Quote:
Originally Posted by RogerWilco
Highly unlikely, this City is unable to do much that is meaningful any more. At some point the majority of Calgary’s population became a colective group of people with limited vision. It’s a long cry from the City many of us were born in. It’s not just the the Olympic vote, it pretty much everything . This City is dying a slow death.
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This isn't a Calgary thing - almost all Olympic plebiscites these days fail. Are Munich, Davos, Krakow, Oslo, Budapest, Innsbruck, Bern, and Boston all on their way to becoming Detroit?
Voters in mature democracies are increasingly distrustful and alienated from the elites who organize and participate in these events. For citizens anxious about the future of core government services like pensions and health care, spending billions for two weeks of watching affluent young adults doing snowboard tricks - or facilities for affluent young adults to practice getting better at doing snowboard tricks - seems like a frivolous way to spend limited government resources. Especially when the event is run by an organization with a toxic brand like the IOC (it's telling that even in the IOC's home of Davos, 60 per cent voted against hosting the games).
These sorts of prestige mega events no longer have broad public support. Here or elsewhere. In the future, hosts will almost exclusively be authoritarian states that don't have to worry about public budgets and popular support.