"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.