, was the supplier of the blank coins that would be minted into all of the pennies in circulation. This Tennessee based company maintained a chokehold on the penny, and on the legislators that allowed it to continue to be minted, by spending nearly $3 million since 2006 on the lobbying firm Americans for Common Cents. Since Artazn was a privileged group, it recognized the value of protecting its revenue stream and wasn't bogged down by the free rider problem or need selective incentives. Given how niche of an issue this was, it was enough to prolong the creation of pennies by nearly two decades.

It seems like Olson would not have been pro penny. The benefits were very concentrated for this pressure group: since 2008, the U.S. Treasury has paid the company more than $1.3 billion since 2008 to produce the blank coins. Meanwhile, in 2024 alone, the net loss for taxpayers was $85.3 million, which is a pretty penny! But since the costs were distributed across hundreds of millions of taxpayers, it only cost about each American one quarter annually. Taxpayers were the latent group in this case, since no one calls a congress member over 25 cents a year. Even the people most prone to penny pinching probably would not have thought twice about how printing pennies hurts their pocketbook.

It's the Economy, Stupid!

 How did Richard Nixon go from a staunch opponent of wage and price controls in July, 1971 to reversing his position just a few weeks later? The answer is relatively simple: he wanted to ensure his reelection in November. Pres. Nixon was advised by his treasury secretary, John Connally, to impose these economic controls in order to demonstrate to the public that he was serious about curbing inflation. The imposition of price and wage controls can be characterized as political signaling to voters, not necessarily a policy initiative in the public’s best interest. Richard Nixon never once believed that these controls would actually fix inflation in the long run. To convince Nixon of their value, Sec. Connally and other proponents argued for the “cosmetic” effects of a freeze on prices and wages. In other words, Connally emphasized the perception of these policies as opposed to their genuine effectiveness. Additionally, because Nixon could only serve four more years in the Oval Office (assuming a victory in November), the long term effects of price and wage controls were weighed negatively against the desire to win the upcoming election. 

Nixon’s decision to impose these controls is a clear-cut example of a politician forming policy in order to win elections instead of the reverse. The question we should ask ourselves is if Nixon is unique or if all politicians use policy as a means of winning elections. As our old pal Milton Friedman put it, “Nixon had the capacity of rising above principle if politics demanded it.” Is this a fault of Nixon’s character, or is this a fault of the incentive structure embedded within American politics? The answer is likely both, but we would need a second blog post to answer this question in more detail. 

Corn and Garlic: Two Peas in a Pod

    Becker’s model of competition among pressure groups says that groups spend resources to maximize the benefit of those in their group, and the policy outcome depends on how effective each group's spending is. Like corn farmers in the U.S. , garlic is a clear example of pressure groups. The U.S. has had an antidumping order on Chinese garlic since 1994, and in 2018 a rancher named Ken Christopher, one of the last three commercial garlic producers in the country, traveled to Washington to ask that garlic be included in new tariffs. His reasoning was that the tariffs were happening anyway, so why not garlic. His lobbying was successful, and after a 10% tariff began in September 2018, his domestic sales rose 15% in the last quarter of the year, and the tariff went up to 25% in May 2019.

    As Becker predicted, pressure groups began to compete against each other and Garlic didn’t go unchallenged. McCormick, a huge seasoning company, argued against it before the International Trade Commission. McCormick pushed back and said its recipes depend on Chinese garlic, which it does not consider substitutable for the American kind. A small group of growers with a large stake faces a firm that bears the cost, and both spend on lobbying. Consumers, who saw a box of garlic go from $20 to $40, are left bearing unnecessary burden. McCormick and Chrispother are spending resources on things other than production causing dead weight loss.

You Really Should Be Tipping.

    I have been working in the service industry for about 2 years, and the other day I was working at Wing Wednesday as a server at Asado. After someone tipped me a fun $0.97, I started thinking about tipping culture in the US and how it relates to our discussion about pressure groups and lobbying.

    Groups like the National Restaurant Association lobby heavily to keep the “tip credit” system intact. They spend millions of dollars in political efforts to maintain the policies that set the federal and state sub-minimum wage for tipped employees. The National Restaurant Association’s lobbying efforts are very successful, with wins in 2023 that stopped legislation in 23 states from overturning the tip wage policy. However, according to Olson, larger groups are often unsuccessful when it comes to applying political pressure because of the free rider problem. Where the National Restaurant Association differs is their implementation of selective incentives in the form of membership benefits. By becoming a member of the group, members are given exclusive access to a team of regulatory experts/lawyers, economic research on the restaurant industry, and member discounts on products and health care. With these selective benefits and a massive eligible base in the nation’s second-largest private sector employer, the National Restaurant Association secures a large amount of funding. They use these resources to out-pressure less organized labor groups and effectively influence governments to maintain sub-minimum wage levels of around $2/hour (that really gets taxed out). So, unless you can out-lobby the NRA, please think twice before you decide not to tip after dining in a restaurant that provides table service.