So on friday the Olympics will be starting up in Beijing. Now I'm all for it- the games are an ancient and time honored tradition wherein every nation (well, most every nation) can send their best athletes to represent them in international competition. You know, all that utopian sentimental goo about us putting aside our differences and coming together in common brotherhood (sisterhood? sibling-hood?) to celebrate extraordinary athletics. You know, peace and love and all that crap. And good on 'em for keeping the Olympics alive. Hell, it's probably a better forum for international cooperation and diplomacy than the U.N or the League of Nations ever were. 

However, I read that the costs for these Olympics will be well over 40 billion dollars!! 40 billion. Let's think about that. Now this is not a crack at China in specific, as all Olympics these days tend to be ridiculously over-priced.  As with all things that us troublesome humans get our grubby little paws on, it seems we sure are skilled at taking a good thing and ruining it with our greed and petty desires.

Now granted, yes, there are many athletes coming for these games (10,500 to be specific) and 302 events in 28 sports is indeed a lot. But do we really need to spend 40 billion to make it happen? It's 10 bloody days!! For 10 days of international sporting, over 40 billion dollars has been spent to build massive stadiums, expand transit systems, setup MASSIVE communication and broadcast networks, tens of thousands of kilometers of temporary communication and electrical cabling laid, special accomodations built etc etc. And let's not forget the opening ceremonies which are going to run something like 3 and a half hours with thousands of performers.

As is typical, I think much of this boils down to the "pie" analogy. The Olympics is a big pie, and everyone wants their piece. Over the years, as the grandeur and legacy of the Olympics has increased, so too has the greed and the desire to get a bigger piece of that pie. If you were a construction contractor building some condos for the Olympics would you charge your normal rate? Heck no, you'd want your piece of the pie and charge as much as you could get away with (after securing the contract of course, those cost overruns are indeed unfortunate aren't they?)

This is nothing new. In fact, it falls in line with human nature. Whenever we get a winning formula or concept, it seems our greed steps in and in our desire for more we end up ruining it for everyone. Each successive city must have bigger and better opening ceremonies than the last. Each successive city must have better venues, designed by some crackpot architect who's been sealed in a wine casket for the last hundred years with nothing else to do. We get all whipped up into some fervor about what's going to happen in an event with a few thousand people over 10 days.

Now should we invest money in making the Olympics a true international event we can be proud of? Absolutely. But 40 billion dollars is beyond reasonable. I'm not saying that the athletes should perform in a high school gymnasium, but let's be honest here, do we really need to construct massive facilities and infrastructure that will realistically only host the Olympics once (maybe twice at the most?)

Especially considering that many countries are having food and fuel riots right now, 40 billion dollars for 10 days of sporting events seems like a rather questionnable investment. Heck, give it to NASA to invest in their man-on-mars program which they've openly stated probably isn't gonna happen due to lack of funding. If you wanna give people real hope (something a lot of folks need right now) putting a man on mars would probably go a long way! Or maybe use it to help feed some people, fund R&D into water filtration systems or alternative energy. There's lots of better possibilities. Nope, we're gonna use it to build massive infrastructure and line the pockets of already well-off contractors so that we can be in awe for 10 days.

The Olympics need to get back to the basics... it's about the athletes, and in the bigger picture the nations they represent. That's where the emphasis should be placed, not on building gazillion dollar mausoleums for a few days use!