Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)
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So he dressed up in his full paddling outfit and brought his boat (4m long in those days) and paddle to a street corner in downtown DC. He set up a “meet an Olympian” sign and charged people cash to have their picture taken with him. Much hustle, very entrepreneurial of him, and he made a decent amount of money.
But he got into huge trouble with the U.S. Olympic establishment, and was almost dropped from that team. They said they were scandalized that he would dare to try to make personal money from his Olympic team status. It became clear to some that they were also mad he dared to demonstrate how poor many Olympic athletes actually were—by essentially begging on a street corner in a part of town full of prominent people.
...
"No not like that!"
Never knew if it was real but I've seen on reddit several times that letter someone got from their employer chastising them for not owning a newer, nicer vehicle, since they were making good money at their job and it was "hurting the reputation of the business" that they were driving effectively a poor person's car. It feels far fetched but at the same time, also feels exactly like the irrelevant twaddle that a certain kind of upper management type would make his secretary write a letter about.
That being said, the USOC does not financially support most athletes outside of the Olympic window (meaning, from the time they depart for the host city until the time they return). This means that any activities outside of the Olympics are paid for by the athletes out-of-pocket (for most sports, this includes the Olympic Trials to qualify for the team!). Most athletes don't make money from their athletic endeavors as prize monies are usually quite small and sponsorship opportunities are usually very limited outside of the marquee sports. Generally, in the non-marquee sports (i.e., everything outside of swimming, track and field, and gymnastics), U.S. post-Olympic financial funding (i.e., salaried training) is limited to podium finishers, and many of the more niche sports further limit financial support to gold medal athletes.
[Somewhat related: The Boys in the Boat is a movie about the UW Rowing Team, which won gold at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. At the time, athletes and teams were generally expected to help pay for the costs of attending the Olympics by fundraising (but as with fundraising today, this meant they were on the hook for any shortfalls). In the movie, Cal writes the check for the final post-fundraising shortfall of $300 so the UW team could go; in real life Cal offered a donation but it wasn't needed.]
He does describe building his own kayak for the event. [0] But that's probably just to help promote his business.
[0] https://hub.jacksonkayak.com/2019/11/the-unabridged-history-...
In Brazil a very long time ago, there was a gigantic tug of war between the top-tier sports (especially volleyball and football) and the low-tier sports, and the issue is that from the prize pool, most went to the major sports. The partial solution for it was to incentivize the corporations to do the sponsorships, and the ones that made it got some tax benefits (sometimes in a 1:2).
Javelin, while slightly more cool, is you throwing a stick. Mildly interesting for a few seconds.
Football is a top tier sport because it's entertaining. People will pay to see it. Hence there's money to be earned.
If someone wants to spend their time seeing how far they can throw a stick, cool, but they shouldn't be surprised they're waking up to an empty bank account every day.
The entertainment in the Olympic games is in the fact that those folks (especially track and field) go to the extreme and human limit. In other words, for regular sports entertainment, I can go to watch Green Bay Packers vs. Vikings or Chelsea vs. Manchester City; for olympic entertainment (athletes pushing to their limits), Olympics are the place to watch.
All the figures bear out that people find football more entertaining than extreme feats. Maybe they like the slow pace and tension as it's more relatable to their own lives, or because the lulls in action allow some socializing or whatever.
Otherwise they'd spend their weekends watching hours of shark wrestling or whatever.
E.g. ice hockey in Canada, makes sense that people living in such a cold place are going to gravitate to such a sport.
EU countries - guessing those near the Alps right, not say Portugal? Biles - because it was their country winning. Outside of that they didn't care about the sport.
If you want some real entertainment in that area watch HEMA fencing.
You may as well say "it's an Olympic event, not a sport" or "it's a TV show, not an Olympic event." These are overlapping categories.
* The same money problems that Fencing athletes face would apply to potential 'HEMA athletes'.
* You would hate what HEMA becomes because now it's a sport that people try to win at, with the 'realism' aspect all but destroyed.
HEMA rapier fights look like Olympic fencing but in a ring (although seems linear movement is preferred anyway).
First of all, which weapon do you refer to? Foil, epee or saber? They look quite different.
Saber is very fast and might look as you say, both fencers jumping quickly to each other to get their right of way and score. Epee looks quite different, there’s no right of way and the score target is the whole body, so it tends to be slower. Foil is in the middle in terms of speed, and much more technical.
IMO the issue with fencing is not that it looks “dumb”, but that it’s not easy to understand what is happening without knowing the rules. And then things happen fast.
If I watch the hundred meter sprint, I kind of get it. They're aiming to run super fast. It's a relatable activity. See it in the movies. Would do it if a dog is chasing you. Swimming - crocodile chasing you.
Javelin, they're chucking a spear really far - not so useful now, but I get it. People used to do that to fight or hunt.
Others, like pole vault or weight lifting or gymnastics etc, have spectacle appeal.
Now we come to fencing. I see two guys with what look somewhat like swords. A bit floppier, but I get they're not going to a real sword. They face off apart from each other. They look poised.
All of this, so far, is not dumb. I get this. This is mimicking a sword fight. Like boxing is mimicking a fist fight. I feel suspense. I am ready to see this fight play out.
Then they rush into each other and stab and get stabbed as if the swords were pool noodles.
This is now clearly a dumb activity with no real world parallel, and there's also no spectacle since they're just poking or slapping each other with floppy little sticks. Not so entertaining.
Basically, unlike say boxing, there's a distinct lack of hurt. Fight sports must include hurt of some kind to not appear dumb.
My opinion is this could be rectified quite simply - raise the costs of getting hit, until the fight looks real. If a stab to the torso meant you're out of the competition, even if you stab them first, the whole thing would adjust immediately to stop looking dumb.
So they could restructure the point system until the behaviour of the contestants was clearly trying to avoid getting stabbed (as if that were actually painful or deadly) while trying to stab the other person.
More substantial swords that spectators can actually see would help too. Make the saber actually a saber.
Or, “I prefer sports which uninterested parties can easily understand.” Nothing you’ve said speaks to objective entertainment value.
Someone getting punched and falling down - immediately clear who's winning, makes sense. Ball gets kicked in a net - immediately clear, makes sense.
Common knowledge of sword fighting, albeit coming from movies, is: if you get stabbed by a sword, that's bad. You're not winning. And yet in fencing, they get stabbed and then some lights appear and they have "won" somehow.
What I personally prefer is only relevant to the extent you will feel better about your day if you believe you have beaten a stream of text on the internet. What matters is what's universally true, and obviously it's universally true that for spectators to enjoy watching something their ability to understand it is a factor.
Top performance in Greco Roman wrestling is harder than in WWE. 10m rifle/pistol is harder than IPSC. Formula 1 is harder than monster truck races. Marathon is harder than wife-carrying, though for sure the opposites are much more spectacular.
Everything is about context.
Football is more entertaining than fencing?
Go to a Sunday local game against two amateur teams where the only attendance is you and one of the player's uncle and you have to stay standing up next to the field while its pouring rain.
Then go to a fencing contest with 100+ people in attendance, music and a great speaker.
Now tell me which one looks more entertaining?
I used to think like you, until I watched big darts tournaments and curling with a great speaker. It went from "uh, who watches darts? it's stupid!" to "quiet, I'm watching darts!".
That's also why, depending on the country, popular sports are not the same, because they developped a culture and know how to make it entertaining.
Fencing is hard to follow because its fast and movements are subtle.
> If someone wants to spend their time seeing how far they can throw a stick, cool, but they shouldn't be surprised they're waking up to an empty bank account every day.
But if someone wants to see how well they can kick a ball its somehow worth paying them?
The biggest factor here is that team sports are brandable and build brand loyalty in a way individual sports cannot.
See the Night of 10k PB’s in London as an example of an event done right, even if it’s just watching people run 25 laps.
What brings in viewers isn't a predictable measure of much. Like the weather forecast, you're not going to have much more than vague generalisations each season - and they can turn out very wrong.
It could happen to fencing as well or any other random sport with enough luck.
There are 6 football games with higher viewership than the 2002 Olympic ski jumping.
Also, viewers per year would be a better metric, one single event with a lot of viewer probably gives you less ad revenue than an event every week with half the viewers.
They're looking at a different set of TV stations.
For example, if you use your right hand, it's over to quickly.
Which, if anything, is great a case for instant replay and slo-mo.
Football is often also quite hard to follow, but it brings in so much money that we've just solved that problem with technology.
Some dudes running and kicking a ball from left to right for 90+ minutes? They’re not even allowed to fight…
From all the sports this is certainly one of the most boring ones.
Would be great if they wound back all the dainty fouls stuff though. Bring back two leg slide tackles etc. But they did all that precisely because the sport got so popular - costs of multi million dollar players getting legs broken wasn't acceptible.
Example: In China, table tennis is king.
Germany has the strongest table tennis league in Europe, and yet mainstream media mostly ignores it. Even the second and third soccer leagues get more media attention. If you ask me, most of soccer is very boring, players safely passing the ball back and forth, looking for openings. Somewhere between 0 and 5 goals in 90 minutes, if you see the 3 to 10 most interesting minutes, you haven't missed anything. How exciting /s.
If we care about Olympic games, and maybe even medal rankings, we'd do well to discard notions that some forms of sport being more or less interesting based on cultural and personal preferences.
So athletes are basically diplomats.
Athletes are not like diplomats, they're like warriors, except there's no killing.
This, I met the daughter of a colleague who was one of the UK Olympian rowers/crew and after I fed her and got her 2 drinks in she started telling me what her 'off-season' activities consisted of: her father as much as he tried could only afford to pay a fraction of her training costs and living expenses and they were well off land owners from Cornwall.
She basically got her Captains lisc and took the affluent people from the City on everything from booze cruises, to hen nights in the English channel to France etc...
The debauchery was obscene and made her witness some of the darkest aspects of humanity to pursue this dream she had, which was admirable in a way, but I knew that after a few years when she got really injured, or aged out or the money simply ran dry this would be her REAL life.
OF wasn't a thing back then, but I wonder if given the choice she would prefer the choice of uploading anon sexy feet pics or babysitting people go into drunk or coke fueled stupors where she is psychically restraining people from falling into the water while heavily intoxicated causing her to lose her license, or livelihood or at best increase her insurance rates.
Then again OF has the same problem where the top talent takes <90% of the money, and those are often managed and curated by agencies which have been dubbed the E-pimps of OF [0].
0: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/16/magazine/e-pimps-onlyfans...
Is it played worldwide? Sure, but so is volleyball. It's certainly not a culturally significant sport everywhere. I think my country has a basketball league, but I don't know literally anything about it. The only player I can recall the name of is Michael Jordan.
> is tennis (and golf, up to a point at least)
Both are sports for rich (countries) only. How many tennis players you know are from Africa?
> Cricket is played in a minority of countries, but those countries are scattered across the world so it's not exactly "regional".
You can think of the Commonwealth as a "logical region". Cricket is popular only in a couple of countries with common history.
Is it? I've never played volleyball and I never met anyone who had until I moved to my current country.
> Both are sports for rich (countries) only. How many tennis players you know are from Africa?
Fair, but that's a little different from "regional".
See, I've never played basketball or golf.
> Fair, but that's a little different from "regional".
"regional" is very vague. The point is that these sports are far from global.
I don't think this matter.
Most people have ever heard of at least one of the grand slam Tennis tournament that happens every year: Wimbledon, US Open, Rolland Garros or Australian Open. Same for Golf, in my case I can name the British and US Open. In cycling, most people not even interested in it can name the Tour de France. Everyone knows the NBA basketball league, the Soccer World Cup and a number of majors teams from the UEFA and/or their own continent.
Volleyball? I don't think there is any major tournament broadcasted and advertised all over the world. You only really hear about it during olympics alongside a number of other collective and individual sports.
... from your social / regional bubble.
I know Tennis tournaments since tennis is somewhat popular here. Golf? Nope.
> Everyone knows the NBA basketball league
I don't, apart from those 3 letters. And not because it's a popular sport around here, only because of US popular culture influence.
There are even more fringe ones which aren't particularly important under any other circumstances, but matter a lot in the Olympics: water polo (13 players), field hockey (16 players), synchronised swimming (8-10 players) etc.
When an athlete does it directly and retains the money themselves, that's a disgrace.
I'm not getting the feeling that the article is trying to say it's a disgrace, but it's aimed at that it's a disgrace that the executives are getting all the money while the athletes sees basically none of that.
Reading around, it seems like the common opinion on it, but like everyone else, I too have somewhat of a bubble so might look different in other mainstream outlets I suppose.
It really is a no brainer when you consider the investment they have to make in their bodies.
Problem with many sports is that they just don't earn enough money, which mostly is in advertising, and that doing it professionally is rather costly.
[^1]: As it is, I still dream and go to the gym every day.
Some sports overcome this by forcing the team operators to also be the facilities operators, such as the NFL, but for many others like SailGP the athletes and teams are directly competing with the venues for some of the sponsorship money. And on top of that the different sports are competing with eachother for who gets what sponsorship, as some sports or sponsors have forced exclusivity contracts, such as Pepsi had with Hendrick Motorsports in NASCAR or Mastercard had with FIFA.
And sometimes the sanctioning body responsible for the sport itself is just taking in the majority of the money and leaving the actual individual costs to the venues, teams, and athletes without ever supporting them centrally. F1, FIFA, and the NCAA did that for years.
There's plenty of money, it's just that it's not being spread around appropriately. The worst part is that it doesn't even have to be evenly for the sport and athletes to thrive, just appropriately.
The high level escort services use business jets to move good looking people into and out of Dubai. They must get paid a lot when it costs $5,000 and $8,000 per hour to move them around. Eastern European athletes are over-represented but there are many westerners as well.
Dubai is the Vegas for ultra rich "What happens in Dubai stays in Dubai."
You can't eat "more satisfying way to live for the soul", and if you can't convince people to sponsor your endeavors, then you'll have to get a job that produce goods/services people are willing to pay for, like most other people.
It's although very hard to just find something else, that gives you the same satisfaction as your favourite "past-time" - the only job that is as good as doing sport, is sport as a job.
But on the other hand, if you were to go watch a launch from SpaceX, You will find that there's already a crowd being inspired, experiencing joy, and it absolutely brings people together. So why not work more on that and less on sports?
You go find me a Space X launch in some of the countries that produce, say, top footballers. In those countries, then go find me a robust educational infrastructure. You won't find the educational resources for one to become a top aerospace engineer or astrophysicist in say, Ghana or Mali.
Sports are popular because enjoying them either by playing or watching doesn't require a ton of brain power.
Let people enjoy what they want, who are you (or I) to judge?
>> I'd love to see that energy and drive rewarded and respected by society like self-actualization mattered, not just the next paycheck.
FTFY.
Let's not be condescending to athletic pursuit. Is that drive and passion really any different to the fuel of many a start-up hustler who, when their funding ran out, didn't really manage to change the world, with neither disruptive business model nor novel technical developments to show for it? Are they really so different from publish-or-perish academics toiling on some obscure edge of human knowledge which is more likely to either be a dead end or a small brick on which a cathedral of a grand discovery will be built upon rather than being THE paradigm-shifting, theory-unifying, revolutionary thesis?
Let's not be condescending to athletic pursuit because it's "just" entertainment. For a lot of people that struggle for faster, higher, stronger is inspiration, just as the early days of AirBnB/Facebook/Google is spoken of in hallowed tones in all-hands meetings, start-up mixers, and conferences, as motivation. Yeah, the ethics of the hustle might be questionable but fact of the matter is, at the end of the day, we all need heroes to look up to to some extent.
If code can be poetry then surely so can a gutsy maneuver, a clever tactic, or a sonofabitching Hail Mary of an opportunistic play. Sports---just as science, math, business, or literature---are narratives of struggle, human ingenuity, and achievement.
(Yes obviously there are extreme and very visible edge cases, but 99.999% of things normal people get paid to do is something valuable for their neighbor)
I do not see the virtue in athletics given that being an entertainer, and being powerful and fit are intrinsically rewarding enough. I'd much rather we were funding musicians and artists, but only a fraction of funding goes to these in comparison to the behemoth that is sports.
No, they don't. The olympics in particular have been shown not to have any sort of lasting effect on host countries or the world in general.
AFAICT this whole thing is a fallacy dreamt up as part of the justification for spending billions on games.
My intuition is that you will find a small and decreasing number of people agree with or believe this
Consider the counterfactual. In order for it to be true that many people are paid for work that isn't valuable, it'd have to be true that many people are willingly parting with their money for no reason at all.
That does happen, of course, and it's so special we think highly of people when they do it (it's called charity).
Just because people can't reason about the transmission of value throughout a complex economy doesn't mean it's not happening. In fact that's the beauty of currency and market economies: it doesn't need to be comprehensible to anyone outside of the transaction.
By analogy, good engines produce power. A speedometer measures the engine's power under a set of conditions. However, a speedometer is not (by itself) a good way to measure an engine because there are other factors you care about. The fact that a speedometer is a bad measure of engine power does not mean that engine power is unimportant or bad.
If I said, "high max speed means good engine," or "high GDP means economy is working well," your comment would be relevant.
I did not say that. I said "the overwhelming majority of transactions in an economy are of mutual benefit to the transactors."
Consider FooCorp paying an advertiser to convince people to buy its gizmos rather than the market leader Bar Inc.'s widgets. This is then followed by Bar Inc. paying the same advertiser to convince the same people to go back to buying widgets again. Each transaction is to the benefit of both the advertiser and the respective manufacturer, but taken together leaves the world in the same state as it was to begin with. No value was created. In fact, value was destroyed (the opportunity cost of labor by the advertiser).
An example of a transaction that is not to the mutual benefit of the transactors, yet increases value is the levying of fines against behavior which has externalized costs greater than their internalized gains. The fine is not to the benefit of the party it is levied against, but the effect of deterring negative-total-value behavior is equivalent to creating value.
I'm not convinced >99% of people's jobs are of the value-creating kind but it's certainly well above 50%. Several of the largest companies in our industry are arguably of the negative value kind. Insurance companies that accept premiums but deny legitimate claims certainly are.
A landlord or a holder of IP can and will arrange deals that have negative value for society because of the fact it attracts monetary value for them.
A client paying for a service, is this done 'willingly' when it is needed and no other choice exists? If someone wants to compete, can they navigate the moats companies are so fond of?
Agreed on landlords -- this is a rather unique but huge failure case. My comment history is full of harping on this particular point :)
> A client paying for a service, is this done 'willingly' when it is needed and no other choice exists?
Yeah obviously you can do the work yourself.
Who cares there's no money in it? Lots of things that have been corrupted with money are also hardly worth pursuing.
By that standard if survival means that we have to return to child sacrifice or something else so heinous then I guess engaging in anything but is also privileged.
These people are pursuing the survival of their souls. If you lose that, you cannot regain it. And time is not an athlete’s friend. You can always make money. It’s not going anywhere.
This is not the case for most Olympians, because even for sports that are not attracting large amounts of visitors and viewers and therefore sponsorships, you still basically need to dedicate your life to it.
You don't need to dedicate your life to writing code unless you are working for an early-stage startup or Elon Musk. So you have spare time which you can use to write code.
Like decreasing quality of life for everybody through ad-tech.
These are Olympic athletes, they are on the extreme edge.
Some of their focus comes from just being naturally talented at their activity. I am really focused on coding, b/c I have a natural affinity to working with computers, but that doesn't mean I can focus on gymnastics.
Oh darn that's good that nursing school is free then!/s
> I'd love to see that energy and drive [...]
I'm a former professional athlete in a marginalized sports. Sadly never made it to Olympia. I learned that energy and drive by doing my sport, and I wasn't "born" with it (well, maybe with the genes, but it's something one has to learn IMHO). I think I am now what I am thanks to doing sports for more than 5 year as my main activity (in terms of invested time) and maybe 10 years as secondary activity.
Money was always tight, and I was happy to leave my sport with a "black zero" on my bank account. I never did it for the money, but I'm happy to not ran into bankrupcty just for my dream. And that's what I hope is the minimum for every athlete.
I'm an absolute middling athlete. In my 40s. Half a life spent at a desk. And then I picked up a bit of running/cycling as one does. And joined a local club, and became absolutely inspired by the people of all ages at the club entering competitions, doing big feats of endurance. Just for the love of the sport, or the thrill of achieving something difficult.
I'm still a middling athlete but now one that makes sure to fit in a bit of exercise each week and continues to make solid progress. So even if you haven't won any medals, you've likely inspired someone into making changes for the better.
it matters to them; who cares whether it matters to you?
The Soviet Union used to give the award "Hero of Socialist Labour" to top performers in the labour force, and public spaces everywhere had billboards celebrating local labour performers.
Could you name any top labourer in your region, your country or the world? Any certain factory worker that comes to mind?
Like, if your hobby is throwing a disc as far as you can, have fun. But don't expect many people to pay to watch right?
But people pay a whole lot to see nice bodies doing sexual stuff. So since money comes from what other people value, no need for a surprised Pikachu face.
It’s just a fraction of a cent per viewer. So even with hundreds of millions of viewers it’s still barely a hundred thousand dollars to be split up between all disk throwers.
Every once in a while a Turkish guy shooting with no equipment becomes a meme, or the greatest swimmer or runner in the history of the world comes onto the scene. Newsmedia goes nuts because this sells advertising.
But then a southern girl in a 5-second viral video does 100x of that in notoriety, with no travel budget and for the production cost of a single Big Mac.
Clearly they do or NBC wouldn't pay approximately eleventy quadtrillion dollars every time the contract is up to renew. NBC makes billions on the Olympics though running advertising and advertisers are willing to pay NBC's rates therefore at least enough people care for NBC to profit massively.
They don't want to pay that much, they may not really profit from paying that much, but they can't let their competitors take the customer for free.
Nobody particularly cares, other than other people in the sport. The only reason they might show you is if you win a medal for the US.
They could all save a lot of money and it would probably be more interesting to watch.
Except that the IOC generate billions in revenue so there obviously is value to a lot of people in it somewhere. The problem as stated is that the root source of that value, ie the athletes, see very little of that revenue.
There's value in the Olympics, sure, but that value is concentrated in a handful of big-name sports. The smaller ones come along for the ride rather than generating value themselves.
Support is a two way street, and I'd rather kids grow up to be strong and able to be those supporters of others than end up a depressed lonely loser, when they could've been happy instead, because they pissed their efforts on some trivia.
I found your capitalism quip particularly amusing. I know it's just a parroting of programming from your university days, but I'm sure there's someone in a labour camp in North Korea who'd crack at least a brief smile at the idea of a poor downtrodden Olympian proletarian spending all day practicing throwing a stick because it's their passion.
Why did you ignore the fact from the article that people do pay to watch (it's one of the most watched events in the world) it's just that that money doesn't reach the athletes? Not sure which pokemon represents that
Sure, an actual clown will get paid a tad better than zero by their circus, but they don't have the upside of a potential lucrative clown shoe sponsorship deal if they win.
TL;DR: these athletes knew the deal before they went in, and shouldn't act victim when they have to show their butts on only fans because their gamble didn't land.
Where is anybody "acting" victim? Isn't choosing to open an OnlyFans and posting on it to make rent and travel money the opposite of playing victim since they're taking agency over their situation?
1) it entirely depends on the prize and the financing infrastructure around it
2) athletes can participate in other competitions besides the Olympics
They can, but almost none of them are even remotely as popular as the Olympics. The only exceptions are in massive sports (football, in the US american football, hockey, basketball; in countries like India cricket; tennis, F1). For every other sport, the Olympics are the pinnacle and nothing is even remotely comparable.
2) yeah, but who watches those? and if there's nobody watching then there's not much money in it
A quick Google search suggests that the Olympics feature about 10k athletes in summer games and 3k in winter games - 2-3 orders of magnitude more than the typical 20-30 players on staff at a soccer club. I wouldn't be surprised if the wage gap was even more crass than those numbers suggest, but it shows that major spectator sports are an entirely different game.
If you offer something for free, especially to people we now understand to often be quite poor, they're going to fill their suitcase with them.
Even if you are offering beer coasters for free, someone's going to fill their suitcase with them.
Providing free access to make sure things are happening safely is not what's 'encouraging the behaviour' here :D
"Olympians" representing their countries.
- Is your hobby "to create software"? Then you should not be paid for it. - Do you like to help peolpe? Then you should not be paid for being a doctor. - etc.
Who should earn all the money then? The owners of the TV stations, the owners of the hospitals, basically the people that does nothing and just own things. What a dystopia of a world are we creating.
That said, the "hobby" angle is irrelevant here. As the article points out, the IOC makes an absolute fuckton of money from Olympic broadcast rights and sponsors, essentially none of which flows back to the actual athletes.
A lot of it flows back into the Olympic Committees of each country, who are in charge of spreading it, investing into infrastructure, youth development, etc.
Yes, but people connected to Olympic want to be independent from governments. In some way Olympians Games are private tournaments which are sponsored by host countries.
It is funny that "Olympians" representing my country when they demands public money, but are independent from government when we are talking about organization of National Olympic Committee.
Otherwise they are private workers/entrepreneurs and as such should be paid by what their customers feel like they're worth. Creating software can be an unpaid hobby, a government job, a private job, or a personal business.
Maybe. But they don't represent the people in their countries. Paying them is not a matter of taxation, I don't care about watching sports (but I do sports) and I never watch, I don't see myself represented in any way and I am not willing to pay for the "honor" or being "represented". In the end the article is about money: who should pay, why, how much? Not the tax payer.
The people doing the jobs that no-one wants to do. The garbagemen, the plumbers, the cleaners. And/or the people who do stuff that other people value, that people will pay to have it done well rather than badly.
If you're doing something fun, something that other people would very happily do for free, then yeah you shouldn't feel entitled to get paid for it. If you're good at your hobby and people care about it, they might pay you to do it (and I'd absolutely count software development among that), but that's up to them.
Whether this can be a career depends on the specific sport.
* Music, musicians
* Publishing/journals, academics
* (and more that I can't think of right now)
* Pharma companies, US taxpayers funding basic research
* Waltons, Walmart employees
The list is endless.
I’m really hoping people are empowered to use these artificial intelligence systems to level the playing field. No idea what the likelihood of this is to happening though.
More like credit asymmetry.
capitalist system working as intended :(
Maybe, the government could make an agency that will employ them all and pay them a wage. Of course, it would only be fair that, if all the downside is taken up by the agency, then it will also get all the upside. Meaning: If any agency athlete starts raking in millions in sponsorship deals, then those millions will go to the agency, and the athlete will keep getting no more than their salary.
Or is "privatize profits, socialize losses" the place where entitlement culture is actually at, right now?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Games#Amateurism_and...
Even as things currently are, it absolutely infuriates me, that my money is taken from me involuntarily (as an involuntary license payer for public broadcasting in Germany) and given to the IOC to line the pockets of corrupt officials and further aims that I disapprove of, like overtourism and everything that surrounds the building of an olympic village etc. Every single cent's worth of transfer from my pocket to Isabel Werth's is just adding insult to injury.
They all have a free choice about whether to be an Olympian or to take a more lucrative career path. It was obvious to me even as a kid that the chances of making money as an Olympian is about as probable as making money as a singer in a rock and roll band.
I.e. a thoroughly impractical career choice.
Even worse, no matter how good you are, a random injury or getting the flu at the wrong moment will destroy your chances.
> It's making athletes entrepreneurs
Along with artists, painters, photographers, etc.
Not everyone is born capable of being an Olympic athlete and the career path of being one alongside associated opportunity costs is chosen long before the person can consciously and rationally make decisions about themselves. Also, not everyone is as bright as a kid as you.
Of course, some parents make poor decisions - but it's a free country, but not free from the consequences of bad decisions.
Or do you suggest someone else make those decisions for the kids?
They can't alter the past, but they can cut their losses now.
It will also hopefully help the next generation of potentially professional athletes.
I’m staggered how many Americans are steadfastly against socialized healthcare for all, but immediately turn to GoFundMe in desperation when their insurance tells them to take a hike.
I can’t help thinking “just do that for everyone”
[1] https://time.com/5516037/gofundme-medical-bills-one-third-ce...
That is the worst possible "healthcare" situation I can imagine.
Dozens of countries have shown you pay a lot less and get much better outcomes [1] when you just provide healthcare to everyone all the time, the same way high school, roads and street lights are provided.
Why wouldn't you want that? Why on earth would you think flying to some foreign country is a better solution?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_vs_heal...
Medical tourism is alive and well even within Europe [1]. And an entire genre of concierge medicine in America caters to rich Europeans (alongside rich Middle Easterners and Asians).
[1] https://www.magazine.medicaltourism.com/article/visegrad-cou...
Yes, the systems in America favor the rich.
Socialized healthcare is good because it doesn't mean you're tied to a job or worried about in/out network hospitals. But, care would still be rationed as it doesn't magically provide us with infinite resources.
I just like to point this out since there are very good arguments for socialized care in the US, but this isn't one of them.
The incentive for private health insurers is to raise prices and increase denial rate until people are unwilling or unable to pay. People will pay until they can't, since they don't want to die, so this can be pushed pretty far. The incentive for socialized healthcare, at least in principle, is to provide people with as much treatment as is feasible for the amount of incoming funds. In one case rationing is driven by a need to remain solvent and in the other case it's driven by profit maximization. The different incentives lead to significant differences in how people are impacted by the denials/rationing that necessarily exist in both systems.
https://www.cms.gov/marketplace/private-health-insurance/med...
Socialized healthcare is not perfect.
But it is much, much better that what the US has now. Every other developed country spends vastly less and gets much better health outcomes. [1]
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Adopt socialized healthcare now, even though it is imperfect, and then work on improving it as time goes on. That is the path to making stuff better.
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...
The obvious thing to do is move power away from the regulator and make it easier for consumers to pay directly for treatment. It works for almost everything else.
Can you provide links?
I've personally used the healthcare systems in Australia and Canada for two decades each, and also for a short time in the UK. I've never heard of this.
The treatment provided will be similar to the NHS, but with less waiting (if relevant) and nicer facilities, such as private rooms rather than shared wards in hospital.
It’s welfare for the industry.
It was big news in Singapore where parents were raising millions for their children with a rare genetic disease.
Singapore has social medicine, but it doesn’t pay for gene therapy (but it’s paid for in the US through insurance).
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/crowdfunding-r...
Then add on top all the ones I saw from surrounding SE Asian countries and it’s must add up.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Games#Amateurism_and...
There was also a prevailing concept of fairness, in which practising or training was considered tantamount to cheating.[176] Those who practised a sport professionally were considered to have an unfair advantage over those who practised it merely as a hobby.[176]
Personally I think it would be better if it was just regular joes doing the Olympics again, but state political interests kept dipping their hand into the pool to try and secure wins for some dubious political points.
Of all the things the state does having national pride in competition does not seem nefarious to me. I also love it when we win the various math/science olympiads. Means our country is still a powerhouse across the board.
Everyone's already heard of America, they don't need the marketing.
Hm, so which one is it now? If you're arguing that sex work shouldn't be stigmatized, it shouldn't matter how light or heavy it is?
-- I don't personally think that sex work should be stigmatised
-- Other people do stigmatise it, however.
-- I would like to point out to these people that what I do is analogous to a light version of sex work [and arguably any professional sportsperson sells their body one way or another - so why not this?]
He doesn't seem to state his position on whether proper sex work should be stigmatized or not, just that others think it should be.
Table tennis, for example, is basically a bunch of Chinese people battling it out for gold for their host country. Am I supposed to root for the Chinese-Australians as if they're any more representative of me than the Chinese-Canadians?
It's particularly damning that you picked two countries with almost entirely modern colonial populations.
Cf. Rhythmic gymnastics free routine is borderline but there's a whole bunch more set pieces the young women do with balls and hoops which are sport. Figure skating is also borderline but does have figures and set moves and a high physical danger factor (you try leaping high, at speed on the ice, or being lifted). Freestyle skiing doesn't belong in the Olympics.
You meant USADA, right?
Maybe parents should rethink spending hundreds of thousands in coaching, training, travel, competitions, etc. from 12-18. I always chuckle when I read about an athlete getting a college scholarship, when it is clear that they already spent 4 times that on their development to get that scholarship.
"Congratulations on becoming a Div 1 College Basketball player. You need to keep focusing on your studies, because [they break down stats that show that ~1% of even Division 1 players will make it to the NBA]."
By the logic here us programmers should never work for startups and work only for the Big Tech companies because, frankly, they pay far far better and much more stable.
By the logic here you shouldn't found companies because it's too niche. You can "make more money" being a senior product manager for Big Tech.
By the logic here we all should move to New York and go into Finance because it pays more than Tech.
And to really hammer the point home, by the logic here nobody should play High School sports or on a A/AA Farm Teams, the very farms of mediocrity that, once in a while, produce genuine greatness that go on to the AAA circuit.
Be careful disparaging niches and unprofitability because that argument can and will be made against you too.
For example, people willing to take high risks should can try working for startups, people that cannot take risks (ex: single income for a family with kids) should not. "Founding companies because it's too niche" makes no sense, we should do it as long as there is revenue to fund it. Because Finance in New York pays for than Tech means ... nothing, Tech is good enough for most people.
There is little support that sport competition is any good for humankind and Socrate argued in his days that competition had the reverse effect of making you see others as the enemy.
> "It's making athletes entrepreneurs."
Leaving aside the whole drug aspect of the Enhanced Games, at least they are committing to pay athletes properly.
Also these are the salaries of the IoC directors: https://www.sportandpolitics.de/ioc-directors-salaries-2024-...
Why? Sports are just another form of entertainment for others. Same as any other performance artist.
Who gets to choose which artists and athletes are funded?
When do we start funding them? In high-school, before? After they graduate? There are many people who identify as athletes at that age, football players, cheerleaders.
I have a 6yo son who is really good at doing various crafts and he really enjoys it, does he count as an artist?
How do we define art? Are we counting the preforming arts? Does someone playing the guitar in the subway count? What about my garage band that I have with my friends?
On the flip side, are we also going to ensure Taylor Swift has a livable wage for life? Tom Brady?
We could say we'll fund the fastest people but in all liklihood those will turn out to be people who have dedicated the most time to their sport, which is a pretty good proxy for being rich, because most people can't afford that level of time investment.
Preferably via UBI which would prevent cheating and inconsistencies and minimise the bureaucracy around it.
> When do we start funding them?
Smarter people than me have already answered this, but generally at 18 years of age or after graduation seems to be a common answer.
> I have a 6yo son who is really good at doing various crafts and he really enjoys it, does he count as an artist?
As far as I am concerned yes, he should be provided with UBI once he reaches a mature age (see earlier answer as well).
> How do we define art? Are we counting the preforming arts? Does someone playing the guitar in the subway count? What about my garage band that I have with my friends?
That's what's so great about UBI, no need for subjective/objective debates. Everyone gets it, nobody gets to gate-keep, no expensive investigations into what is art and so on. All these people are eligible for UBI.
> On the flip side, are we also going to ensure Taylor Swift has a livable wage for life? Tom Brady?
That's where the _Universal_ part of _Universal Basic Income_ makes itself reminded.
As far as my own tax burden, I pay a marginal tax rate of about 33% and would have no issue increasing that. I also think I pay too little in property taxes for my house. I am also getting a tax write-off to my loan which means I can take on a higher loan that I maybe should have (this write-off is bad on a macro scale because of the increased risk), I think that write-off should be phased out. There are also other taxes to adjust such as Tobacco taxes, VAT:s (we have four tiers today: 0, 6, 12, and 25 percent VAT depending on the type of good), Wealth taxes, Carbon taxes, and Financial taxes such as those on dividends and transactions.
However, GDP keeps going up, and many people would argue that "real" labor force participation keeps going down (e.g., bullshit service sector jobs, which mostly provide value to customers who want to feel superior to someone). At some point, UBI is going to be affordable; especially if it replaces most of the current welfare state.
Is there any other part of the math that simply doesn't work?
The biggest parts of the federal welfare budget by far are social security and medicare/medicaid. SS is simply a QBI, a UBI which is for qualified recipient instead of universal. So that's $1.4T saved, right there.
Medicare/Medicaid together are another $1.4T, and replacing them isn't automatic--a UBI high enough to cover contemporary American medical costs would be huge. I must note, though, that these exorbitant medical costs are being collectively paid by Americans anyway; if we switched to literally any other system--from Robin Hanson's "buy life insurance and medical care from the same company" to EU-style public/private insurance--we'd save enough for UBI from that alone.
The rest of welfare is comparitively penny-ante stuff--food stamps are only $120B, section 8 housing is $70B, etc. Even if we still had to provide Guaranteed Basic Food and Guaranteed Basic Housing in addition to UBI, it could still end up cheaper than our current system.
And even if it didn't, I stand by my observation that the GDP keeps going up. If we genuinely can't afford a UBI at a GDP of 27T, what about at 30T? That increase covers the entirety of the current spending on both social security and medical aid. If not at 30T, what about at 40T or 50T?
I have done no such thing. I have never said that welfare receipts "uniformly" do anything. I am just saying that SOME will not use their money wisely and our choice is either to provide them with additional benefits or let them die.
If we are going to continue to give some people the benefits we are trying to get rid of, they won't go away and more and more people will find ways to get the additional benefits.
> rather than having some sizeable minority who are simply temporarily down on their luck. Let's grant your assumption, for the sake of this argument.
The reason people need benefits is irrelevant to my argument.
> The biggest parts of the federal welfare budget by far are social security and medicare/medicaid. SS is simply a QBI, a UBI which is for qualified recipient instead of universal. So that's $1.4T saved, right there.
If we do not have SS there will be no SS tax which is what mostly funds SS. Unless you are advocating for retaining a tax for SS and not using it on SS, which is a dubious proposition.
> Medicare/Medicaid together are another $1.4T, and replacing them isn't automatic--a UBI high enough to cover contemporary American medical costs would be huge. I must note, though, that these exorbitant medical costs are being collectively paid by Americans anyway; if we switched to literally any other system--from Robin Hanson's "buy life insurance and medical care from the same company" to EU-style public/private insurance--we'd save enough for UBI from that alone.
You are saying the only way to make UBI work is to make UBI not cover everything that we are trying to replace with UBI. I mean, if that is your argument I can see how you can get the math can work...
If you want to figure out if it will actually be cheaper you have to include everything covered currently with welfare. If you don't do that we really can't have any sort of actual comparison.
Also, there are more reasons than just the way insurance is set up causing high costs that won't magically go away because of a change to an EU style system.
> The rest of welfare is comparitively penny-ante stuff--food stamps are only $120B, section 8 housing is $70B, etc. Even if we still had to provide Guaranteed Basic Food and Guaranteed Basic Housing in addition to UBI, it could still end up cheaper than our current system.
Interesting that you are now using the phrase "could still end up cheaper than our current system.". You seemed so positive before that it would and now you don't seem so certain.
> And even if it didn't, I stand by my observation that the GDP keeps going up. If we genuinely can't afford a UBI at a GDP of 27T, what about at 30T? That increase covers the entirety of the current spending on both social security and medical aid. If not at 30T, what about at 40T or 50T?
I don't think anybody is saying we can't afford UBI. The US could give everybody $1 and it would be UBI. The problem is providing enough money to replace the welfare system without messing up the costs of things or causing people to not work.
I'm all for trying something, but I think that something should be a negative income tax rather than UBI to prevent any negative incentives that come with UBI.
> If we are going to continue to give some people the benefits we are trying to get rid of, they won't go away and more and more people will find ways to get the additional benefits.
Yes, means-testing is the enemy, and reducing the administrative burden of welfare is most of the cost savings that UBI offers.
Still, even if we can't reform American healthcare at all, reducing means testing to just medical care would be huge. After all, you're now testing for the severity and expense of the medical condition itself, not for income or assets--and to falsify that, a welfare recipient would need an MD to commit blatant fraud.
> Interesting that you are now using the phrase "could still end up cheaper than our current system.". You seemed so positive before that it would and now you don't seem so certain.
You may be confusing me with other UBI advocates. I never claimed UBI would be cheaper than the current system.
> I'm all for trying something, but I think that something should be a negative income tax rather than UBI to prevent any negative incentives that come with UBI.
Have you looked at the incentives described by, say, the Adam Smith institute? They describe a negative income tax as incentivizing more participation in the labor market by poor people, due to the lower marginal tax rate: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/nit-or-ubi-that-is-the-econom...
Provide livable wages to athletes and artists who represent your country (i.e., Olympians and national performers/artists). Fund development programs from as early as possible; this means grassroots efforts like summer camps, higher-level contests/tournaments, providing funds for national and international exposure, and providing for easy access to decent gear, among others. A lot of the participants in these programs wouldn't do this for life---won't make it to the Olympics or to the National Opera---but it will do a lot of other things like keep children off the streets and, not to mention, develop other skills/connections that could still come in useful later in life. If anything, sports could give them a love for exercise which, I heard recently, is the most potent medical intervention.
And yes, your son is an artist as long as he imagines himself to be. Ideally he has access to these development programs that could pave the way for him to a professional art career if he's so determined.
Your garage band is an artist group; what you may not be is a professional artist group. Same goes for the subway busker.
Speaking of which, when you went to the flip side, you kinda went from oranges to, not quite apples but lemons. Professionals like Swift and Brady should be far far less the taxpayer's concern compared to Olympians and other amateurs.
Who is in this group?
>On one hand you want to provide livable wages to your athletes, but Canada just registered a deficit of 62 billions. Cuts are coming and more money to Olympians will be put up against funding for healthcare, education, etc... At some point you have to make hard decisions.
and my question of where this money will come from.
The initial discussion did not specify a set of "Athletes and artists who represent your country (i.e., Olympians and national performers/artists)" although it cold be argued it was inferred due to the topic being Olympians. However, since Artists are part of the thread and I am not aware of any Olympic medals for things traditional considered art i.e. painting, sculpture, I decided it would be a good topic of discussion.
I like a lot of your answer but you ran into the same obstacle that I did when considering this: >Provide livable wages to athletes and artists who represent your country (i.e., Olympians and national performers/artists).
>Professionals like Swift and Brady should be far far less the taxpayer's concern
Swift and Brady are athletes who represent the country; Swift explicitly when she does international tours, while Brady has international appeal as well bringing the NFL outside of the USA(if you disagree, substitute Brady with Micheal Jordan or Babe Ruth)(https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/33007604/my-michael-jord...).
>compared to Olympians and other amateurs.
This is where I was having the most trouble, as I can not find a way to draw a distinction between say Brady and Michael Phelps; both have a large amount of natural talent but they both had to train intensively every day. The only difference is the sport that Brady engaged in is a national league that who's bidding process drives up the athlete's pay.
It gets even harder when you try to do the analysis for artists, Maurizio Cattelan(famous conceptualist, who's works include a golden toilet and banana taped to the wall)(net worth 5 million) or Phillip Glass(composer)(net worth 35 million)
>“While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. ‘But you’re Philip Glass! What are you doing here?’ It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. ‘But you are an artist,’ he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish.”.
We want to support these people when they need it but that is before they rise to fame. Once they do, they generally don't need the support. But sometimes they do...take the number of "professional" NBA, NFL, etc that spend their money unwisely and are bankrupt as soon as they are unable to play sports.
The guy stamping metal parts at a factory has to work an hour more, because you want to take part of his income and hand it to someone doing his/her hobby.
Talk about hard decisions and belt-tightening is ludicrous until North America changes it's all-war, all-the-time politics.
Well, except an actual relationship.
Canada isn't one of those countries though lol.
It's about Platformization (+ Datafication + Finacialization). When Platform Capitalism the book came out, feels like a decade ago, literally everyone agreed its Unsustainable. Its not just about how well your mindless dumbfuck platform milks the consumer and producer simultaneously. Its about all the Platforms doing it simultaneously across every single sector you look at.
Just look at GDP by sector, and ask yourself which sector hasn't been platformized?
Sooner or later the only option on the table for Govt will be to ask China how they handled Jack Ma.
It wouldn't be the stupedist, and some forms are probably pretty physically demanding (can't really comment based on first person experience since I don't view it).
Personally, I find the whole competitive sports industry to be a giant waste of time and money.
For poelpe practicing the sports, most probably bring physical benefits. For the 99.999% who just watch it on TV, what's the point really?
If someone likes sports, they should go out and play them...
Maybe they can also eat while running and having sex. Might as well.
In the pole vault event, they could try to eat a hot dog in mid air before landing on top of another naked person.
Capitalism is great, it feeds billions, but it shouldn’t be lost on anyone that we can provide generational wealth to anyone who can produce beans a bit better, while the transcendental has pitiful returns. On one hand, we need beans. On the other, it sure is nice to transcend from time to time.
Over all I think it’s wildly important we’re slanted towards the mundane, but next time you see a poor artist or a talented young athlete: put some money in the hat.
I'd also apply the same thought to North American arts and sports. Singing about hoes and bling, while clutching your testicles or ring fighting hardly feed the soul.
The Olympians should get proper state funding. They do inspire.
Nobody is turning to OnlyFans "due to a broken system". All the people in the comments here have normal jobs, so could these athetes.
OnlyFans is a choice here.
You ever think we should just cut out the middlemen? Skip the governments, the international organizations, the television networks, and get back to the basic principle of fit naked people doing fit naked things in front of an admiring audience.
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But after reading the article, looks like the IOC is raking in the big bucks and exploiting all athletes. No surprise there since I and maybe everyone believes the IOC nothing but a corrupt organization.