No More Hunger Games?

Don · Jun 2, 2014

Apparently the citizens of the several districts have figured out that the games aren't really being held for their glory, but for the enrichment and entertainment of the ruling class, and that the food, supplies and riches they are promised as a reward fail to materialize in the real world, leaving them poorer in the aftermath.

Although in this version, the host populations are the ones getting wise to getting hosed, and the Hunger Games are called the Olympics.

Researchers have known for years that hosting large sporting events like the Olympics always costs more than expected and always yields less revenue and useful long-term infrastructure than estimated. Now voters and politicians in democratically elected countries are starting to realize the same thing.

Potential host cities are dropping out of the bidding process for the 2022 Winter Olympics like crazy.
...
Bidding on the Olympics has been justified for years by one big economic lie: investing in hosting Olympic Games will lead to long-term economic growth.

It doesn't.

Once Norway drops out, it will be down to a single-party socialist state and an oil-rich state ruled by a president for life.

Xelebes · Jun 2, 2014

I think this factor played an understated role in the 2011 London and 2010 Vancouver riots and the Brazillian protests.

regdog · Jun 2, 2014

Who needs the Olympics. Gone are the days when the best amateur athletes had their chance for glory. It's nothing but another professional sports show.

robeiae · Jun 2, 2014

regdog said:
Who needs the Olympics. Gone are the days when the best amateur athletes had their chance for glory. It's nothing but another professional sports show.

Yep.

While there are all kinds of great Olympic moments involving professional athletes and what amounts to professional Olympic athletes, I've always thought that two new rules needed to be added for the Olympics, given the extensive dollars involved in sports and the number of people on the planet:

1) No professional players, period.

2) No repeat Olympic athletes, period. That means athletes are allowed to compete in just one set of Olympic games. Not only would this give others a a chance, it would also knock out a lot of the pseudo-amateur athletes.

jeffo · Jun 2, 2014

I'm with you both on the pro athletes. I remember when the rules stated that if you were a pro in ANYTHING you were not allowed in the Olympics.

Alessandra Kelley · Jun 2, 2014

I've been beating my head against the wall of publicly-funded sports stadiums for a long time.

There's a huge, echoing boondoggle of a sports stadium near the kids' cousins. We drive by it every time we go to visit them.

Nothing sucks the money and life out of a community like a sports complex.

Cyia · Jun 2, 2014

I always feel sorry for the "almost there" athletes when anything threatens to disrupt the Olympics. Most start training before they're old enough to decide to train; they grow up with the Olympics on their permanent calendar of future events. To get that close and have it taken off the table would be devastating.

Alessandra Kelley · Jun 2, 2014

Cyia said:
I always feel sorry for the "almost there" athletes when anything threatens to disrupt the Olympics. Most start training before they're old enough to decide to train; they grow up with the Olympics on their permanent calendar of future events. To get that close and have it taken off the table would be devastating.

I do sympathize.

And yet ... "Think of the poor athletes" always seems to be the excuse made to shore up all kinds of atrocities in the name of sports.

Remember people wanted to boycott the Russian olympics because of Russia's pogrom against homosexuals and its other horrific human rights abuses? And its Cossacks horsewhipping anyone who criticized Putin? And its corruption?

We were told we could not crush all those young athlete's dreams.

The Olympics went on. Russia and Putin got a big PR boost. It remains to be seen what, if any, use will be made of the huge showcase sports complex it built.

Less than a month later Russia invaded and annexed Crimea away from Ukraine. Oh, and Cossacks were horsewhipping people there too.

Remember when people wanted to boycott the Chinese Olympics because China is so horrific on human rights and was demolishing historic Beijing neighborhoods and buildings without compensation to create its Olympic complex and jailing anyone who questioned the construction?

We were told we could not crush all those young athlete's dreams. Also that if China got the Olympics it would magically get better on human rights violations.

The Olympics went on. China got a big PR boost (although in its zeal to imprison all dissenters it jailed even the architect of the Olympic stadium for questioning the government). It has -- surprise, surprise -- not gotten more humane under the influence of sports.

Much though I like and sympathize with young athletes, I believe they are being used as pawns and excuses to keep the sports juggernaut spending machine going.

patskywriter · Jun 2, 2014

Wow. I haven't watched the Olympics since I was a kid way back in the 1960s/70s. I sure wouldn't miss them if they disappeared. Come to think of it, almost everyone I know ignores it. Every now and then a personality/media darling like the young black gymnast, Gabby Douglas, will come along and draw people in.

BenPanced · Jun 2, 2014

The article that stuck out most in my mind during the last round of the Olympics was about the seven figure salaries and endorsement deals the brave amateur U.S. athletes were pulling in.

In between articles about Johnny Weir's hats.

But I haven't been a big supporter of the games since the IOC and the USOC selectively sued the organizers of the Gay Games, which were originally called the Gay Olympics, for their use of the word "olympic".

Zoombie · Jun 2, 2014

Alessandra Kelley said:
We were told we could not crush all those young athlete's dreams.

I was told that boycotting the Olympics doesn't work either way: The people who do go just win because they have no competition, and the nation-states continue to do their bullshit.

I mean, boycotting the last Moscow games didn't do a damn thing to stop the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

nighttimer · Jun 2, 2014

Every four years the Olympic committee, the television networks, corporate sponsors and monied elites allow the peasants of cities across the globe to fight for the privilege of going millions of dollars in debt building hotels, stadiums, swimming pools, and other limited usage venues for their amusement and entertainment.

The Olympics are a scam and have been for years. Nice to see some of suckers are waking up to this and choosing not to waste their scarce dollars on two weeks of synchronized swimming.

I propose the permanent home for the Olympics should be Detroit. As is. Don't build a damn thing.

That would be real entertainment. :popcorn:

Plot Device · Jun 2, 2014

My 8th grade history teacher said exactly this much to the entire class one day: build a million-dollar stadium that gets used for 6 weeks, and then watch it rot for 60 years.

Stupid stupid stupid.

I have never forgotten his stern dark assessment of the utter sham of the foolish dumb-ass cities who always scramble for the honor of going millions (and now billions) of dollars in debt, and then set up the next four generations of their children for a city full of white elephant hotels and stadiums.

Alessandra Kelley · Jun 2, 2014

Plot Device said:
My 8th grade history teacher said exactly this much to the entire class one day: build a million-dollar stadium that gets used for 6 weeks, and then watch it rot for 60 years.

Stupid stupid stupid.

I have never forgotten his stern dark assessment of the utter sham of the foolish dumb-ass cities who always scramble for the honor of going millions (and now billions) of dollars in debt, and then set up the next four generations of their children for a city full of white elephant hotels and stadiums.

The sad thing is if they had spent a hundredth of that on the local arts scene they would have gotten returns ... I think it was calculated seventeen times back on investment. Enough, anyhow, that even the conservative government of the UK supported funding the arts even during austerity.

The arts, whether in education or local communities, are a great investment. Showy sports events are a terrible one. But guess which one gets most of the funding.

Lillith1991 · Jun 2, 2014

Honestly, other than the fact a lot of the people in the Olympics are now pros, and the money issue. I really like the games.

If the hotels and stuff that went up for them were used after, to put the lost money back in the economy of whereever won the bid, then it would garner way more positive attention. The original spirit of the games has been severly tarnished.

Don · Jun 2, 2014

Alessandra Kelley said:
The sad thing is if they had spent a hundredth of that on the local arts scene they would have gotten returns ... I think it was calculated seventeen times back on investment. Enough, anyhow, that even the conservative government of the UK supported funding the arts even during austerity.

The arts, whether in education or local communities, are a great investment. Showy sports events are a terrible one. But guess which one gets most of the funding.

The arts are about self-expression, skill, creativity, individual vision, subjective value and voluntary cooperation.

Professionally they run the gamut from local art fairs, concerts, bars and community theatres to the finest art galleries, Nashville to Detroit, Broadway to Hollywood, a huge massive democratic marketplace spanning a spectrum of skill levels and forms of appreciation.

Sports are about competitiveness, teamwork, hierarchy, and obedience to the rulebook and its appointed arbiters. Value is objective, expressed most readily in scores, but also in other sharply-definable data sets, making it easy to declare winners and losers.

Professionally they are primarily practiced within a few well-connected and well-defined cartels, subsidized by taxpayers, spectator-centric, highly promoted and covered by the mass media and very lucrative to the various gatekeepers involved.

I'm shocked the arts get short shrift when it comes to oligarchy-dispensed funding. :sarcasm

Alessandra Kelley · Jun 2, 2014

Lillith1991 said:
If the hotels and stuff that went up for them were used after, to put the lost money back in the economy of whereever won the bid, then it would garner way more positive attention.

The problem is the hotels are usually clustered around the stadium complexes, convenient to the ghosts of the sporting events but rarely to anything else tourists might wish to see.

Sochi is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. How many giant hotels does it need? Apparently it's already a ghost town.

There are abandoned Olympics sites all over the world:

http://news.distractify.com/culture/sports/haunting-images-of-abandoned-olympic-venues/

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertai...ons-photos-of-abandoned-olympic-sites/261114/

http://www.weather.com/sports-rec/former-olympic-sites-decay-photos-20130718

http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=USRTR30UOB#a=1

These things are giant chimeras, promising infrastructure and throttling growth instead. How many thriving neighborhoods were bulldozed to build these monstrous monuments to physical fitness? How many schools went unfunded to pay for them? How many hospitals? How much art? How much of the sort of thing that actually attracts tourists once the athletes and the cameras are gone?

Zoombie · Jun 2, 2014

We should just build a reusable Olympic City on neutral ground somewhere.

Everyone chips in to refurbish it before the games, to cut the costs down.

And we'd have a city called OLYMPIC CITY somewhere!

Alessandra Kelley · Jun 2, 2014

Zoombie said:
We should just build a reusable Olympic City on neutral ground somewhere.

Everyone chips in to refurbish it before the games, to cut the costs down.

And we'd have a city called OLYMPIC CITY somewhere!

Everyone required to wear superhero outfits when they visit.

Don · Jun 2, 2014

Zoombie said:
We should just build a reusable Olympic City on neutral ground somewhere.

Everyone chips in to refurbish it before the games, to cut the costs down.

And we'd have a city called OLYMPIC CITY somewhere!

There's no neutral ground left on earth anywhere. Some country claims every square inch. Except for antarctica, I seem to remember. That would take care of the winter games, at least.

Zoombie · Jun 2, 2014

Neutral land exists...

UNDER THE OCEAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

robeiae · Jun 2, 2014

Don said:
There's no neutral ground left on earth anywhere.

Switzerland. Duh. We can use the Nazi gold in the Swiss banks to cover the costs.

Don · Jun 2, 2014

Zoombie said:
Neutral land exists...

UNDER THE OCEAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And in space. Perhaps a vast zero-gravity sports complex can be part of Agora City after we get the hotels and restaurants up and running.

Lillith1991 · Jun 2, 2014

Alessandra Kelley said:
The problem is the hotels are usually clustered around the stadium complexes, convenient to the ghosts of the sporting events but rarely to anything else tourists might wish to see.

Sochi is a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. How many giant hotels does it need? Apparently it's already a ghost town.

There are abandoned Olympics sites all over the world:

http://news.distractify.com/culture/sports/haunting-images-of-abandoned-olympic-venues/

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertai...ons-photos-of-abandoned-olympic-sites/261114/

http://www.weather.com/sports-rec/former-olympic-sites-decay-photos-20130718

http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?articleId=USRTR30UOB#a=1

These things are giant chimeras, promising infrastructure and throttling growth instead. How many thriving neighborhoods were bulldozed to build these monstrous monuments to physical fitness? How many schools went unfunded to pay for them? How many hospitals? How much art? How much of the sort of thing that actually attracts tourists once the athletes and the cameras are gone?

That doesn't sound like the fault of the hard working athletes who make it to the Olympics, it's the fault of nations that bid to host it. Just like it's not the fault of the people who do school sports that funding is cut first to the arts. It comes from people undervaluing the arts.

They could turn the stadiums around and use them as more than shrines to sports. The govs hosting could use the hotels to in productive ways, instead they don't. That doesn't mean sports are objectively bad or that no athletes are artists. It means our society needs a wake up call, needs to learn to value both. In middle school and High School I was a member of the art club, and I did track and field. Now, I weight lift for exercise, and I write stories and poetry. I learned to value both arts and sports equally because I was encouraged to. I was taught liking both is ok.

We don't need to get rid of things like this, what we need is to learn to intergrate these manufactured towns back into economies. To value both physical and artistic prowess equally.

Xelebes · Jun 2, 2014

Where in the thread were we hoisting the blame on the athletes?

No More Hunger Games?

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