I hate the Olympics. I hate everything about them… their show-casing of murderous authoritarian regimes, their graft and corruption, their promotion of obscure sports that generate little genuine interest, their hypocritical claim of being non-commercial and non-political, their subordination of athletic excellence to soap-opera story-telling… everything.
Are there libertarians out there who love the Olympics? It occurs to me that anti-Olympics misanthropy might be correlated with anti-state misanthropy. It is true enough in my case.
I don’t *love* the Olympics, but I do enjoy watching people who are very good at weird things like speed skating, downhill skiing, various summer olympic games, etc. Which is to say, I suppose, that I only disagree with the bit about promoting obscure sports. I like obscure sports and despise all the rest of that stuff…
I like sports, except for new subjective “sellable” sports like snowboarding and skiing have become. I dislike human interest stories and the manufactured time-delayed productions that support them.. And I very much dislike US networks’ cheering for the US team.
So, all in all, I have antipathy for the Olympics. Nonetheless, as the number of channels covering the Olympics has grown, you can pretty much turn away from human interest stories and find some fun sports you don’t see enough of the other 206 weeks of the quadrennium.
It’s the subordination of athletic excellence to soap-opera story-telling that turns me off the Olympics. The same goes for baseball, which I no longer watch because too much of the commentary is about off-the-field stuff.
I no more love or hate the Olympics than I do any other organized sporting event.
I’m glad that athletes have a way of competing with each other at a global level- although I have little to no interest in watching it.
As for the rest, countries can choose to participate, or not. The IOC can choose how to administer the games, giving countries the decision making framework in which to choose. TV networks can choose to air the events or “human interest” puff pieces.
And I can choose to not be interested.
Chicks dig the long ball and the human interest.
When I think about the effects of Fiscal Policy I like to think of the Olympics and how they typically are a net loss despite being large government spending and planning.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/30/do-the-olympics-boost-the-economy-studies-show-the-impact-is-likely-negative.html
I think that most of the negatives can be said of nearly all sports. I don’t, for example, see any reason that local football teams should be associated in any way with the local public school system, paid for with taxes, promoted with social hysteria, etc.
I detest valuing American lives above foreign lives in big policy decisions, but sports is one place I think fervent nationalism is ok. I grew up in dallas so I root for the cowboys beyond reason; I am an American so I root for American athletes beyond reason. Sports-nationalism helps me happily watch the odd Olympic event.
That said, as a soccer fan I reserve most of my frothing, inarticulate jingoism for the World Cup. I can watch sports I don’t care about, but the Winter Olympics really pushes the envelope there.
I started losing interest in the Olympics shortly after the Miracle on Ice. I haven’t watched any of the last 3 or 4 games.
They’re still holding the Olympics? How about that!
There’s probably a good argument to be made that tribalism via sports helps as a sort of pressure valve for more violent tribalism. It’s also yet another forum for nations to see humanized versions of one another, so in the same way interpersonal communication technology may reduce “otherism,” sports may help (not in extreme cases like the US vs Soviet Union, of course).
Finally, you might make a libertarian (or more probably conservative) case that fostering a spirit of competition is helpful in creating a culture conducive to capitalist principles. Might a competition-averse society might more willingly accept left-leaning economic rhetoric about “cooperation?”
Those are generally devil’s advocate arguments, as I’m pretty neutral on the Olympics. I enjoy them like most sports, but don’t celebrate them above that or detest them particularly.
I should check for typos before pressing post:
1. I thought Ayn Rand libertarians would probably like the Olympics, and looks like i was right: ‘The Olympics Represent the Best of Western Civilization”.
http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=9969&news_iv_ctrl=1021
If you love sport and/or are patriotic (and there are some libertarians who are both), the Olympics are great.
If you’re going to have a world organized into states, there are far worse things to worry about than Olympics. I could care less about “commercialization” (a good thing, better than supporting the games with taxation), generally like sports, and will root for Americans over others.
Exactly, like whether there are any potential enemy state who don’t think exactly how we recently “evolved” to think about gays that we can offend 😉
I contend that basketball should be in the winter Olympics. Otherwise I don’t feel strongly.
I have no problem with citizens competing on behalf of their country, though when I watch the competitions I don’t think of it so much that way as their competing merely against others in their field for best individual. Watching people who have excelled in their field of sports is an awesome sight and has less to do with national or political promotion than it does with the individuals’ personal efforts.
I’m as libertarian as they come and I LOVE the Olympics, for one simple reason: they are about INDIVIDUAL achievement (a small handful of team sports notwithstanding).
I can’t stand football, baseball, basketball, hockey, or soccer. Zero sum! The entire event is just a struggle of one group against another. Some consider it fun to watch but nothing is achieved.
But every 2 years there’s a chance for someone to break a record, to become The Best at something. To claim victory through pure achievement, without struggle against an opponent (wrestling, fencing, etc. notwithstanding).
Who cares that some of the sports are oddball? You want a boring sport, watch BASEBALL. Americans may not think Biathlon is interesting but the nordic countries sure do. I’m sure the colder parts of the world don’t understand our fascination with Beach Volleyball. Besides, plenty of Olympic sports are things that normal adults actually do in their spare time. Skiing, snowboarding, cycling, running, weightlifting, martial arts, kayaking, swimming, tennis, and so on. When’s the last time you played football?
The fact that competitors nominally represent their countries is irrelevant. If the top 3 competitors are all from Country X, they still get 3 medals, not 1. The fact that Nation Z is a brutal dictatorship is not the responsibility of each citizen who happens to have been born there, and the games are a time when we can put those things aside and appreciate what humans can do when they apply themselves.