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Feb. 16, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

07:35

1585 Brawn Porn - The Truth About the Olympics (audio to a video)

The true costs of watching rich kids play in the snow... From Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web

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	Hi everybody, it's Devan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio.
	This is my Olympic special.
	It's true news, brawn, porn, rich dicks on ice.
	Time for a few sensible, reality-based and cautionary facts about the Olympics.
	The Olympics, of course, is always sold to the captive citizenry as a way to make money, as if somehow your tax is being siphoned out of your wallet and your children's futures and going to developers and athletes and IOC executives is somehow going to make you richer.
	Well, of course, it's not true at all.
	No modern games has ever made a red cent.
	It costs a staggering amount of money to run Olympic games, and we'll put some figures up so you can just enjoy them.
	Now, what they do is they inflate the returns and they deflate the costs.
	This Enron-style accounting is how they sell the games to, again, the captive citizenry.
	Past games, past Olympic games, have been complete fiscal disasters, and people have been paying it off, the citizens of the towns or the cities, have been paying off these debts, sometimes for decades or more, and of course the people who've made the profits are long gone, the athletes are probably in retirement, and still the hapless people who weren't even born when the games were going on are continuing to pay the debts of playtime for the rich kids of the Masters.
	For instance, U.S. taxpayers paid a grand total of $625,000 in subsidies for the athletes at Salt Lake City.
	Not the U.S. athletes, mind you.
	All the athletes.
	The money from the Olympic subsidies and the charges go to the well-connected.
	They go to the well-connected.
	Why does the government do anything?
	Because it wants to create a splash.
	It wants to distract the citizenry with the tried-and-true methods of bread and circuses, welfare and stupid, retarded, dumbass entertainment.
	And they want to take the money through the creation of an empty-headed patriotic fervor.
	They want to take the money that is then hoovered out of the citizens' pockets, usually in the future.
	And they want to give it to the well-connected.
	So it's all about backroom deals.
	It's as usual, and this has been pointed out many, many times by some very perceptive left-wing critics, such as Noam Chomsky.
	And what they say is that things are built at the expense of the public purse and then transferred to private hands for additional profiteering.
	And that is a very, very common process in this mercantilist, corporatist state fascism that we're currently groaning under, but which fortunately is on its last legs and hopefully which won't take us with it.
	Now, I'm always asked to add a little Canadian content, eh?
	So I will. In Canada, Olympic athletes get about $200 million a year in subsidies.
	That's quite a lot of money.
	And, you know, I hate to pull the race card, particularly as I am Casper, the friendly talking philosopher, but you say, look, I was watching the downhill skiing, the mogul skiing.
	You know, not a lot of brothers out there.
	This is, of course, all rich kids, because in order to compete in these Winter Olympics, which are all very expensive to compete in, and, you know, just before, just sort of by the by, before everybody tells me, oh, you hate sports!
	I love sports, and I'm quite a sportsman in my own way.
	I competed in In swimming, in running, in water polo, I play tennis, I play squash, I lift weights.
	I love sports myself.
	Volleyball, beach volleyball in particular is a great favorite of mine.
	I love sports. I just recognize sports for what they are.
	It's a goddamn hobby. Not a career where I have to get other people to pay for my whims at gunpoint.
	But you see all these kids and, oh, we all started skiing at the age of two and my dad is a ski instructor and they were able to afford the thousands of dollars a year and to have the time to jet me all around and build up my career and they knew how to apply for all these subsidies and so on.
	This is all playtime for rich kids.
	And hey, nothing wrong with rich kids.
	I hope that my daughter will grow up wealthy someday.
	This is not something that we want to get the poor to subsidize as the playgrounds of the rich.
	It's really quite embarrassing to look at.
	Sports as a whole would not exist at all in its current configuration without massive, blinding subsidies from the state.
	In the 20th century, just in America alone, more than 20 billion dollars has been spent on major league ballparks and stadiums and arenas, 14.7 billion on government subsidies to sports, and these are just The direct subsidies, there are many, many more indirect costs that have accrued to taxpayers as a result of sports.
	And here's the thing that I find particularly galling about these rich dicks on ice is Every time you see them at the end of the race or they get interviewed or people say, you know, how did you get here and all that, they all thank their parents.
	They all thank, you know, their own dedication.
	They thank their coaches. They thank their supporters.
	They thank their fans. They thank their friends.
	They thank their siblings. They thank their fucking duck.
	But you know what I have never, ever seen a subsidized, a taxpayer subsidized athlete ever?
	What I would ever do is thank the taxpayer.
	That's unthinkable. You see in the Olympics, this event is brought to you by X corporation or X company.
	This is nonsense. The whole mess is brought to you by taxpayers at the point of a game.
	The whole confused mess is brought to you by taxpayers at the point of the gun, most of whom aren't even born yet, who will continue to pay off the debts for these rich kids to go around and play in the snow.
	And that to me is shameful.
	And it's not so much shameful that the ruling class doesn't thank the tax slaves for building them pretty courses to play around in.
	What is embarrassing is seeing all of the taxpayers cheering them on.
	It's like watching cows, you know, cheering off the rich kids as they fly away, subsidized by the milk taken from the cows so the cows' own kids go hungry.
	If you've lost your job, if you are having a tough time finding a job, if you're finding things economically crumbling, if your debt is mounting, if the value of your family house is falling, it's not all because of the Olympics, but it's because of the principle behind the Olympics.
	Please, for the love of all that's holy, for the sake of your children's future, please stop cheering the ruling class as they gouge you for their own fun, profit and entertainment.
	Please, please stop cheering.
	Empty suits who happen to be close to you.
	Please stop cheering political and geographic proximity, the mere accident of one person's birth over another person's birth.
	We've got to outgrow this stuff, people as a species.
	We've got to outgrow it.
	We've got to, got to, got to!
	Because while you're watching the rich kids play, they have one hand reaching for a medal, they have another hand deep inside the pockets and futures of you and your children.

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