In the early 1990s a paddler named Eric Jackson was fast enough to make the U.S. Olympic team in whitewater slalom kayak. But he lacked funds to go.
So he dressed up in his full paddling outfit and brought his boat (4m long in those days) and paddle to a street corner in downtown DC. He set up a “meet an Olympian” sign and charged people cash to have their picture taken with him. Much hustle, very entrepreneurial of him, and he made a decent amount of money.
But he got into huge trouble with the U.S. Olympic establishment, and was almost dropped from that team. They said they were scandalized that he would dare to try to make personal money from his Olympic team status. It became clear to some that they were also mad he dared to demonstrate how poor many Olympic athletes actually were—by essentially begging on a street corner in a part of town full of prominent people.
Part of the reason he got into trouble was that the US Olympic committee started to pay for athletes' expenses to attend the Olympics in the 1980s (the underlying law itself, the Amateur Sports Act, passed in 1978)...so someone begging on the street would not have been doing so because they needed the money to go (in Eric's case, Barcelona 1992).
That being said, the USOC does not financially support most athletes outside of the Olympic window (meaning, from the time they depart for the host city until the time they return). This means that any activities outside of the Olympics are paid for by the athletes out-of-pocket (for most sports, this includes the Olympic Trials to qualify for the team!). Most athletes don't make money from their athletic endeavors as prize monies are usually quite small and sponsorship opportunities are usually very limited outside of the marquee sports. Generally, in the non-marquee sports (i.e., everything outside of swimming, track and field, and gymnastics), U.S. post-Olympic financial funding (i.e., salaried training) is limited to podium finishers, and many of the more niche sports further limit financial support to gold medal athletes.
[Somewhat related: The Boys in the Boat is a movie about the UW Rowing Team, which won gold at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. At the time, athletes and teams were generally expected to help pay for the costs of attending the Olympics by fundraising (but as with fundraising today, this meant they were on the hook for any shortfalls). In the movie, Cal writes the check for the final post-fundraising shortfall of $300 so the UW team could go; in real life Cal offered a donation but it wasn't needed.]
"You're on the team, but you have to fund your own trip to the Olympics to compete."
...
"No not like that!"
Never knew if it was real but I've seen on reddit several times that letter someone got from their employer chastising them for not owning a newer, nicer vehicle, since they were making good money at their job and it was "hurting the reputation of the business" that they were driving effectively a poor person's car. It feels far fetched but at the same time, also feels exactly like the irrelevant twaddle that a certain kind of upper management type would make his secretary write a letter about.
I remember reading, in the late '80s, a series of interviews with famous programmers in a Yugoslav computer magazine (I think it was 'Računari' - those were translations from some U.S. magazine). In one of the interviews, a programmer (whose name, for the life of me, I can’t recall or find on the internet) mentioned that his boss was embarrassed because he drove an old clunker to meet clients. His boss pressured him to buy something more suitable. So, this guy (the legend I guess) ends up buying an old Rolls Royce to ensure his boss couldn’t complain anymore, all while still not doing what was actually expected of him :)
Haha. Thank you for confirming. It certainly seemed familiar. Sometimes I worry that what we view as a cautionary tale about wealth (satire) is seen as a goal amongst the elite.
I wouldn't say goal as much as natural consequence. One of the pieces of media that sent me quite leftwards was a podcast called Behind the Bastard's episode on what the host, Robert Evans, calls "Elite Panic" and it's history intertwined through (and behind, heh) various disasters in our history, and specifically, how the wealthy cause and/or react to them in ways that are profoundly inhuman. Which is not to dehumanize them but quite the contrary, is a fairly clear (and frankly understudied) way that the accumulation of wealth screws with your mind.
It's funny, I drive a 22 year old car, by far the oldest at my workplace parking. I've been talking about getting a newer car but haven't been able to bring myself to spend 35K on one. It's running joke in the office, colleagues will ask if I've bought the new car yet every week.
I'm driving a car that's nearly as old and am in the same boat. Maintenance seems to be about $1500/year at this point. That seems to be a lot cheaper than a monthly payment on a new vehicle. Vehicle costs have just gotten out of control. I want something that safely gets me from point A to B with decent fuel economy. I don't care about much else. I could go buy a new car today, but I don't see the value. People seem to keep buying things like $100k trucks despite them being way outside of budget.
Being a former athlete (100/200 meters), the issue is that the top-tier sports (e.g., football, volleyball, basketball, etc.) capture the majority of money/value, and if you are from javelin throwing, fencing, or racewalking, unless you have a great sponsor, it will definitely require personal sacrifices to make it to the games.
In Brazil a very long time ago, there was a gigantic tug of war between the top-tier sports (especially volleyball and football) and the low-tier sports, and the issue is that from the prize pool, most went to the major sports. The partial solution for it was to incentivize the corporations to do the sponsorships, and the ones that made it got some tax benefits (sometimes in a 1:2).
Fencing as done now looks legit stupid, so does racewalking.
Javelin, while slightly more cool, is you throwing a stick. Mildly interesting for a few seconds.
Football is a top tier sport because it's entertaining. People will pay to see it. Hence there's money to be earned.
If someone wants to spend their time seeing how far they can throw a stick, cool, but they shouldn't be surprised they're waking up to an empty bank account every day.
I know where the argument comes from, but at an extreme watching football with 22 folks running behind a ball in a slow game where 97% of the time nothing happens in terms of scoring, and in terms of tactics, today sounds like a handball game; it's boring (and I say that as a Brazilian and having attended more than 100+ in the stadium and more than 600 on TV).
The entertainment in the Olympic games is in the fact that those folks (especially track and field) go to the extreme and human limit. In other words, for regular sports entertainment, I can go to watch Green Bay Packers vs. Vikings or Chelsea vs. Manchester City; for olympic entertainment (athletes pushing to their limits), Olympics are the place to watch.
What you say sounds logical, but it's nevertheless observably obviously wrong, and that's what's important.
All the figures bear out that people find football more entertaining than extreme feats. Maybe they like the slow pace and tension as it's more relatable to their own lives, or because the lulls in action allow some socializing or whatever.
Otherwise they'd spend their weekends watching hours of shark wrestling or whatever.
Or, hear me out, it's purely a cultural thing. Some communities are into hockey, wrestling, soccer, football etc. You could say the same thing about ski jumping, yet it's extremely popular in a few EU countries and pretty well funded. AFAIU barely anyone gave a shit about gymnastics in the US before Biles - if we have pipelines for young athletes to succeed, their sports can absolutely become regionally popular, sufficiently for them to be self sustainable through direct sponsorships.
Another example of this was chess with Bobby Fischer. Before Fischer there was minimal interest in chess on the US. But he caused a 3000%+ increase in membership of the US Chess Federation, to say nothing of casual players, and is largely responsible for the growth of chess in the US.
It can change really quickly too, with the top contenders coming from new countries. For example Polish population changed in 2001 from "what's skijumping?" to "skijumping is the new national sport" just because Adam Małysz won many medals and has a fun personality.
I think that popularity isn't random but comes from the region, and in those cases they are in fact paid well.
E.g. ice hockey in Canada, makes sense that people living in such a cold place are going to gravitate to such a sport.
EU countries - guessing those near the Alps right, not say Portugal? Biles - because it was their country winning. Outside of that they didn't care about the sport.
Likely just napkin math of “I watch about one game every week, that’s roughly 50 games per year, so over the course of 12 years i should be around 600 games”
Fencing is hard to follow because its fast and movements are subtle.
> If someone wants to spend their time seeing how far they can throw a stick, cool, but they shouldn't be surprised they're waking up to an empty bank account every day.
But if someone wants to see how well they can kick a ball its somehow worth paying them?
The biggest factor here is that team sports are brandable and build brand loyalty in a way individual sports cannot.
The criterium is "does it bring viewers" though, which is mostly objective. That a lot of people watch football games on TV and not a lot of people watch fencing is something that can be measured.
Many sports have lost and struggled to get an audience again, before suddenly booming. Like cricket in Australia going downhill, and then Big Bash and women's leagues reigniting.
What brings in viewers isn't a predictable measure of much. Like the weather forecast, you're not going to have much more than vague generalisations each season - and they can turn out very wrong.
If you seriously think that there is even a tiny chance of fencing ever continuously bringing in even half as much viewers as football, I don't know what to tell you. The uncertainty there is not weather report level, more like "the sun will rise tomorrow".
As a counterpoint, I bet if you had told people a thousand years ago that swordsmanship would be less interesting to people than kicking a ball, they would also think you were crazy.
Well if you extended it to "weaponsmanship" then that's still the case. People are fascinated by guns and bombs and other modern (or fantasy) weapons, which is why they show up copiously in movies.
Not a fencing example specifically, but in Poland skijumping effectively didn't exist until 2001. Then because of Adam Małysz, a record viewership has been established for national TV - during skijumping championships. That record has not been replaced until at least 2022 (I don't have more recent data, maybe it still stands). The largest football matches had millions fewer people watching. For more context the 10 most viewed events were: 4x skijump, pl-vs-rus football, 3x skijump, JP2 funeral, pl-vs-cze football.
It could happen to fencing as well or any other random sport with enough luck.
There are 6 football games with higher viewership than the 2002 Olympic ski jumping.
Also, viewers per year would be a better metric, one single event with a lot of viewer probably gives you less ad revenue than an event every week with half the viewers.
No, the biggest factor is that certain sports are more entertaining than others - even individual sports - and I'd pay to watch some but not others. I'd pay more to watch cyclists do the tour de france or tony hawk go on a half-pipe or Mike Tyson fight someone than someone do a long jump; it's just more fun!
Yeah there still wouldn't be much money in it, it's pretty niche, and would probably only grow the viewership slightly. But at least it wouldn't be dumb.
Yea I always thought it was a bit silly that the method for winning was charging at your opponent and stabbing them a hundredth of a second before they stab you. As a person who knows nothing about fencing besides watching it on TV at the olympics once I think they should change the rules where it's not who stabs who first, but who stabs the other without getting stabbed themselves.
Right, if you get stabbed you lose points, so the people who win both stabbed good and also didn't get stabbed. Whole dynamic of the sport would change and would actually look closer to in the movies.
That's all purely a social construct - e.g. almost nobody on the planet outside the US watches football (or Cricket in the UK/India, or ...). Football is a thing in the US because it is a thing in the US: You can bond with your peers around it. The objective technicalities of the sport itself have nothing to do with it.
How it's done at the Olympics is dumb, and pales in comparison in entertainment value to say HEMA fencing, where they actually wield the original weapons, rather than running at each other with goofy floppy wand sticks.
I’m biased because I’ve practiced fencing for a long time, but you keep saying it’s dumb without explaining why.
First of all, which weapon do you refer to? Foil, epee or saber? They look quite different.
Saber is very fast and might look as you say, both fencers jumping quickly to each other to get their right of way and score. Epee looks quite different, there’s no right of way and the score target is the whole body, so it tends to be slower. Foil is in the middle in terms of speed, and much more technical.
IMO the issue with fencing is not that it looks “dumb”, but that it’s not easy to understand what is happening without knowing the rules. And then things happen fast.
So a layman like me finds it instinctively dumb for the following reasons.
If I watch the hundred meter sprint, I kind of get it. They're aiming to run super fast. It's a relatable activity. See it in the movies. Would do it if a dog is chasing you. Swimming - crocodile chasing you.
Javelin, they're chucking a spear really far - not so useful now, but I get it. People used to do that to fight or hunt.
Others, like pole vault or weight lifting or gymnastics etc, have spectacle appeal.
Now we come to fencing. I see two guys with what look somewhat like swords. A bit floppier, but I get they're not going to a real sword. They face off apart from each other. They look poised.
All of this, so far, is not dumb. I get this. This is mimicking a sword fight. Like boxing is mimicking a fist fight. I feel suspense. I am ready to see this fight play out.
Then they rush into each other and stab and get stabbed as if the swords were pool noodles.
This is now clearly a dumb activity with no real world parallel, and there's also no spectacle since they're just poking or slapping each other with floppy little sticks. Not so entertaining.
Basically, unlike say boxing, there's a distinct lack of hurt. Fight sports must include hurt of some kind to not appear dumb.
My opinion is this could be rectified quite simply - raise the costs of getting hit, until the fight looks real. If a stab to the torso meant you're out of the competition, even if you stab them first, the whole thing would adjust immediately to stop looking dumb.
So they could restructure the point system until the behaviour of the contestants was clearly trying
to avoid getting stabbed (as if that were actually painful or deadly) while trying to stab the other person.
More substantial swords that spectators can actually see would help too. Make the saber actually a saber.
As a different layman, your objections seem ridiculous and might be summarised as “I would prefer to watch professional wrestling or a stage fighting demonstration in which the actors are trained to strongly emote the storyline of the action to the audience.”
Or, “I prefer sports which uninterested parties can easily understand.” Nothing you’ve said speaks to objective entertainment value.
They poke each other simultaneously with a barely visible "sword" and you only know who won if you know what the lights on the board mean.
Someone getting punched and falling down - immediately clear who's winning, makes sense. Ball gets kicked in a net - immediately clear, makes sense.
Common knowledge of sword fighting, albeit coming from movies, is: if you get stabbed by a sword, that's bad. You're not winning. And yet in fencing, they get stabbed and then some lights appear and they have "won" somehow.
What I personally prefer is only relevant to the extent you will feel better about your day if you believe you have beaten a stream of text on the internet. What matters is what's universally true, and obviously it's universally true that for spectators to enjoy watching something their ability to understand it is a factor.
As yet another layman, if they want to simulate a duel then they should make it first clean hit wins. Kind of like judo or boxing, where you do have points, but if someone lands a 'finishing' attack they win. Points only come in if no-one finishes the fight.
Well duh, that's a recurring theme between true performance sports and spectacle sports.
Top performance in Greco Roman wrestling is harder than in WWE. 10m rifle/pistol is harder than IPSC. Formula 1 is harder than monster truck races. Marathon is harder than wife-carrying, though for sure the opposites are much more spectacular.
I don't watch it either, tedious unless got skin in the result, but my tastes aren't the public's.
Would be great if they wound back all the dainty fouls stuff though. Bring back two leg slide tackles etc. But they did all that precisely because the sport got so popular - costs of multi million dollar players getting legs broken wasn't acceptible.
Go to a Sunday local game against two amateur teams where the only attendance is you and one of the player's uncle and you have to stay standing up next to the field while its pouring rain.
Then go to a fencing contest with 100+ people in attendance, music and a great speaker.
Now tell me which one looks more entertaining?
I used to think like you, until I watched big darts tournaments and curling with a great speaker.
It went from "uh, who watches darts? it's stupid!" to "quiet, I'm watching darts!".
That's also why, depending on the country, popular sports are not the same, because they developped a culture and know how to make it entertaining.
The local football team matches in my small town cause traffic jams. The local fencing contest doesn't exist. I have no idea why so many people in this thread are trying to deny obvious trends in relative popularity between sports.
Preference for specific sports is highly cultural.
Example: In China, table tennis is king.
Germany has the strongest table tennis league in Europe, and yet mainstream media mostly ignores it. Even the second and third soccer leagues get more media attention. If you ask me, most of soccer is very boring, players safely passing the ball back and forth, looking for openings. Somewhere between 0 and 5 goals in 90 minutes, if you see the 3 to 10 most interesting minutes, you haven't missed anything. How exciting /s.
If we care about Olympic games, and maybe even medal rankings, we'd do well to discard notions that some forms of sport being more or less interesting based on cultural and personal preferences.
I use in real life, albeit much less than on the internet because there are more costs to being a disagreeable prick in real life - so I have to say the same thing but ten times slower as I word it diplomatically.
No it doesn't make people like me but I get much more pleasure from disagreeing with and pushing against bad or wrongful things than being liked. Not saying that's good or bad, but that's how I am.
this is the same in sports in general. In almost every country, players from certain sports earn many times more what players in other sports make. I don't think there's any "fix" for this -- some sports will always be more popular than others, and those who play those particular sports will have more financial opportunities.
> the issue is that the top-tier sports (e.g., football, volleyball, basketball, etc.) capture the majority of money/value
This, I met the daughter of a colleague who was one of the UK Olympian rowers/crew and after I fed her and got her 2 drinks in she started telling me what her 'off-season' activities consisted of: her father as much as he tried could only afford to pay a fraction of her training costs and living expenses and they were well off land owners from Cornwall.
She basically got her Captains lisc and took the affluent people from the City on everything from booze cruises, to hen nights in the English channel to France etc...
The debauchery was obscene and made her witness some of the darkest aspects of humanity to pursue this dream she had, which was admirable in a way, but I knew that after a few years when she got really injured, or aged out or the money simply ran dry this would be her REAL life.
OF wasn't a thing back then, but I wonder if given the choice she would prefer the choice of uploading anon sexy feet pics or babysitting people go into drunk or coke fueled stupors where she is psychically restraining people from falling into the water while heavily intoxicated causing her to lose her license, or livelihood or at best increase her insurance rates.
Then again OF has the same problem where the top talent takes <90% of the money, and those are often managed and curated by agencies which have been dubbed the E-pimps of OF [0].
Honestly it is the first time I read volleyball mentioned as a top-tier sport. This must be a regional thing because in most countries volleyball is totally anonymous.
Team sports always matter more because every player on the roster gets a medal. Exact rules vary between sports, but winning a volleyball tournament = winning 12 gold medals, not just one. That's what makes it a top tier sport.
There are even more fringe ones which aren't particularly important under any other circumstances, but matter a lot in the Olympics: water polo (13 players), field hockey (16 players), synchronised swimming (8-10 players) etc.
I don't think it's quite that limited. Basketball is pretty much worldwide, so is tennis (and golf, up to a point at least). Cricket is played in a minority of countries, but those countries are scattered across the world so it's not exactly "regional".
Is it played worldwide? Sure, but so is volleyball. It's certainly not a culturally significant sport everywhere. I think my country has a basketball league, but I don't know literally anything about it. The only player I can recall the name of is Michael Jordan.
> is tennis (and golf, up to a point at least)
Both are sports for rich (countries) only. How many tennis players you know are from Africa?
> Cricket is played in a minority of countries, but those countries are scattered across the world so it's not exactly "regional".
You can think of the Commonwealth as a "logical region". Cricket is popular only in a couple of countries with common history.
> Both are sports for rich (countries) only. How many tennis players you know are from Africa?
I don't think this matter.
Most people have ever heard of at least one of the grand slam Tennis tournament that happens every year: Wimbledon, US Open, Rolland Garros or Australian Open. Same for Golf, in my case I can name the British and US Open. In cycling, most people not even interested in it can name the Tour de France. Everyone knows the NBA basketball league, the Soccer World Cup and a number of majors teams from the UEFA and/or their own continent.
Volleyball? I don't think there is any major tournament broadcasted and advertised all over the world. You only really hear about it during olympics alongside a number of other collective and individual sports.
It's fine when Sports Illustrated does it- that's a legitimate publication that will subtly hide the most interesting bits and retain all the money from advertising and sales.
When an athlete does it directly and retains the money themselves, that's a disgrace.
> When an athlete does it directly and retains the money themselves, that's a disgrace.
I'm not getting the feeling that the article is trying to say it's a disgrace, but it's aimed at that it's a disgrace that the executives are getting all the money while the athletes sees basically none of that.
Reading around, it seems like the common opinion on it, but like everyone else, I too have somewhat of a bubble so might look different in other mainstream outlets I suppose.
Athletes seem to appear in Playboy fairly often. eg Dutch skater Joy Beune was in the December 2024 issue ( in Dutch Playboy and possibly other countries )
20yr ago they were all stripping for all of the same reasons but that was easier to keep on the down low because some journalist couldn't see and contact a dozen of them from their desk and many employers didn't even know who these people were.
It really is a no brainer when you consider the investment they have to make in their bodies.
A lot of sports make quite a bit of money. The problem is the facilities costs. You're spending a lot of money on a specialized building with specialized equipment. Larger markets with more money raise costs even further by raising both athlete and audience expectations with ever more luxurious features, meaning the smaller markets with smaller audiences are compared to them. The facilities operators thus get the majority of sponsorship money as they force themselves into having the largest costs, leaving less money for other aspects like athlete pay and feeder leagues.
Some sports overcome this by forcing the team operators to also be the facilities operators, such as the NFL, but for many others like SailGP the athletes and teams are directly competing with the venues for some of the sponsorship money. And on top of that the different sports are competing with eachother for who gets what sponsorship, as some sports or sponsors have forced exclusivity contracts, such as Pepsi had with Hendrick Motorsports in NASCAR or Mastercard had with FIFA.
And sometimes the sanctioning body responsible for the sport itself is just taking in the majority of the money and leaving the actual individual costs to the venues, teams, and athletes without ever supporting them centrally. F1, FIFA, and the NCAA did that for years.
There's plenty of money, it's just that it's not being spread around appropriately. The worst part is that it doesn't even have to be evenly for the sport and athletes to thrive, just appropriately.
The only people who make it to Olympic level (other than for very small countries) are people with the willingness to do anything it takes. If your sport isn't your top priority in your life, your place will be taken by someone for whom it is.
I was there six months in Dubai consulting for Al-Futtaim and quickly realized that female athletes are now doing way more than stripping and taking pictures.
The high level escort services use business jets to move good looking people into and out of Dubai. They must get paid a lot when it costs $5,000 and $8,000 per hour to move them around. Eastern European athletes are over-represented but there are many westerners as well.
Dubai is the Vegas for ultra rich "What happens in Dubai stays in Dubai."
This is the reality of building your life around sport—-there’s basically no money in it unless you’re on the extreme edge. I wish people would stop dumping their entire life’s energy into chasing it—-do something more useful like stamping parts out in a factory. Olympic athletes are stunningly focused achievers—I’d love to see that energy and drive applied to something that mattered.
Define "something that mattered", because over half the stuff posted on hackernews is a complete waste of time and effort if your only real metric is profitability. The vast majority of "hacking" in general is of negative financial value.
Right but GP’s comment would apply if someone posted a complaint about “why is no one paying me a salary to build an ESP32 thermometer that tickles my feet when it gets below 80 outside?”
And then cries of disgust and demands of professional services 24/7 for free because someone found a bug in your hobby project which turned out to be useful for some megacorp or VC funded startup.
Careful. Trying to detach profitability from utility and necessity, nevermind any higher level ethical or philosophical questions, may get you strung up around here.
You're entirely correct. However, most people on Hacker News are also making decent money on the side with their main job.
This is not the case for most Olympians, because even for sports that are not attracting large amounts of visitors and viewers and therefore sponsorships, you still basically need to dedicate your life to it.
You don't need to dedicate your life to writing code unless you are working for an early-stage startup or Elon Musk. So you have spare time which you can use to write code.
I'm a former professional athlete in a marginalized sports. Sadly never made it to Olympia. I learned that energy and drive by doing my sport, and I wasn't "born" with it (well, maybe with the genes, but it's something one has to learn IMHO). I think I am now what I am thanks to doing sports for more than 5 year as my main activity (in terms of invested time) and maybe 10 years as secondary activity.
Money was always tight, and I was happy to leave my sport with a "black zero" on my bank account. I never did it for the money, but I'm happy to not ran into bankrupcty just for my dream. And that's what I hope is the minimum for every athlete.
I'm an absolute middling athlete. In my 40s. Half a life spent at a desk. And then I picked up a bit of running/cycling as one does. And joined a local club, and became absolutely inspired by the people of all ages at the club entering competitions, doing big feats of endurance. Just for the love of the sport, or the thrill of achieving something difficult.
I'm still a middling athlete but now one that makes sure to fit in a bit of exercise each week and continues to make solid progress. So even if you haven't won any medals, you've likely inspired someone into making changes for the better.
I assure you this motivation does not exist in a vacuum, and many will quite rightly find achievement more important than generating capital for someone else.
Is it equally dystopian if you consider that “be productive for the economy” is shorthand for and quite closely related to “do something of value for your fellow community members?”
(Yes obviously there are extreme and very visible edge cases, but 99.999% of things normal people get paid to do is something valuable for their neighbor)
Are athletes are working themselves to injury for the sake of improving the lives of the people around them? I do not see this. Athletes are competing for themselves: for fame, money and to feed their egos.
I do not see the virtue in athletics given that being an entertainer, and being powerful and fit are intrinsically rewarding enough. I'd much rather we were funding musicians and artists, but only a fraction of funding goes to these in comparison to the behemoth that is sports.
Athletes serve as aspirational figures that drive interest towards sports that keep people healthy. There is an ugly skinny-fat / fat-fat hatred of sports born from post-war folklore about jocks and nerds.
Consider the counterfactual. In order for it to be true that many people are paid for work that isn't valuable, it'd have to be true that many people are willingly parting with their money for no reason at all.
That does happen, of course, and it's so special we think highly of people when they do it (it's called charity).
Just because people can't reason about the transmission of value throughout a complex economy doesn't mean it's not happening. In fact that's the beauty of currency and market economies: it doesn't need to be comprehensible to anyone outside of the transaction.
There are many cases of market failure and inefficiencies, rentiers, useless 'BS jobs' and unchecked monopolies in a market economy. Why would the people criticizing it be wrong? It's not like it's rare.
A landlord or a holder of IP can and will arrange deals that have negative value for society because of the fact it attracts monetary value for them.
A client paying for a service, is this done 'willingly' when it is needed and no other choice exists? If someone wants to compete, can they navigate the moats companies are so fond of?
I think the concept of BS jobs is BS. That's because the fulfillment people get from jobs isn't tied to the value the economic value they provide to the firm or even the social value they may or may not provide. Some people may hate teaching because they feel it is soul crushing to them (especially if they are not supported and the school isn't in good shape) despite it being socially useful someone else may enjoy being an elderly greeter because it lets them continue working and they may feel they are providing some social value even if most people don't care another person may be happy working at the shrinkwrap factory because it provides money for their family
This is irrelevant, I'm not talking about GDP. I'm saying that people generally don't pay money for things they don't value, ergo when people are paid money, it's for things that other people value.
Right... and GDP being a bad metric (for most decisions) doesn't have any relevance to the discussion. It doesn't imply anything about the thing it measures.
By analogy, good engines produce power. A speedometer measures the engine's power under a set of conditions. However, a speedometer is not (by itself) a good way to measure an engine because there are other factors you care about. The fact that a speedometer is a bad measure of engine power does not mean that engine power is unimportant or bad.
If I said, "high max speed means good engine," or "high GDP means economy is working well," your comment would be relevant.
I did not say that. I said "the overwhelming majority of transactions in an economy are of mutual benefit to the transactors."
Being of mutual benefit to the transactors is not the same as being of value for your neighbor. A transaction being mutually beneficial to the transactors is neither necessary nor sufficient for the transaction to be generating value.
Consider FooCorp paying an advertiser to convince people to buy its gizmos rather than the market leader Bar Inc.'s widgets. This is then followed by Bar Inc. paying the same advertiser to convince the same people to go back to buying widgets again. Each transaction is to the benefit of both the advertiser and the respective manufacturer, but taken together leaves the world in the same state as it was to begin with. No value was created. In fact, value was destroyed (the opportunity cost of labor by the advertiser).
An example of a transaction that is not to the mutual benefit of the transactors, yet increases value is the levying of fines against behavior which has externalized costs greater than their internalized gains. The fine is not to the benefit of the party it is levied against, but the effect of deterring negative-total-value behavior is equivalent to creating value.
I'm not convinced >99% of people's jobs are of the value-creating kind but it's certainly well above 50%. Several of the largest companies in our industry are arguably of the negative value kind. Insurance companies that accept premiums but deny legitimate claims certainly are.
The word valuable is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. I don't personally consider the legions of people working in filling my eyeballs with advertisement valuable, but it certainly makes a lot of money.
A lot of things that your neighbor may like are still net negative (see the ongoing climate catastrophe and think about fossils production, air travel, etc).
Ridiculous. Life is not about getting the most money. You can’t eat money, doesn’t matter how much you have. Someone, somewhere has to do work that makes less money for some other gain so that you can eat what you do.
By that standard if survival means that we have to return to child sacrifice or something else so heinous then I guess engaging in anything but is also privileged.
These people are pursuing the survival of their souls. If you lose that, you cannot regain it. And time is not an athlete’s friend. You can always make money. It’s not going anywhere.
You clearly come from a country without a social safety net. Most people never make it to the olympics much less professional sports. So all the people who don't make it die? No they transition into other industries.Trying and failing is much better than never trying at all. Long live the dreamers and artists.
> I’d love to see that energy and drive applied to something that mattered.
>> I'd love to see that energy and drive rewarded and respected by society like self-actualization mattered, not just the next paycheck.
FTFY.
Let's not be condescending to athletic pursuit. Is that drive and passion really any different to the fuel of many a start-up hustler who, when their funding ran out, didn't really manage to change the world, with neither disruptive business model nor novel technical developments to show for it? Are they really so different from publish-or-perish academics toiling on some obscure edge of human knowledge which is more likely to either be a dead end or a small brick on which a cathedral of a grand discovery will be built upon rather than being THE paradigm-shifting, theory-unifying, revolutionary thesis?
Let's not be condescending to athletic pursuit because it's "just" entertainment. For a lot of people that struggle for faster, higher, stronger is inspiration, just as the early days of AirBnB/Facebook/Google is spoken of in hallowed tones in all-hands meetings, start-up mixers, and conferences, as motivation. Yeah, the ethics of the hustle might be questionable but fact of the matter is, at the end of the day, we all need heroes to look up to to some extent.
If code can be poetry then surely so can a gutsy maneuver, a clever tactic, or a sonofabitching Hail Mary of an opportunistic play. Sports---just as science, math, business, or literature---are narratives of struggle, human ingenuity, and achievement.
> Olympic athletes are stunningly focused achievers—I’d love to see that energy and drive applied to something that mattered.
Some of their focus comes from just being naturally talented at their activity. I am really focused on coding, b/c I have a natural affinity to working with computers, but that doesn't mean I can focus on gymnastics.
People often like what they are good at, true, but people become good at things through work and practice. I am tired of the general attitude that somebody will either like something or dislike it after they give it a little try, when pretty much any performance art, be it programming, playing sport, drawing or learning an instrument comes front-loaded with hundreds of hours of practice before somebody can get good enough at it to properly enjoy it.
Sports is entertainment. It inspires people and brings joy. It brings people together. It sets positive examples of the rewards that can come from consistent effort and teamwork. Athletes are people making the most of the gifts they’ve been given. This is all laudable.
To me there's something more than just entertainment in the idea of sport, of finding the limits of the human body and will. It's almost like art—it's evidence of human flourishing and it should appear as one of the final products of a successful society.
It certainly shows how much more rewarding it is to work for the IOC, a government, or a corporation than it is to be an Olympian. It shows that being genetically gifted is the primary metric of success in sports (I don't care how hard you work, you aren't ever out-swimming Michael Phelps), and a lot of things bring people together that don't cost $10 billion, most of which is funneled into a bunch of hidden pockets.
That can certainly be the case, although usually I find that athletes are not the kind of people who should be considered inspirational.
But on the other hand, if you were to go watch a launch from SpaceX, You will find that there's already a crowd being inspired, experiencing joy, and it absolutely brings people together. So why not work more on that and less on sports?
>But on the other hand, if you were to go watch a launch from SpaceX, You will find that there's already a crowd being inspired, experiencing joy, and it absolutely brings people together. So why not work more on that and less on sports?
You go find me a Space X launch in some of the countries that produce, say, top footballers. In those countries, then go find me a robust educational infrastructure. You won't find the educational resources for one to become a top aerospace engineer or astrophysicist in say, Ghana or Mali.
Sports are popular because enjoying them either by playing or watching doesn't require a ton of brain power.
Let people enjoy what they want, who are you (or I) to judge?
If you don't put in the energy and drive, someone else will and someone else will be good enough to make money of their drive and energy.
It's although very hard to just find something else, that gives you the same satisfaction as your favourite "past-time" - the only job that is as good as doing sport, is sport as a job.
Is this meant to be sarcasm? If we're comparing only stamping parts in a factory vs. pushing the human body to its limits, you probably ain't gonna make money in either. But one of them is going to be a far more satisfying way to live for the soul. We can talk about other things that matter, but there's probably less of that out there than you might think.
I think the point was pretty simple: there's no reason that pursuing your Olympic dreams would be a way to make money. So feed your soul, but unless you come to it with money, be prepared to find another way to feed your wallet.
>If we're comparing only stamping parts in a factory vs. pushing the human body to its limits, you probably ain't gonna make money in either. But one of them is going to be a far more satisfying way to live for the soul.
You can't eat "more satisfying way to live for the soul", and if you can't convince people to sponsor your endeavors, then you'll have to get a job that produce goods/services people are willing to pay for, like most other people.
Most stuff that "matters" or is "useful" also pays next to nothing, or has been outsourced to China if you happen to live in the West. There's nothing useful to do for most of today's workforce in post-industrial societies, except things like nursing which are severely underpaid.
Huh? Unemployment is low and median wages are up. Nursing might not be the highest paying job but they earn a median wage of $86k which is pretty good in most areas.
Are you per chance stamping parts out in a factory?
The Soviet Union used to give the award "Hero of Socialist Labour" to top performers in the labour force, and public spaces everywhere had billboards celebrating local labour performers.
Could you name any top labourer in your region, your country or the world? Any certain factory worker that comes to mind?
Like, if your hobby is throwing a disc as far as you can, have fun. But don't expect many people to pay to watch right?
But people pay a whole lot to see nice bodies doing sexual stuff. So since money comes from what other people value, no need for a surprised Pikachu face.
> But don't expect many people to pay to watch right?
Why did you ignore the fact from the article that people do pay to watch (it's one of the most watched events in the world) it's just that that money doesn't reach the athletes? Not sure which pokemon represents that
A quick Google search suggests that the Olympics feature about 10k athletes in summer games and 3k in winter games - 2-3 orders of magnitude more than the typical 20-30 players on staff at a soccer club. I wouldn't be surprised if the wage gap was even more crass than those numbers suggest, but it shows that major spectator sports are an entirely different game.
That's less to do with people paying to watch someone throw a disc as far as they can, and more to do with corporations understanding that putting the Olympic logo on a shirt increases sales.
> athletes can participate in other competitions besides the Olympics
They can, but almost none of them are even remotely as popular as the Olympics. The only exceptions are in massive sports (football, in the US american football, hockey, basketball; in countries like India cricket; tennis, F1). For every other sport, the Olympics are the pinnacle and nothing is even remotely comparable.
It's not a great business model as an athlete though is it now? Not really going to build up a following when you do it once every 4 years, or maybe only once. And unless you're in a prestigious event like the 100m sprint you're closer to a clown entertainment role wise, swinging your ball on a string or whatever.
Sure, an actual clown will get paid a tad better than zero by their circus, but they don't have the upside of a potential lucrative clown shoe sponsorship deal if they win.
TL;DR: these athletes knew the deal before they went in, and shouldn't act victim when they have to show their butts on only fans because their gamble didn't land.
Where is anybody "acting" victim? Isn't choosing to open an OnlyFans and posting on it to make rent and travel money the opposite of playing victim since they're taking agency over their situation?
- Is your hobby "to create software"? Then you should not be paid for it.
- Do you like to help peolpe? Then you should not be paid for being a doctor.
- etc.
Who should earn all the money then? The owners of the TV stations, the owners of the hospitals, basically the people that does nothing and just own things. What a dystopia of a world are we creating.
Creating software is an economically profitable activity that many people are willing to pay top dollar for. Throwing a disc really far by hand, not so much.
That said, the "hobby" angle is irrelevant here. As the article points out, the IOC makes an absolute fuckton of money from Olympic broadcast rights and sponsors, essentially none of which flows back to the actual athletes.
> As the article points out, the IOC makes an absolute fuckton of money from Olympic broadcast rights and sponsors, essentially none of which flows back to the actual athletes.
A lot of it flows back into the Olympic Committees of each country, who are in charge of spreading it, investing into infrastructure, youth development, etc.
Ok then why don't they get paid a living wage by the countries they are representing? Wouldn't representing a country be a government job?
Otherwise they are private workers/entrepreneurs and as such should be paid by what their customers feel like they're worth. Creating software can be an unpaid hobby, a government job, a private job, or a personal business.
If it became a government job, then they wouldn't be able to get rid of the athletes when they're too old to perform. The solution of course is to distribute gold medals and awards according to age and experience rather than athletic performance.
Yes, but people connected to Olympic want to be independent from governments. In some way Olympians Games are private tournaments which are sponsored by host countries.
It is funny that "Olympians" representing my country when they demands public money, but are independent from government when we are talking about organization of National Olympic Committee.
I represented my country in cycle ball as well. The thing is that nobody is really interested in that, similar to how nobody is interested in people throwing discs as far as possible. Just because you represent a country, it’s not necessarily interesting and people don’t have to get paid for it.
The people doing the jobs that no-one wants to do. The garbagemen, the plumbers, the cleaners. And/or the people who do stuff that other people value, that people will pay to have it done well rather than badly.
If you're doing something fun, something that other people would very happily do for free, then yeah you shouldn't feel entitled to get paid for it. If you're good at your hobby and people care about it, they might pay you to do it (and I'd absolutely count software development among that), but that's up to them.
Maybe. But they don't represent the people in their countries. Paying them is not a matter of taxation, I don't care about watching sports (but I do sports) and I never watch, I don't see myself represented in any way and I am not willing to pay for the "honor" or being "represented". In the end the article is about money: who should pay, why, how much? Not the tax payer.
A few years ago, I remember when the Olympics was hosted in Vancouver, BC. The news reported that an insane amount of free condoms was distributed to the athletes. Some lower level athletes were interviewed, and they said they knew they had zero chance of a medal, but were having the time of their lives.
This always gets the pearl-clutchers out of the woodwork - you're gathering a few hundred of the world's fittest people in peak performance mode in the same place for a few weeks, giving most of them a huge amount of downtime, what do you THINK is going to happen? (This is the general 'you', not YOU)
Providing free access to make sure things are happening safely is not what's 'encouraging the behaviour' here :D
People travel around the world and pay a lot to see a small handful of big-name sports. The long tail of olympic events is watched mostly by people who came for the big-name sports (or lived there already) and figured they might as well catch something else while they were in town.
Well the IOC makes an enormous amount of money that has to come from somewhere. That is a reflection of the demand. Tickets are extremely expensive and the deals for live broadcast also involve huge amounts of money, which broadcasters wouldn't pay if they didn't think many would watch. The point of this article is simply that a bigger fraction of that money should go to the athletes. They are prevented in various ways from bargaining collectively.
These days I start to think (US) college sports, as bad as they are for many reasons, are much better than the Olympics, in the sense that at least athletes don't need to worry about being able to afford the training.
I mean... Yes okay. But is this the world you prefer? Wouldn't it be nice if we could both tell children to be the best they could be at something, to strive for greatness... And then also supported them when they did? Or would you rather reduce humanity to the cold calculus of capitalism?
Yes, I prefer it this way. Children can be the best they can be at something, and have that thing generate no value to anybody else around them. No need to subsidize it.
People very much do care about the olympics… once every 4 years. There is clearly value generated by throwing a disk around, and it’s not being distributed well.
They do care for a few seconds on average per viewer… so that small amount of value is making its way to the athlete.
It’s just a fraction of a cent per viewer. So even with hundreds of millions of viewers it’s still barely a hundred thousand dollars to be split up between all disk throwers.
Let's be real here the value comes from someone winning a medal for their country. I don't think a single person in the Netherlands gives a shit about fencing or kayaking but if a Dutch boy/girl ends up on the podium it's broadcast live.
Do they? I can't name a single disc thrower, sabre-master, parallel bar gripper, judo person, or thing-shooter.
Every once in a while a Turkish guy shooting with no equipment becomes a meme, or the greatest swimmer or runner in the history of the world comes onto the scene. Newsmedia goes nuts because this sells advertising.
But then a southern girl in a 5-second viral video does 100x of that in notoriety, with no travel budget and for the production cost of a single Big Mac.
Clearly they do or NBC wouldn't pay approximately eleventy quadtrillion dollars every time the contract is up to renew. NBC makes billions on the Olympics though running advertising and advertisers are willing to pay NBC's rates therefore at least enough people care for NBC to profit massively.
Except NBC barely broadcasts any sports other than swimming, gymnastics, and track and field (summer). If you’re good at one of those you’re probably good financially as well. If you’re a decent shot..putter?
Nobody particularly cares, other than other people in the sport. The only reason they might show you is if you win a medal for the US.
Advertisers might be paying due to historical inertia and the need to compete with other advertisers during these times. And NBC rakes in the money just like Google does from local pest control companies who pay $10+ per click.
They don't want to pay that much, they may not really profit from paying that much, but they can't let their competitors take the customer for free.
Maybe there should be some ethical consideration of a culture of prizing American/German/Chinese/Russian mostly semi-pro and literally pro athletes stomping mostly real amateurs from the rest of the world in the olympiad.
They could all save a lot of money and it would probably be more interesting to watch.
Children can be the best they can be at something, and have that thing generate no value to anybody else around them
Except that the IOC generate billions in revenue so there obviously is value to a lot of people in it somewhere. The problem as stated is that the root source of that value, ie the athletes, see very little of that revenue.
> the IOC generate billions in revenue so there obviously is value to a lot of people in it somewhere.
There's value in the Olympics, sure, but that value is concentrated in a handful of big-name sports. The smaller ones come along for the ride rather than generating value themselves.
You're correct. But throwing a disc may be fun activity, but by no means is it a mark of "greatness." If a pro sport can't entertain, IMO it's a waste of time and contributes little to humanity. I would be happier if people celebrate wins in science.
Yeah but I'm not going to tell them throwing a disc is greatness, and I'm not going to tell them to make up the gap between what they think an activity is worth and what society thinks it's worth by becoming a whiner. That'd be abuse.
Support is a two way street, and I'd rather kids grow up to be strong and able to be those supporters of others than end up a depressed lonely loser, when they could've been happy instead, because they pissed their efforts on some trivia.
I found your capitalism quip particularly amusing. I know it's just a parroting of programming from your university days, but I'm sure there's someone in a labour camp in North Korea who'd crack at least a brief smile at the idea of a poor downtrodden Olympian proletarian spending all day practicing throwing a stick because it's their passion.
Information asymmetry has never played such a large role in income inequality as it does today.
I’m really hoping people are empowered to use these artificial intelligence systems to level the playing field. No idea what the likelihood of this is to happening though.
you mean like the people capturing most of the value generated by labor (shareholders) are not the people actually producing the value through their labor (workers)?
Funny how "not getting paid" went from being a requirement [1] to being a scandal.
Maybe, the government could make an agency that will employ them all and pay them a wage. Of course, it would only be fair that, if all the downside is taken up by the agency, then it will also get all the upside. Meaning: If any agency athlete starts raking in millions in sponsorship deals, then those millions will go to the agency, and the athlete will keep getting no more than their salary.
Or is "privatize profits, socialize losses" the place where entitlement culture is actually at, right now?
Expenses could be orders of magnitude more than an individual's fulltime salary. Just think of the equestrian disciplines, for example, where it's pretty obvious that being independently wealthy with millions to spend on your campaign with zero hope of making that money back is just what it takes to participate. You're spending those millions and devoting your life to athletics, in preference to any pursuit that's actually, you know, productive, to compete with other similarly-positioned people for what, within the circles you travel in, passes as the ultimate status symbol.
Even as things currently are, it absolutely infuriates me, that my money is taken from me involuntarily (as an involuntary license payer for public broadcasting in Germany) and given to the IOC to line the pockets of corrupt officials and further aims that I disapprove of, like overtourism and everything that surrounds the building of an olympic village etc. Every single cent's worth of transfer from my pocket to Isabel Werth's is just adding insult to injury.
They all have a free choice about whether to be an Olympian or to take a more lucrative career path. It was obvious to me even as a kid that the chances of making money as an Olympian is about as probable as making money as a singer in a rock and roll band.
I.e. a thoroughly impractical career choice.
Even worse, no matter how good you are, a random injury or getting the flu at the wrong moment will destroy your chances.
> They all have a free choice about whether to be an Olympian or to take a more lucrative career path.
Not everyone is born capable of being an Olympic athlete and the career path of being one alongside associated opportunity costs is chosen long before the person can consciously and rationally make decisions about themselves. Also, not everyone is as bright as a kid as you.
I don’t have a solution for those kids but I know telling them they shouldn’t have chosen to be athletes is missing the point you yourself bring up - which is, their parents made those decisions for them. Humans are not rational economic actors.
> Criticizing a system built mostly on government handouts
This was not what I was criticising. It was about turning someone’s life into entertainment and, in this extreme GoFundMe example, the right to life becoming a function of how entertaining one is.
> (by definition a socialist or communist structure)
Socialism and communism are not about government handouts. Both are about controlling the means of production (industries, farms) by the people (implying democratic representation). You might correctly argue that the Soviet Union was not a shining beacon of how to implement it, and this is what details almost every discussion on the subject.
There isn't any mention of socialism, or anything related to it in your link.
It sounds like a classic balance of payments issue (importing too much compared to exports/tourism/other revenues) being hit with an exploding in price critical import (oil). Sri Lanka had the same issues just a few years back, was it "socialism" too?
What a shittily written article, staining the Adam Smith name.
Nationalising a bunch of critical industries isn't "socialism" and the article utterly fails to explain how it is or why it's related. Historical UK, and modern France, Russia, UAE, Saudi Arabia also had multiple crucial industries which were fully nationally owned. Were they socialist too?
Private companies needed to obtain license [0] from the govt to start or to expand.
Some companies were even prosecuted for producing more than what was allowed. This was at least Nehru's (first Prime Minister) version of Democratic Socialism.
That's still not what socialism means. Absurdly tight government control over the economy, and the existence of a private market economy, doesn't mean that workers owned the means of production.
> Criticizing a system built mostly on government handouts (by definition a socialist or communist structure) as being a late-stage capitalism problem shows you’ve got no clue what these terms actually mean.
That's just the capitalists outright purchasing the legislators, so Walmart can employ people at minimum wage and let the taxpayers foot the bill for their healthcare and food stamps.
>so Walmart can employ people at minimum wage and let the taxpayers foot the bill for their healthcare and food stamps.
Do those people magically start needing food and healthcare once they're employed by walmart? Why is it suddenly walmarts problem the moment they become a walmart employee? Would anyone stakeholder in this situation (the employees, society, walmart) be better off if the employee was no longer employed?
I think the argument is that their labour is being subsidised which amounts to a benefit for BigSam.
If we had a USB or negative income tax system then that benefit would be clearly spread across the whole population evenly but instead the stamp system has many rules and restrictions that allow Walmart to strategically benefit by both positioning the role at just the right amount to qualify for the benefit (but no more) and frustratingly by being the vendor honouring the stamps.
>I think the argument is that their labour is being subsidised which amounts to a benefit for BigSam.
Ironically negative income taxes are closer to a labor "subsidy", than food stamps, because they're contingent on income (ie. labor), unlike food stamps which don't give you more money if you make more.
In that case, we’re not in a capitalist system at all, but a capitalist-socialist hybrid. Arguably, we’ve been in the hybrid since the New Deal, and it seems to have inherited the same socialism issues China is also grappling with.
One third of all donations on GoFundMe are for medical expenses. [1] the very vast majority of that must be Americans.
I’m staggered how many Americans are steadfastly against socialized healthcare for all, but immediately turn to GoFundMe in desperation when their insurance tells them to take a hike.
> in desperation when their insurance tells them to take a hike.
Socialized healthcare is good because it doesn't mean you're tied to a job or worried about in/out network hospitals. But, care would still be rationed as it doesn't magically provide us with infinite resources.
I just like to point this out since there are very good arguments for socialized care in the US, but this isn't one of them.
But it is much, much better that what the US has now. Every other developed country spends vastly less and gets much better health outcomes. [1]
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Adopt socialized healthcare now, even though it is imperfect, and then work on improving it as time goes on. That is the path to making stuff better.
It isn't a case of perfect being the enemy of good, it is that you're looking at what might potentially be the most corrupt, captured and incapable healthcare regulator in the modern world and advocating that they get even more power. That seems like a bad strategy. The US healthcare system won't be fixed by dissociating patients from the process even further.
The obvious thing to do is move power away from the regulator and make it easier for consumers to pay directly for treatment. It works for almost everything else.
It's not unreasonable to argue for socialized healthcare based on treatment denials in private healthcare, since there are impactful differences in the incentives driving denials and rationing in private vs socialized healthcare. I agree that the argument should be more nuanced than just "denials happen".
The incentive for private health insurers is to raise prices and increase denial rate until people are unwilling or unable to pay. People will pay until they can't, since they don't want to die, so this can be pushed pretty far. The incentive for socialized healthcare, at least in principle, is to provide people with as much treatment as is feasible for the amount of incoming funds. In one case rationing is driven by a need to remain solvent and in the other case it's driven by profit maximization. The different incentives lead to significant differences in how people are impacted by the denials/rationing that necessarily exist in both systems.
There is still out-of-network healthcare (i.e. specific services or entire healthcare providers not covered by single payer) in many countries with universal healthcare. But it is usually clear which is which.
> There is still out-of-network healthcare in many countries with universal healthcare
Can you provide links?
I've personally used the healthcare systems in Australia and Canada for two decades each, and also for a short time in the UK. I've never heard of this.
Link: https://www.reginamaria.ro/ - one of the biggest networks in the country. I have to use it for most of the regular stuff and I pay a subscription plus out of pocket for some consultations. This is on top of paying 10% of my gross income to socialized healthcare money stealing scheme.
The treatment provided will be similar to the NHS, but with less waiting (if relevant) and nicer facilities, such as private rooms rather than shared wards in hospital.
There is a small handful of clinics in Japan that do not accept the universal health insurance, such as specialist ones targeting English-speaking expats.
The US healthcare system is insanely expensive. Socialized healthcare is not the solution to this particular problem. Spending the most $ amount in the world with not the best results raises the question about efficiency. Solve that first, otherwise it is just money pit and no realistic amount of socialized money can fill it.
Americans are presented with a false dichotomy: Socialized medicine or US-style privatized healthcare; where the healthiest are charged 10% or more of their income and the neediest are dumped onto the US government.
It seems like Americans have a knack for coming up with the most convoluted ways of accessing healthcare that are still expensive and inconvenient. Your idea still require paying out of pocket, requires taking unpaid time off work, flights, relying on the healthcare system of a foreign country and more.
That is the worst possible "healthcare" situation I can imagine.
Dozens of countries have shown you pay a lot less and get much better outcomes [1] when you just provide healthcare to everyone all the time, the same way high school, roads and street lights are provided.
Why wouldn't you want that? Why on earth would you think flying to some foreign country is a better solution?
> Americans have a knack for coming up with the most convoluted ways of accessing healthcare
Medical tourism is alive and well even within Europe [1]. And an entire genre of concierge medicine in America caters to rich Europeans (alongside rich Middle Easterners and Asians).
I’m not saying it’s a great thing but when things are messed up you need a work around. That’s the work around, the money from go fund me is probably not enough the health care is that unaffordable
Olympians being "people with really intense hobbies" is still weird to me. I haven't reconciled in my mind that the life of AA baseball players getting paid a little more than minimum wage plus a meal stipend is a dream for 90% of Olympians who, if they win, become national symbols of excellence for a week every 4 years.
„Early days“ is until 1990 in that case, which is surprisingly late. Some nations got around the ban by employing the athletes as soldiers and allowing them to prepare almost full time though.
There was also a prevailing concept of fairness, in which practising or training was considered tantamount to cheating.[176] Those who practised a sport professionally were considered to have an unfair advantage over those who practised it merely as a hobby.[176]
Yes it was originally, but now you gotta have the money and time to pursue that sport at a professional level if you want to have any chance of even getting into the Olympics.
Personally I think it would be better if it was just regular joes doing the Olympics again, but state political interests kept dipping their hand into the pool to try and secure wins for some dubious political points.
Hmm I've never thought of any Olympic victory as being attributed in part to like, the current President, and I'd be surprised if anyone thought that would be the case. But it's not dubious that Americans (including myself) love to see our country winning things, and if we suddenly started tanking at the Olympics most of us would want our country to get our act together.
Of all the things the state does having national pride in competition does not seem nefarious to me. I also love it when we win the various math/science olympiads. Means our country is still a powerhouse across the board.
This is much more an autocratic country thing. Or small countries trying to promote themselves on the world stage, usually by picking a particular event and focusing on it.
Everyone's already heard of America, they don't need the marketing.
Jamaican bobsled team is basically the nation state sponsored-ish equivalent of that guy from one of the plains states that won a bunch of medals in downhill skiing a few years back.
> "Some people are judgy about sex work. People say it's a shame or even that it is shameful," Mitcham said. "But what I do is a very light version of sex work, like the low-fat version of mayonnaise selling the sizzle rather than the steak."
Hm, so which one is it now? If you're arguing that sex work shouldn't be stigmatized, it shouldn't matter how light or heavy it is?
I don't think there's much hypocrisy in that statement. My interpretation would be something like this:
-- I don't personally think that sex work should be stigmatised
-- Other people do stigmatise it, however.
-- I would like to point out to these people that what I do is analogous to a light version of sex work [and arguably any professional sportsperson sells their body one way or another - so why not this?]
Opinion: I stopped thinking the olympics was cool when I saw a 14 year old win gold in diving. Now I think it's a business exploiting people for money. Like any other business, if they don't like it they can stop doing it. Sports has a bad ROI on average afaik.
I knew 2 former UFC fighters (circa 2010/2016) that got USD 20K in average for their fights. The issue is that this does not cover 100% of the whole preparation that they need to be in the octagon. For instance, from little things since food and flight tickets, going to special medication (one of them was suspended by the USDA and got banned from UFC), sparring, fighting camping, and so on. One of them told me that the UFC was only the marketing for his personal Jiu Jitsu academy as a top of the pipeline for new students.
Can confirm, noting that the $20k actually on the higher end for a UFC figher. Most UFC fighters get paid significantly less than $20k as pay is based on a fighter's "seniority" as measured by UFC matches fought (see https://mmajunkie.usatoday.com/2024/05/ufc-fight-night-241-v...).
I think the Olympics in particular are mostly supposed to be a less violent outlet for nationalism, but I think we learned from the Anger Management craze that safe outlets lead to a normalization and more of the original problem.
It's an absolutely awful outlet for "nationalism" in a post-national diversified world.
Table tennis, for example, is basically a bunch of Chinese people battling it out for gold for their host country. Am I supposed to root for the Chinese-Australians as if they're any more representative of me than the Chinese-Canadians?
no serious fan of the sport would agree. not even truls would consider him to be the 2nd best in the world. but yes, he did have an amazing run to the silver
I stopped thinking it was cool when athletes were prohibited from publishing their diaries because it violated some "exclusive media rights" deal. that was pretty much the last time I paid any real attention to it.
I would imagine people operating at an Olympic level are training and breathing the sport so much it's hard to have a normal career on top that isn't also related to the sport.
Breakdancing should never had made it into the Olympics. Breakdancing is art or it's not. It's certainly not sport.
Cf. Rhythmic gymnastics free routine is borderline but there's a whole bunch more set pieces the young women do with balls and hoops which are sport. Figure skating is also borderline but does have figures and set moves and a high physical danger factor (you try leaping high, at speed on the ice, or being lifted). Freestyle skiing doesn't belong in the Olympics.
The ancient Greeks separated arts into the Pythian Games at Delphi, which celebrated Apollo and featured competitions in music, poetry and drama ... plus athletics. Rather than including the arts in the Olympics perhaps an international quadrennial Pythian Games should be established.
When parents and athletes decide to embark on this journey, it is well known that being an Olympian doesn't pay for many sports, similar to choosing your degree in college.
Maybe parents should rethink spending hundreds of thousands in coaching, training, travel, competitions, etc. from 12-18. I always chuckle when I read about an athlete getting a college scholarship, when it is clear that they already spent 4 times that on their development to get that scholarship.
The NBA apparently does a pretty good job of trying to be responsible, here. They'll send letters to players at college.
"Congratulations on becoming a Div 1 College Basketball player. You need to keep focusing on your studies, because [they break down stats that show that ~1% of even Division 1 players will make it to the NBA]."
Even with their existing fan base (which might or might not be interested in seeing them less clothed), OnlyFans is not a sustainable income model for most creators:
Statistically most accounts are people signing up, trying it for a couple days half-heartedly, and giving up. You can be morbidly obese, deformed, and geriatric and rake in multiple six figures /year within months if you're going in with an actual agency.
The comments here are depressing, especially coming from a forum that hypes unprofitable and niche companies competing against larger "profitable" and "popular" companies.
By the logic here us programmers should never work for startups and work only for the Big Tech companies because, frankly, they pay far far better and much more stable.
By the logic here you shouldn't found companies because it's too niche. You can "make more money" being a senior product manager for Big Tech.
By the logic here we all should move to New York and go into Finance because it pays more than Tech.
And to really hammer the point home, by the logic here nobody should play High School sports or on a A/AA Farm Teams, the very farms of mediocrity that, once in a while, produce genuine greatness that go on to the AAA circuit.
Be careful disparaging niches and unprofitability because that argument can and will be made against you too.
I couldn't agree more. Elite Olympic athletes are a representation of extreme talent, perseverance, physicality, creativity, luck, risk-taking, emotion, mentality and work ethic. Even if I find most of the disciplines boring, sometimes unintelligible and aren't 'economically' valuable, I still admire them for representing the positive aspects of humanity. Similar behaviours are necessary in other endeavours, be they of a intellectual or physical nature, where great achievements are made.
For example, people willing to take high risks should can try working for startups, people that cannot take risks (ex: single income for a family with kids) should not. "Founding companies because it's too niche" makes no sense, we should do it as long as there is revenue to fund it. Because Finance in New York pays for than Tech means ... nothing, Tech is good enough for most people.
I don’t think we should paying taxes to support this of events.
There is little support that sport competition is any good for humankind and Socrate argued in his days that competition had the reverse effect of making you see others as the enemy.
The entire economy is based on competition; if we agree that cooperation beats competition for the common good, then we have much larger systemic changes to do before we get to sports.
> "With OnlyFans, athletes are actually providing a product or service, something of value for the money they're receiving," he explained, emphasizing the need to reframe thinking.
Some really bizarre and dystopically capitalistic in this comments section. Olympic athletes are a significant source of national pride and optimism and sport is a powerful positive expression of the human spirit. We all get value from them, we should feel comfortable giving them at least a small amount of money for their efforts. Currently we give gold medalists around $40k, which I think is pretty low but better than nothing.
Thanks for your sanity. My wife is a (Canadian) Olympian and I almost feel betrayed by the level of condescension towards sports in this forum that I am normally aligned with. Like engineers denigrating the arts because it doesn’t generate value— it makes me think some folks are not experiencing what life has to offer.
Sensationalistic headline aside, this is a very thorny issue. On one hand you want to provide livable wages to your athletes, but Canada just registered a deficit of 62 billions. Cuts are coming and more money to Olympians will be put up against funding for healthcare, education, etc... At some point you have to make hard decisions.
Lots of money for bombs for Gaza, bombs for Ukraine, bombs all over the world. Very little motivation it seems to settle foreign policy issues diplomatically. Which would save trillions of dollars (for us) and millions of lives (for them). Lots of money for war.
Talk about hard decisions and belt-tightening is ludicrous until North America changes it's all-war, all-the-time politics.
Apparently you haven't been paying attention. The USA and other countries have made repeated diplomatic attempts to get Russia to end the invasion of Ukraine but they refuse to negotiate in good faith. So bombs are the only option. They are also banned from the Olympics.
I would like to provide liveable wages for both artists and athletes.
Who gets to choose which artists and athletes are funded?
When do we start funding them? In high-school, before? After they graduate? There are many people who identify as athletes at that age, football players, cheerleaders.
I have a 6yo son who is really good at doing various crafts and he really enjoys it, does he count as an artist?
How do we define art? Are we counting the preforming arts? Does someone playing the guitar in the subway count? What about my garage band that I have with my friends?
On the flip side, are we also going to ensure Taylor Swift has a livable wage for life? Tom Brady?
First of all, funding arts/sports != livable wages for the artists/atheletes. There's an overlap but wage is just at the tip of the iceberg of funding.
Provide livable wages to athletes and artists who represent your country (i.e., Olympians and national performers/artists). Fund development programs from as early as possible; this means grassroots efforts like summer camps, higher-level contests/tournaments, providing funds for national and international exposure, and providing for easy access to decent gear, among others. A lot of the participants in these programs wouldn't do this for life---won't make it to the Olympics or to the National Opera---but it will do a lot of other things like keep children off the streets and, not to mention, develop other skills/connections that could still come in useful later in life. If anything, sports could give them a love for exercise which, I heard recently, is the most potent medical intervention.
And yes, your son is an artist as long as he imagines himself to be. Ideally he has access to these development programs that could pave the way for him to a professional art career if he's so determined.
Your garage band is an artist group; what you may not be is a professional artist group. Same goes for the subway busker.
Speaking of which, when you went to the flip side, you kinda went from oranges to, not quite apples but lemons. Professionals like Swift and Brady should be far far less the taxpayer's concern compared to Olympians and other amateurs.
My discussion of funding, was not in reference to development programs but in reference to the top of the thread:
>On one hand you want to provide livable wages to your athletes, but Canada just registered a deficit of 62 billions. Cuts are coming and more money to Olympians will be put up against funding for healthcare, education, etc... At some point you have to make hard decisions.
and my question of where this money will come from.
The initial discussion did not specify a set of "Athletes and artists who represent your country (i.e., Olympians and national performers/artists)" although it cold be argued it was inferred due to the topic being Olympians. However, since Artists are part of the thread and I am not aware of any Olympic medals for things traditional considered art i.e. painting, sculpture, I decided it would be a good topic of discussion.
I like a lot of your answer but you ran into the same obstacle that I did when considering this:
>Provide livable wages to athletes and artists who represent your country (i.e., Olympians and national performers/artists).
>Professionals like Swift and Brady should be far far less the taxpayer's concern
Swift and Brady are athletes who represent the country; Swift explicitly when she does international tours, while Brady has international appeal as well bringing the NFL outside of the USA(if you disagree, substitute Brady with Micheal Jordan or Babe Ruth)(https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/33007604/my-michael-jord...).
>compared to Olympians and other amateurs.
This is where I was having the most trouble, as I can not find a way to draw a distinction between say Brady and Michael Phelps; both have a large amount of natural talent but they both had to train intensively every day. The only difference is the sport that Brady engaged in is a national league that who's bidding process drives up the athlete's pay.
It gets even harder when you try to do the analysis for artists, Maurizio Cattelan(famous conceptualist, who's works include a golden toilet and banana taped to the wall)(net worth 5 million) or Phillip Glass(composer)(net worth 35 million)
>“While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. ‘But you’re Philip Glass! What are you doing here?’ It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. ‘But you are an artist,’ he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish.”.
We want to support these people when they need it but that is before they rise to fame. Once they do, they generally don't need the support. But sometimes they do...take the number of "professional" NBA, NFL, etc that spend their money unwisely and are bankrupt as soon as they are unable to play sports.
> Who gets to choose which artists and athletes are funded?
Preferably via UBI which would prevent cheating and inconsistencies and minimise the bureaucracy around it.
> When do we start funding them?
Smarter people than me have already answered this, but generally at 18 years of age or after graduation seems to be a common answer.
> I have a 6yo son who is really good at doing various crafts and he really enjoys it, does he count as an artist?
As far as I am concerned yes, he should be provided with UBI once he reaches a mature age (see earlier answer as well).
> How do we define art? Are we counting the preforming arts? Does someone playing the guitar in the subway count? What about my garage band that I have with my friends?
That's what's so great about UBI, no need for subjective/objective debates. Everyone gets it, nobody gets to gate-keep, no expensive investigations into what is art and so on. All these people are eligible for UBI.
> On the flip side, are we also going to ensure Taylor Swift has a livable wage for life? Tom Brady?
That's where the _Universal_ part of _Universal Basic Income_ makes itself reminded.
UBI sounds good on paper, and I was in favor of replacing the rest of our safety nets with it until 2019. The problem is, after trying it, as happened in lots of different places during the COVID lockdowns, way too many people will decide to live off of it alone while doing absolutely nothing useful.
No actual smart people think that UBI is an effective answer to anything. The math simply doesn't work. Those claiming that UBI is the answer are either innumerate or are making ideological claims at odds with objective reality.
UBI would have an expense comparable to the entire current welfare state, which is a large part of the federal budget even in America--much larger than defense spending, for example.
However, GDP keeps going up, and many people would argue that "real" labor force participation keeps going down (e.g., bullshit service sector jobs, which mostly provide value to customers who want to feel superior to someone). At some point, UBI is going to be affordable; especially if it replaces most of the current welfare state.
Is there any other part of the math that simply doesn't work?
You can't replace most of the current welfare state since you are ultimately going to have to provide food, medical and housing payments directly because people will blow all their UBI and not have those things. Unless you are willing to let people starve to death since they wasted their money you will end up with both systems.
Ok, you're guessing that current welfare recipients are uniformly imprudent and lack all virtue, rather than having some sizeable minority who are simply temporarily down on their luck. Let's grant your assumption, for the sake of this argument.
The biggest parts of the federal welfare budget by far are social security and medicare/medicaid. SS is simply a QBI, a UBI which is for qualified recipient instead of universal. So that's $1.4T saved, right there.
Medicare/Medicaid together are another $1.4T, and replacing them isn't automatic--a UBI high enough to cover contemporary American medical costs would be huge. I must note, though, that these exorbitant medical costs are being collectively paid by Americans anyway; if we switched to literally any other system--from Robin Hanson's "buy life insurance and medical care from the same company" to EU-style public/private insurance--we'd save enough for UBI from that alone.
The rest of welfare is comparitively penny-ante stuff--food stamps are only $120B, section 8 housing is $70B, etc. Even if we still had to provide Guaranteed Basic Food and Guaranteed Basic Housing in addition to UBI, it could still end up cheaper than our current system.
And even if it didn't, I stand by my observation that the GDP keeps going up. If we genuinely can't afford a UBI at a GDP of 27T, what about at 30T? That increase covers the entirety of the current spending on both social security and medical aid. If not at 30T, what about at 40T or 50T?
> Ok, you're guessing that current welfare recipients are uniformly imprudent and lack all virtue,
I have done no such thing. I have never said that welfare receipts "uniformly" do anything. I am just saying that SOME will not use their money wisely and our choice is either to provide them with additional benefits or let them die.
If we are going to continue to give some people the benefits we are trying to get rid of, they won't go away and more and more people will find ways to get the additional benefits.
> rather than having some sizeable minority who are simply temporarily down on their luck. Let's grant your assumption, for the sake of this argument.
The reason people need benefits is irrelevant to my argument.
> The biggest parts of the federal welfare budget by far are social security and medicare/medicaid. SS is simply a QBI, a UBI which is for qualified recipient instead of universal. So that's $1.4T saved, right there.
If we do not have SS there will be no SS tax which is what mostly funds SS. Unless you are advocating for retaining a tax for SS and not using it on SS, which is a dubious proposition.
> Medicare/Medicaid together are another $1.4T, and replacing them isn't automatic--a UBI high enough to cover contemporary American medical costs would be huge. I must note, though, that these exorbitant medical costs are being collectively paid by Americans anyway; if we switched to literally any other system--from Robin Hanson's "buy life insurance and medical care from the same company" to EU-style public/private insurance--we'd save enough for UBI from that alone.
You are saying the only way to make UBI work is to make UBI not cover everything that we are trying to replace with UBI. I mean, if that is your argument I can see how you can get the math can work...
If you want to figure out if it will actually be cheaper you have to include everything covered currently with welfare. If you don't do that we really can't have any sort of actual comparison.
Also, there are more reasons than just the way insurance is set up causing high costs that won't magically go away because of a change to an EU style system.
> The rest of welfare is comparitively penny-ante stuff--food stamps are only $120B, section 8 housing is $70B, etc. Even if we still had to provide Guaranteed Basic Food and Guaranteed Basic Housing in addition to UBI, it could still end up cheaper than our current system.
Interesting that you are now using the phrase "could still end up cheaper than our current system.". You seemed so positive before that it would and now you don't seem so certain.
> And even if it didn't, I stand by my observation that the GDP keeps going up. If we genuinely can't afford a UBI at a GDP of 27T, what about at 30T? That increase covers the entirety of the current spending on both social security and medical aid. If not at 30T, what about at 40T or 50T?
I don't think anybody is saying we can't afford UBI. The US could give everybody $1 and it would be UBI. The problem is providing enough money to replace the welfare system without messing up the costs of things or causing people to not work.
I'm all for trying something, but I think that something should be a negative income tax rather than UBI to prevent any negative incentives that come with UBI.
> I have done no such thing. I have never said that welfare receipts "uniformly" do anything. I am just saying that SOME will not use their money wisely and our choice is either to provide them with additional benefits or let them die.
> If we are going to continue to give some people the benefits we are trying to get rid of, they won't go away and more and more people will find ways to get the additional benefits.
Yes, means-testing is the enemy, and reducing the administrative burden of welfare is most of the cost savings that UBI offers.
Still, even if we can't reform American healthcare at all, reducing means testing to just medical care would be huge. After all, you're now testing for the severity and expense of the medical condition itself, not for income or assets--and to falsify that, a welfare recipient would need an MD to commit blatant fraud.
> Interesting that you are now using the phrase "could still end up cheaper than our current system.". You seemed so positive before that it would and now you don't seem so certain.
You may be confusing me with other UBI advocates. I never claimed UBI would be cheaper than the current system.
> I'm all for trying something, but I think that something should be a negative income tax rather than UBI to prevent any negative incentives that come with UBI.
Have you looked at the incentives described by, say, the Adam Smith institute? They describe a negative income tax as incentivizing more participation in the labor market by poor people, due to the lower marginal tax rate: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/nit-or-ubi-that-is-the-econom...
What you do not consider is that all serious UBI initiatives will see UBI as a _replacement_ to multiple other already existing welfare programs such as housing stipends, childcare benefits, maternity leave benefits, illness benefits, food stamps, veteran care... Not only will those be removed if UBI is implemented, the bureaucracy around those benefits will be eliminated or significantly reduced which means that more of the money paid in taxes will be distributed to people.
As far as my own tax burden, I pay a marginal tax rate of about 33% and would have no issue increasing that. I also think I pay too little in property taxes for my house. I am also getting a tax write-off to my loan which means I can take on a higher loan that I maybe should have (this write-off is bad on a macro scale because of the increased risk), I think that write-off should be phased out. There are also other taxes to adjust such as Tobacco taxes, VAT:s (we have four tiers today: 0, 6, 12, and 25 percent VAT depending on the type of good), Wealth taxes, Carbon taxes, and Financial taxes such as those on dividends and transactions.
Al least you can race the athletes against each other to find out who is the best. Much hard to do that with artists.
We could say we'll fund the fastest people but in all liklihood those will turn out to be people who have dedicated the most time to their sport, which is a pretty good proxy for being rich, because most people can't afford that level of time investment.
"Livage wage" is just euphemism for confiscating someone else's time.
The guy stamping metal parts at a factory has to work an hour more, because you want to take part of his income and hand it to someone doing his/her hobby.
I believe the Olympics is meant to be a career for the rich, and the IOC will do its best to keep working-class people out by removing their opportunities, especially in popular sports. If too many rich kids can't get into Olympic teams, then the IOC will make sure that avenues like OnlyFans are banned.
Onlyfans market is stupid people who don't know that you can get porn for free on the internet. Usually, more intense than most of the models on Onlyfans are willing to do.
Isn't this a win-win situation? Now we all have an excuse to support outstanding sports people directly. Even better, that excuse can be used the other way if one is in need.
That title reminded me on different Olympians who got their "aesthetic" pictures taken for a certain adult oriented print magazine, which most people buy only for the really good articles they have, of course! ;)
It's about Platformization (+ Datafication + Finacialization). When Platform Capitalism the book came out, feels like a decade ago, literally everyone agreed its Unsustainable. Its not just about how well your mindless dumbfuck platform milks the consumer and producer simultaneously. Its about all the Platforms doing it simultaneously across every single sector you look at.
Just look at GDP by sector, and ask yourself which sector hasn't been platformized?
Sooner or later the only option on the table for Govt will be to ask China how they handled Jack Ma.
It wouldn't be the stupedist, and some forms are probably pretty physically demanding (can't really comment based on first person experience since I don't view it).
Personally, I find the whole competitive sports industry to be a giant waste of time and money.
For poelpe practicing the sports, most probably bring physical benefits. For the 99.999% who just watch it on TV, what's the point really?
If someone likes sports, they should go out and play them...
Turns out the real alienation is the artists and athletes, not the workers producing luxury goods.
Capitalism is great, it feeds billions, but it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that we can provide generational wealth to anyone who can produce beans a bit better, while the transcendental has pitiful returns. On one hand, we need beans. On the other, it sure is nice to transcend from time to time.
Over all I think it’s wildly important we’re slanted towards the mundane, but next time you see a poor artist or a talented young athlete: put some money in the hat.
I think the system that orients us away from our passions and towards the mundane is a good thing actually. It hurts the soul but it nourishes the body. However we should all become patrons of the arts, so that we can also nourish the soul. Ain’t nothing so broken that love can’t fix it.
Based on the average diet in North America (fast food, oversized portions, GMO vegetables which look good but are nutrition free, hormone overloaded beef, chlorinated chicken, this is the short list), I would argue the system (North American style capitalism does not nourish the body.
I'd also apply the same thought to North American arts and sports. Singing about hoes and bling, while clutching your testicles or ring fighting hardly feed the soul.
The Olympians should get proper state funding. They do inspire.
When the Greeks invented the games the competitors were all buck naked and oiled up.
You ever think we should just cut out the middlemen? Skip the governments, the international organizations, the television networks, and get back to the basic principle of fit naked people doing fit naked things in front of an admiring audience.
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> What is the economic output? Entertainment as far as I can tell. For a few days every four years. That's not a good return on the time invested.
I‘d guess the vast majority of Olympians do compete in other events outside the Olympics and do provide more entertainment than just once every four years.
The Olympics don‘t pay the bills, but other events do. And many athletes are effectively employed by their countries, be it as soldiers, border guards or through some kind of sports support system.
> The tv rights and advertising sell for billions. In person ticket sales in the 100's of millions.
I acknowledge that this economic output is relevant, but the real issue for me is how this is distributed downstream.
I do not think it's correct that the IOC captures a ton of value [1], and at the same time we have huge issues in terms of funding, even in very rich countries [2].
The countries and athletes make their sacrifices (i.e., one hosting and investing and the latter personal finances), but the IOC still insists on this model.
Back in the day, we used to have the idea to make the Summer Olympic games cheaper by having a permanent country/facility and fewer sports, but for any reason the IOC is against it.
When I read the article the problem as illustrated was not primarily OnlyFans and the morality around that kind of content. It was the lack of funding for athletes and the fact that IOC forces athletes to sign away image rights that were front and center.
True, but swimming is what I call an Olympic tier 1 sport. That means there seems to be plenty of support for these athletes. The hard/impossible to see on TV sports are were I think people are having big issues.
But after reading the article, looks like the IOC is raking in the big bucks and exploiting all athletes. No surprise there since I and maybe everyone believes the IOC nothing but a corrupt organization.
So he dressed up in his full paddling outfit and brought his boat (4m long in those days) and paddle to a street corner in downtown DC. He set up a “meet an Olympian” sign and charged people cash to have their picture taken with him. Much hustle, very entrepreneurial of him, and he made a decent amount of money.
But he got into huge trouble with the U.S. Olympic establishment, and was almost dropped from that team. They said they were scandalized that he would dare to try to make personal money from his Olympic team status. It became clear to some that they were also mad he dared to demonstrate how poor many Olympic athletes actually were—by essentially begging on a street corner in a part of town full of prominent people.