Why do "modern" societies accept these kinds of festivities, with all what is surrounding them?
You get the same effect when, for example, governments subsidise an industry such as agriculture. A tiny group benefits (and lobbies for this to continue) but the cost to the rest of society is individually quite small, for example in Europe around EUR 5-10/person/week.
and your individual power to affect things is even smaller than that.
Add to that that corrupting a multi-billion project results in the huge payoff to the participants where is successfully defending a project against corruption results in no payoff to the ones fighting against the corruption. Thus money and power is on the side of the former.
The question can be widen to 'Why do "modern" society still include organized crime, poor working conditions, bribery and so on'.
The non glamorous, pragmatic answer is that these people turn to these "out of the system" groups for things that are not possible or acceptable within the official set of rules. When will we have a "modern" society where people don't try to circumvent society rules ? Well...
Actually, we could view it as hacking around morality and social rules. And we know some people will always have an itch for hacking things.
Thus "good society" is a public good (at least when the society is governed by a democratic state), and like any public good, it is prone to being underproduced.
What the major news outlets reports on also has a big influence here, and coverage of the olympics also tends to focus on the athletes, not on the olympic committee. As a result, I'm pretty sure what goes into creating the olympics generally ranks pretty far down on the list of people's priorities.
We do not, for whatever reason, act on the information we have.
Example: A documentary was widely watched here showing child labor and dangerous conditions involved in obtaining the materials for mobile phone components.
Do you think this changed the purchasing patterns of those who use mobile phones and watched the program?
You have to actually give people ethical alternatives before they're able to meaningfully change their buying habits. "Fair trade" is a real thing for many products, as well as labor and environmental certification (eg, UTZ).
Not everyone will care, but that number is certainly more than zero. The problem is that all major electronics manufacturers are some degree of awful.
Start with a municipality or country leader looking for ways to cement their "legacy." The leader will identify projects in which their name will can be associated to keep them in the forefront of the people using the people's monies. Be it fixed rail, stadium construction for a private team, or putting on an Olymipic event, the leader needs to fulfill their desire to do something.
Once the project, let us use the Olympics, are whispered as a possibility, an exploratory probe is performed; probes can cost anywhere from $100,000 to $1,000,000 as they include analyses of existing facilities and requirements. Elected officials are excited because there is a remote possibility that the Olymipics could be hosted and sign off on the small funds. Bidding takes a couple of million to draw up plans for the facility deficiencies and shuttle the IOC team around the city; the leader gets to hob nob with the IOC team, press photos, other elected officials get to bask in the glow from local newspaper reports. After the national selection, your city needs to be selected to represent the nation, you move on to global selection committee. Repeat the process and you are looking at $16 million dollars for a successful bid, Salt Lake City was the last American Olympic bid I could find.
If you cannot finance this undertaking you need to find investors willing to finance the program; criminal rings are perfect as they can provide liquid assets and assist with the process by leaning on their contacts.
The risk management for the criminal entities:
* Failure to achieve Olympics, still have a leader to approach when the organization needs assistance with an issue, good result
* Success to achieve Olympics, the leader has favored companies to go to for projects during the bid construction process, further cementing the organizations grip, great result.
The United States has the funds at the federal level to contribute to the Olympic proposals after selection is won.
Reference: I was a periphery in the bidding process.
Is it possible that the people on the FIFA and Olympic committees reflect the country and society they inhabit?
Also remember that the original budget for the games was £2Bn, this spiralled to £10Bn at least. Where did that money go?
I'm only aware of the £10b estimate. The places that was spent can be explored here: http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jun/13/olympic...
In the modern media cycle anything that is not actively pushed into view is hidden.
- What is going on with ebola? Did the epidemic suddenly stopped.
- What is going on with CIA torture?
- What is going on with the jet shot over Ukraine ...
And these are big ticket items that got lots of coverage. The terrible working conditions in Quatar for the world cup has been thoroughly exposed. People read, are shocked and forget.
For a news to be hidden today - you don't need to actively cover up - just to find something else for the attention of the public for the time being.
http://www.esquire.com/_mobile/blogs/food-for-men/olympic-ju...
We're pretty limited beings :).
I think there are two possible reasons :
1. There is big conspiracy between organized crime and governments on a worldwide level, which conclude in mutual help ( government <-> organized crime )
2. The rate of bribes and illegal business deals are overrated by media and actually there isn't such a thing as "massive corruption practices".
Those both reasons are part of what I figured out as the "conspiracy paradox", which ( ironically ) is again based on two statements :
1. There isn't any large conspiracy theory existing, because there is a statistically significant change of a whistleblower to come out and speak about that.
2. Statement 1 is equally true ( Edward Snowden ) and false ( Other unrevealed whistleblowers ).