Also, the "science showcase" is a thing of the past, the BIE switched to "individual country showcase" a couple of years ago, which makes the whole thing a lot less appealing IMHO, but that's another issue.
It's overall a nationalistic country level flex at the expense of the local area. It's part of why only big countries host it, the side affects will only affect one city and you have other places to sustain the nationwide economy despite the hit.
> we look forward to doing so again in 2028
Oligarchs and capitalists benefit, the masses lose though. Especially those most vulnerable socioeconomically.
As long as the government doesn’t lose money, I’m happy. Plus it will be nice to get to LAX without driving a 30 minute loop through the terminals. I’m very excited about that line.
Also Nationalism isn't just flags, hate and hands in the air, it's also an outward expression of ideas and ideals raised on a pedestal to say look how great we are. Such as getting to say "we are all about competition and entertainment" as a story to tell the world as a form of soft power.
Ask those who want to immigrate, and ask the recently immigrated who now want to preserve what they have.
As with...all...of its Olympic bids, LA was not the first choice for the 1984 Olympics. It basically got those Olympics (and 2028, and the 1932 Olympics), because nobody else wanted to host them. In 1932, the world was in the throes of the Great Depression; in 1984, the previous Olympics had bankrupted their hosts; for 2028, hosts of the 20xx games exuberantly built new facilities only to see them wither into decay from non-use (Brazil, China, even London).
Thus, LA's bids have always focused on fiscally responsible games. As with the previous 2 iterations of the LA Games, LA will not be building many new facilities solely for the games. Indeed, currently, LA plans to build no new facilities for the games, though there will be temporary structures/courses built for the swimming events, the BMX and MTB racing events, and NBC will be paying for a temporary media center. Currently, all $7 billion of the estimated costs are being funded by the private sector.
wasn't the London one supposed to have been done cheaply and effectively, in contrast to the splurge of the previous two?
For comparison, the combined total of LA's three Olympics (adjusted for inflation and including the forthcoming games) is well below $10 billion.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/abandon...
Also; very few countries has a need for facilities with the capacity the Olympics require, so this would be a huge burden for most of them.
That's not what a world's fair is. A modern world's fair would be essentially a bunch of companies showing off their latest inventions, in a highly coordinated and controlled way, for marketing purposes.
A better analogy would be something like E3, a video game convention which is struggling to find its purpose in a world where it's easier and more effective from a marketing standpoint to just release a video of your new game. I think it's no coincidence that world's fairs stopped being as important right around the time mass communication became ubiquitous.
You have a point for sports, but concerts? They have their moments, but for the most part, it will be the same set list and the same performance they did in Cleveland a week ago.
But to refute more directly, the unplanned interactions with other visitors, being able to talk directly with makers who built the things you’re seeing, the viral sense of wonder; all are good reasons to have it in-person.
Better parties, though.
One futuristic thing that has stuck with me from the Millennium expo was a demonstration of structural/mechanical and electrochemical simulation of the human body with computers, for example the skeletal, muscular, and circulatory systems. Which of course can be augmented with models of various organs and micro-level models of cellular interaction and cell internals. The brilliant bit seemed to be the idea of using a finite element and/or modular decomposition, potentially at multiple levels of resolution and abstraction. It seemed like the sort of thing that could yield huge benefits in medicine, health/fitness, education, and video games/animation. ;-)
But
I am also very Cold War revival. We should be launching competitive science wars with each other, not unlike the Olympics. Set objectives, set time periods, when the time and objective expire all knowledge gained is pooled and published for the world, for free. National or International propaganda campaigns to recruit for teams. Spies, espionage, moles. Not just a science fair, but something a bit more dirty and fun.
Complete with threats of total annihilation?
> We should be launching competitive science wars with each other
Don't we have this now with competitive global capitalism? I guess it's not the nationstate so much now as the multinational corporation, though, that are the entities competing.
I can kind of understand your wish for a Cold War revival - we certainly had more of a sense of national purpose during that period. But it was driven by fear of the other and I'm not sure that ultimately that's a good motivation.
You'd think that maybe something like a global pandemic would give us a national purpose that would have brought us together, but look what happened, just more fracturing: anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, even covid-deniers.
I agree that a different motivation would be better, but right now we have none, which is worse.
That’s already here again. We may as well do something good with it.
I'm talking about the Space Race. There might have been some fear of space lasers and spy satellites and whatnot, but for the most part, landing on the moon was purely about pride and bragging rights, and who gets to swing a bigger stick. We need more of that, to get people excited, and to push what we can acomplish, and maybe to make us a tiny bit more reckless. Exploration can be dangerous.
I also believe, from a marketing perspective, branding it as a War and not a competition would engage people more. Football level fanaticism. People arent going to wear jerseys and cheer for a Science Fair the way they would for a Science War. I can imagine selling War Bonds to promote the Science War, with nice prizes, to engage and reward people.