Jay laments below that the Boston bid — and possibly the U.S. bid, period — for the 2024 Olympics has been abandoned. A country as great as the U.S. should regularly host the Summer Olympics, which it now will go at least 28 years without doing, and do so eagerly, right, rather than bowing out? Jay asks.
It’s a good question. A few answers:
‐ I’m less convinced that the U.S. shouldn’t host the Olympics than that Boston probably shouldn’t. The L.A. games were a great achievement – they didn’t lose money — in large part because the city didn’t need new venues and had a massive tax base. Boston would and doesn’t. (The only summer host cities of comparable size to Boston going back thirty or so years have been Montreal and Athens; Boston is admittedly much richer than they are.)
‐ Other countries have many more big cities that do need new venues, decent housing, and transport. As a general rule, many of the countries interested in the Games these days are still building wholly new infrastructure; the U.S. is maintaining, improving, and modernizing it. The Olympics is a terrible way to do this.
‐ The case for an Olympics bid, at least here in the U.S., isn’t made on national or regional or municipal pride — it’s usually based on the bogus claim that a pollyannaish plan either won’t cost taxpayers a dime or provide big long-term returns for the city. (By, for instance, leaving behind new, useful transit routes, which is almost by definition unlikely, since commuters aren’t spectators.) If people want to host a huge, brand-burnishing party with taxpayer money and at public inconvenience, that’s fine. Advocates refuse to admit that’s what this is.
‐ The cost of winning a bid to host the Summer Olympics has risen dramatically, in part because newly wealthy undemocratic or just Third World regimes are spending big to show off. Sometimes their grand central-planning schemes work; the ones surrounding the Olympics tend not to. This kind of behavior make us envious in the short term (look at the Birds Nest!) but is nothing to covet in the long term (look at the Birds Nest). Is the Olympics worth getting in a bidding war over, when we’ve got a lot of other more important things to get right?
‐ Other countries are dropping out of the bidding war. It’s not just the U.S. that is losing interest: Other rich countries have, too, although the drop-off in interest has been more dramatic in the Winter Olympics than the Summer.
Now, is there a sensible way for U.S. cities to host the Olympics? Certainly. Even cities like Boston could probably, in theory, do it. But conservatives recoil at most large public projects because most are ill-conceived, costly, and wasteful — and dishonest about their ends. The Boston plan, hastily constructed and barely studied, was shaping up true to form. We — politicians, private sponsors, and the USOC – can do better. I’d certainly like us to.