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If the Olympics were permanently canceled, nothing of value would be lost.
(moist.catsweat.com)
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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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They all have their world championships already so they can already compete there (and I mean, that's exactly what a multitude of sports do in fact, hell, climbers weren't that happy about how the sport was added to the Olympics and some high ranking competitors just didn't bother even trying to go).
The environmental and socioeconomic impact of the Olympics make them something we really should consider at least making permanently held in a specific location.
The Olympics is a time to celebrate athletes in sports we don't follow every day.
I don't watch baseball, soccer, basketball, etc at the Olympics because they all get plenty of air time.
In the last week I watched water polo, gymnastics, breakdancing, volleyball, skateboarding, and more.
There's an event (modern pentathlon) that consists of pistol shooting, fencing, Horsemanship, running, and swimming. That's a fascinating mix of disciplines and there are people who train for decades to be good at it, and I think it's wonderful that they get their time in the spotlight every few years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Modern_Pentathlon_Championships
Again, just considering the environmental and socioeconomic impact of the Olympics should be enough to convince everyone that we need to stop hosting them or that we should host them in a fixed location with only the athletes going.
Homeless people get kicked out of cities and no one cares what happens to them. Billions in public funds are spent without a return on investment, very often to buy infrastructure that is then left to rot. The impact on the environment is incredibly high (this year's Olympics are evaluated to have released 1.5m tons of CO2 pretty much evenly split between traveling, construction and game operations).
If you think about all of that you then realize that the Olympics literally kill people and it's just another thing we're spending public funds on to enrich private corporations at the expense of the public's well-being.
We're not responsible enough to host that kind of events responsibly.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19406940.2023.2271487#abstract
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/economics-hosting-olympic-games
https://apnews.com/article/olympics-2024-explainer-086d71dfa93128a2c5a302cb47ec3524
Hmm, an interesting take. The Olympics, being an international multinational event, being in a singular location could cause political tension between countries. It would have to be on neutral land for such a thing to work. Maybe some of that unclaimed land In Africa?
Edit: messed up the formatting by accident.
That would mean a private company becoming the owner of land that isn't part of a country, would be kind of weird wouldn't it?
They're already registered in Switzerland so let them deal with it, countries should refuse to host them considering the cost and the fact that there's no return on investment in the end.
Swiss winter Olympics Greek summer Olympics
I mean that could work from my American perspective, I'm unsure about other parts of the world. Perhaps we shouldn't care about those sort of silly high school level drama between nations? I don't think I have enough understanding to know. But Switzerland is pretty so I'm down with it.