Perhaps because everything else is going so darn well, President Trump has moved to shutter D.C.’s public, $30-for-nine-holes East Potomac Golf Course so that it can be redesigned into an upscale “World Class Championship Golf Course” fit for the Ryder Cup or PGA Championship.

Assuming this scheme works out (and isn’t another Kennedy Center/Reflecting Pool fiasco), the best case outcome is a 15-month closure that’ll eventually yield a gaudy course that prices out working families but occasionally hosts a professional tournament. Swell.

Why do I bring this up? Because Trump’s gambit so perfectly captures how the comfortable and connected have stolen sports from kids and families. When a serviceable (if not-so-stylish) community golf course becomes yet another plaything for the gluttonous gerontocracy, it comes at a significant (if oft-ignored) cost.

This is a trend that’s been accelerating for decades. Throughout the 20th century, free broadcasts, cheap tickets, heated rivalries, and fan-friendly game times cultivated generations of fans. Today, the NFL schedules games around the globe and has put Thanksgiving games on paid-subscription streaming services. Flashy facilities and ads for online gambling sites are ubiquitous. New stadiums come with personal seat licenses that require even well-off families to take out long-term financing. At the youth level, travel sports took off in the 1990s even as local leagues were allowed to atrophy, creating a toxic arms race that squeezes affluent parents and pushes out everyone else.

We act as if youth doomscrolling, TikTok voyeurism, and phone addiction were preordained, but I can’t help wondering if bored, self-involved adults contributed to the shift by pilfering so many of the spaces that kids used to inhabit. Instead of making it easier for all kids to touch grass, youth sports has become a gated community of $5,000-a-head travel teams and college recruiting consultants signing up middle schoolers. Inexpensive baseball cards and cheap stadium hot dogs have given way to pricey hologram-embossed collectibles and haute cuisine, all designed to siphon money from affluent professionals with too much time on their hands.

I can’t think of a clearer illustration as to why distrust in markets has skyrocketed among younger Americans. After all, the shifts that have boxed young people out have been driven by deep-pocketed owners and private equity firms who see untapped revenue in million-dollar luxury boxes and billion-dollar media deals. As David Rubenstein, the owner of the Baltimore Orioles, said last week of his decision to buy the team, “A lot of my friends were buying teams, and I realized they’re making money. They’re making more money than I’m making in private equity.”

Sure, today we have nicer stadium seats, but they’re increasingly off-limits to kids and working families. Sure, stadiums boast gourmet food options and top-shelf booze, but the retirees and childless professionals who consume them have plenty of other venues where they can eat and drink well. Sure, more games are available via streaming services, but the cost of the requisite subscriptions means a lot of working families are out of luck.

The game-day experience wasn’t always crafted to court celebrities, cultivate corporate clients, or maximize revenues per seat. There used to be reasonably priced down-market beer, not-so-comfortable seats (bleachers, even!), and hardly any heated boxes. The experience wasn’t as “World Class,” but it was satisfactory and kid-friendly.

Now, in the era of $3,000 World Cup seats and $30,000 NFL super suites, only affluent families can attend games without taking out a loan. These experiences have become the province of retirees, childless professionals, and college grads looking for a lively weekend. Where are the kids? Sorry, they just don’t have the same earning potential, which is only too evident every time the camera pans the stands on an NFL Sunday or during an MLB playoff game.

A healthy system of free enterprise is marked by a degree of restraint and public-spiritedness. If there’s anywhere this impulse should be easy to honor, it’s with sports. So what if a stadium lacks a Cuban-Asian fusion restaurant, valet parking, or as many luxury boxes as the owner would like? So what if youth teams take fewer out-of-state trips to Orlando and play more games within an hour’s drive? The benefits of kids playing sports and families attending sporting events should count for more, especially as wary adults wring their hands over the nefarious algorithms competing for their attention.

Will Trump’s new East Potomac golf course be swankier, with upscale facilities and gold-plated golf carts? I’m sure it will (if it happens at all). But who will that serve? There are already big-dollar golf clubs in greater D.C. East Potomac will no longer be a place where a dad can take his kid for nine holes or where a couple of high schoolers might leave their phones behind and go play a round. The new course may be “nicer,” but it’ll also be one more space where affluent adults have co-opted athletic access from the nation’s kids.

The most charitable defense I might mount for a move like Trump’s is that in many cases (though not, apparently, in East Potomac), public options have been overrun by miscreants. Kids can’t play ball in some parks for all the needles, garbage, and homeless tents. Boorish behavior at some public golf courses keeps families away from the links. The response, though, should be to recommit to responsibility—not to reserve ever more domains for the old and affluent.

I mean, how nice can a “nice” community golf course be, anyway, if the community can’t play it?

Frederick Hess is an executive editor of Education Next and the author of the blog “Old School with Rick Hess.”