Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
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.
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i see the word "elites" being thrown around a lot in this debate, and i think it would be interesting to see how the vote broke down in terms of socioeconomic lines, because i know plenty of 'elites' that voted against the olympic bid
it is my feeling that the last olympics here was truly a grassroots effort and not some event that only appealed to the rich.... and i believe that was also the case with vancouver; the sheer amount of volunteers required to host such an event requires a broad cross section of the population.
finally, the Bidco played the populist trump card, which was all about jobs and potential spinoff benefits to the economy, and 'getting our share of money from the corrupt provincial and federal governments'... nothing more populist and non-elite than that kind of messaging quite frankly.