How the Olympics rotted Greece | Hacker News Reader

How the Olympics rotted Greece

politico.eu

21 pointsmarkmassie12 comments

The Olympics wrecked Greece like Gordon Ramsay wrecks the restaurants he visits on kitchen nightmares.

If you're struggling and you plan a big flashy show to save your economy, and it doesn't work, all your problems don't suddenly become the fault of the big flashy show you planned to fix them.

> like Gordon Ramsay wrecks the restaurants he visits on kitchen nightmares.

What's the evidence for this?

The OP is saying that Gordon Ramsay isn't to blame for whatever happens to restaurants after he leaves. The big show might not save Greece or the restaurant, but the original issue is not the big show's fault.

Every couple months it seems like I see another Facebook or Reddit post with the stat that 90% of the restaurants featured on kitchen nightmares go under within a year of their episode airing. As if a show that focuses on failing restaurants is somehow to blame when those restaurants fail.

It seemed like a good comparison for Greece and what they tried to do with the Olympics.

The article states that greek debt is $349 billion and that the Olympics totaled around $7 billion. The premise of this article is flawed.

Totally agree with this. The Greek culture goes way back and perhaps the original Olympic games in 776 BC is a better starting point to understand the context. Greece should have never been allowed in Euro zone - it was forced in part through politics, part through accounting cheating and now is the aftermath.

Agreed.

Also, the author's sub-headline asks whether to blame the IOC then points how the olympics costing doesn't include incremental infrastructure projects -- which likely would've happened without the olympics, just not as fast, as is the case with most olympics[1].

From what I remember, Athens was one of the best executed, efficient olympics ever. Unfortunately, attendance was low as the timing of the Iraq War made travel undesirable.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Summer_Olympics#Costs

> The IOC could solve the problem of where to stage its increasingly costly Games (and provide a helping hand to Greece) by putting the Games permanently in Athens.

Not a great article, but I totally agree with the conclusion. The Summer Olympic Games should be held every four years in Athens. Why move it around the world? Greece is the perfect location.

I honestly don't understand why any country would want to hold the olympics, unless they already have the vast majority of the infrastructure in place, it's just such a mind-bogglingly expensive proposition.

Why, again, would Boston want 2024?

Poor leadership tends to make bad decisions.

Here's a relevant chart: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1b/HellenicOecon...

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