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Comment by Scea91 | Hacker News Reader

Small details like this make my day. I also love how it was basically crowdfunded by Japanese people. It quite strenghtens the symbolic value of the medal I think.

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Too bad they didn't crowdsource the decision about whether the olympics should happen this year: https://sports.yahoo.com/cancel-the-olympics-japanese-people...

If you left the pandemic decisions to a majority vote, most places would be fully open by now.

I don't know about your country, but every month from January to June (the latest data I found) a large majority of Germans polled believed the measures to fight COVID were appropriate or didn't go far enough. https://de.statista.com/infografik/23810/umfrage-zur-angemes...

I’m not sure what country you’re basing this on, but in the US the 2020 election felt like a repudiation of the more liberalized COVID-19 policies of the Trump administration.

Canceling Olympics is difficult. Whoever cancels it, has to pay hefty fine, either the host or the Olympic committee. The pandemic is sadly not the valid reason to cancel them, at least not in committee's eyes, so Japan was strong handed here.

Japan could have just said no to the Olympics, not paid the fine and told the IOC exactly where to put the contract.

Hosting the games ends up costing the host countries more money anyway so if IOC skips over them in the future...so what?

E: this assumes the fine isn't already in escrow

That could have led to Japan being banned from the Olympics until the fine is paid.

eh.

Couldn’t they just compete anyways as the “Japanese Olympic Committee?”

Could have, but this would have been a really bad look for the Olympic Committee, and it's very possible they would have preferred to waive the fine.

Beyond a certain point, fines become a game of political chicken.

Almost all of government spending is crowdfunded

People opt-in to crowdfunding. Generally we have no choice in paying taxes. That said some states like California give taxpayers the option to pay extra taxes for special funds like coastal cleanup or processing the rape kit backlog. These funds are more analogous to crowd funding, but they pale in comparison to total state revenue.

Olympics has huge sponsors too

If you don't opt in to the crowdfunding, it's called "mass theft".

when and where from can I get myself a recycled electronics gold watch / earrings for my lady geek? I feel very confident that this is going to happen, now, but I'm fascinated by the economics of the acquisition of the e-waste, in terms of "ore" density : it's a while since I was marvelling at the sight of the gold pad to pin wires in a ceramic package. Where's the highest quality and concentrations now?

There are potential moral concerns with e-waste recycling. I won’t say it’s more problematic than mining. But many of the same issues with environmental degradation, dangerous work environments and child labor can apply.

Source: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewconten...

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