The gradual destruction of All Black rugby is just another sporting example of what economists call 'the tragedy of the commons'. This refers to the failure of private incentives to provide adequate maintenance of public resources.

New Zealanders think of their All Blacks as public property. But the reality of market economics and professionalism is that these people are owned by private capital. The problem for the capitalists is that it is the illusion of public ownership which underpins the market value of the sports stars in the first place.

Here's how it works. Dan Carter is a star because of his standing in the arena of international rugby. But the commons of international rugby as we now know it is in the process of being fenced off and carved out by northern hemisphere clubs, who were smart enough to see the business opportunities of professionalism before anyone else. When the global game is hollowed out this way, the sporting commons (like a community-shared field that becomes overgrazed) will eventually be exhausted. And there is no incentive for the capitalists to refertilize the soil.

That is why I agree with those who argue that the northern hemisphere poaching will almost certainly kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. But if you're a capitalist, you don't care about the long-term. You just want your profits tomorrow. It is yet another manifestation of the battle between localism and globalism that destroys cultures and robs people of the emblems that give them a sense of their own identities.

American sports fans probably know more about the corrosive long-term effects of capitalism in sport than any others in the world. Regional baseball fans feel a justifiable (if not economically rational) sense of betrayal as their favourite sports stars are siphoned off by the big spending New York Yankees or some other cashed-up franchise.  It's the sporting counterpart of when a small town employer decides to shift the factory to China. Where's the loyalty?

The problem, friends, is soulless capitalism. Maggie Thatcher signalled its victory over social democracy two decades ago when she said there was no longer such a thing as "society". And the great American economist JK Galbraith warned about the inevitability of this hollowing out process back in the 1950s when he said that the natural consequence of unfettered capitalism was the creation of private affluence alongside public squalor.

Wake up and smell the Starbucks coffee fellow Kiwis. What remains of your nation's soul has just been sold.