On the whole Olympic kerfluffle
Mar. 24th, 2015 03:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurIf you are trying to come to your own opinion about whether Boston should host the Olympics, I commend to your attention this recent book review from The Economist.
Summary: yes, hosting something like the Olympics brings in a ton of money. But the IOC skims off an *astonishing* percentage of it, in the name of running the games -- none of which goes to the much-ballyhooed improvements to the hosting city. The end result is usually a pile of expensive rusting white elephants that are not only useless, they mostly wind up draining taxpaper money on an ongoing basis, for upkeep.
It's a bad deal, highly likely to do Boston much more harm than good. On the plus side, the organizers claim that they will drop the whole stupidity if they lose the support of the residents. So it's time for those of us who actually pay attention to this stuff to say No loudly and often, and to explain that this isn't just catastrophizing: there are lots of recent examples, and they all suggest that it's basically a scam.
(Kate suggested to me the other day that the *right* answer is to stop the Olympics wandering around the world, and instead build a permanent site in Greece, which is arguably where it belongs in the first place. I suspect the politics don't work, but it makes oodles of sense to me...)
Summary: yes, hosting something like the Olympics brings in a ton of money. But the IOC skims off an *astonishing* percentage of it, in the name of running the games -- none of which goes to the much-ballyhooed improvements to the hosting city. The end result is usually a pile of expensive rusting white elephants that are not only useless, they mostly wind up draining taxpaper money on an ongoing basis, for upkeep.
It's a bad deal, highly likely to do Boston much more harm than good. On the plus side, the organizers claim that they will drop the whole stupidity if they lose the support of the residents. So it's time for those of us who actually pay attention to this stuff to say No loudly and often, and to explain that this isn't just catastrophizing: there are lots of recent examples, and they all suggest that it's basically a scam.
(Kate suggested to me the other day that the *right* answer is to stop the Olympics wandering around the world, and instead build a permanent site in Greece, which is arguably where it belongs in the first place. I suspect the politics don't work, but it makes oodles of sense to me...)
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Date: 2015-03-26 01:25 am (UTC)Note: neither of these scenarios works particularly well in terms of making the piles of dough that people think they'll get; in the case of businesses such as restaurants, etc., they may end up much worse off in the end. The people going to the games in Atlanta were so convinced that they were going to be price-gouged by the locals--which, well, they WERE--basically shuttled between their hotels and the events, refusing to go out and eating mostly fast food or room service. The upshot was that a number of places went under or came perilously close to it; either they lost a hell of a lot of money on perishables that they never used and extra staff they'd hired--because the locals weren't going out either, partly to avoid the Olympic crowds and partly because they didn't like/couldn't afford the gouging going on--or because the same locals refused to patronize them again after seeing what they'd been up to and how willing they were to screw their regular customers. All this while the IOC was pissed that the locals were trying to milk the games for everything possible, never mind that they were doing the exact same thing themselves...I like the Olympic ideal, but the games themselves leave a hell of a lot to be desired, although I do have to admit London put on a hell of a good show.