I think this is a piece of learned trolling, satire designed to provoke us into thinking hard about what the IOC really is.
The IOC profits from the selection process as much as it does from the games. The bribes, the payments, everything involved in this horrible “competition” fills their coffers with money.
If the games were held in the same place every year, there would be no bribes to rig bids. There would be no construction companies and other contractors to pony up black bags full of money to ensure their place at the trough.
There would also be no pressure on governments to pretend the games are a success. Every country hosting the games is under enormous pressure to brag about how wonderful the games are. They spend hundreds of millions promoting the games that they spend billions supporting.
All that would go away if the games were held in a permanent facility.
The local politicians in my city that lured the IOC here through bribes were all later parachuted into lucrative foreign service diplomatic posts and various IOC connected director positions after. That's the true legacy of the games, the politicians raise their profile, network with the world's elite and move into international politics while the rest of us pay for their promotions.
Having the winter olympics in Switzerland only would make sense, easy to secure, neutral country, no forced relocation of "undesireables" like when Beijing shipped every Mongolian migrant laborer out of the city, or when my government mass imprisoned as many homeless as they could by picking them all up for unpaid fines.
No country would have an edge with exclusive track access for months before allowing competitor teams in to practice either.
Better yet, do what you can to ignore and shun these corrupt proceedings. The Olympics depends on people treating it as something special. Same for FIFA. Mock people wearing Qatar shirts, just as you would someone promoting homeopathy.
>> people treating it as something special. Same for FIFA
Formula 1 racing had a similar "fraud" scheme where a lot of countries invested in racing circuits which were left unused then[1]. I remember the politics, media manipulating people into believing they earn billions of dollars in PR for their government investing in circuit construction.
> Mock people wearing Qatar shirts, just as you would someone promoting homeopathy.
I don't this ending well. First of all, the athletes should not get involved in any of this politics stuff. Second, it is well known that all the World Cup and Olympic Games tournaments post 1990 (at least) were awarded based on corruption, even the 2006 World Cup hosted in Germany. So, I don't see any reason to single out the Qataris.
Why should an athlete not get involved in "any of this politics stuff"? They are individuals as well and have as much right to political speech, thought, and action as every other individual on the planet.
They may have even been granted a platform where their speech can be more effective because of the respect and attention that many in the world pay those athletes.
Censorship, voluntary or otherwise, should be routinely rejected.
Of course I have. But where do we stop? Should we also ban the USA from organizing a future World Cup tournament because of its disastrous foreign policy which has caused unnecessary deaths numbering more than 1 million people in the last 15-20 years? Should we ban Russia from hosting the 2018 World Cup because of its Ukraine policy? And so on and so on.
I agree with everything you wrote, except for the first 10 words. This isn't a trollish idea. It's a practical solution that solves a real problem. Any time in conversation this topic comes up, I make the same argument that it doesn't make financial sense to move from city to city like a plague.
It’s practical in the sense that it would logically work.
But it’s impractical in the sense that it doesn’t actually satisfy the needs of anybody in the IOC or the bid committees that try to get tax money to enrich themselves, or the needs of politicians who want to bask in the halo of “winning and hosting the games."
When most people think of the olympic games, they don't think about the IOC. They could care less about the IOC. They think about athletes, and sports, and national rivalries.
Most people would not give one fat hoot if the whole IOC got left in the dust to whither and die, while a new organization got set up to host similar events in one location.
If the IOC died, the worldwide championships of each sport would gain importance. Such championships are held in different cities every year, which makes me think that the IOC is just inheriting the behavior of moving cities. Probably 70% of the people just want to watch sports and, being a democracy, it's difficult to outweight their choice of spending public money on Olympics.
>But it’s impractical in the sense that it doesn’t actually satisfy the needs of anybody in the IOC or the bid committees that try to get tax money to enrich themselves, or the needs of politicians who want to bask in the halo of “winning and hosting the games."
In which case almost all anti-corruption drives are impractical.
That's a really excellent point. As I was reading it I thought maybe the author didn't really get why the IOC exists, but your suggestion, that this is mostly satire, makes way more sense.
Yep, let's have everyone compete at who's the best to beat the drug tests in one spot year on year. TV licenses are gonna go through the roof. What a business to partake in.
The IOC profits from the selection process as much as it does from the games. The bribes, the payments, everything involved in this horrible “competition” fills their coffers with money.
If the games were held in the same place every year, there would be no bribes to rig bids. There would be no construction companies and other contractors to pony up black bags full of money to ensure their place at the trough.
There would also be no pressure on governments to pretend the games are a success. Every country hosting the games is under enormous pressure to brag about how wonderful the games are. They spend hundreds of millions promoting the games that they spend billions supporting.
All that would go away if the games were held in a permanent facility.