[HeavenFox]

Tone aside, she is not wrong though. At this point, there are only two groups of people who are clearly incentivized for the Olympics to happen: the IOC, which would lose all the revenue; and the athletes who would "age out" for the 2024 games. Why should an entire city, even an entire country, bear the cost for just a few?

[Danieru]

> Why should an entire city, even an entire country, bear the cost for just a few?

Are you imaging some form of refund on the billions in infrastructure spending? Japan has nothing to gain by canceling and freeing the athletes and IOC from their responsibilities. Why shouldn't Japan get their own private Olympics? They paid for it.

[rurounijones]

> Japan has nothing to gain by canceling

Japan has not paid 100% of the costs already. Cancelling will avoid throwing good money after bad.

If we are _only_ thinking about finances then the question is if Japan will make more money from hosting the reduced olympics than it would cost to finish all work required to host it.

[rtpg]

And there's the even "real-er" cost of bringing in thousands of people in an ongoing pandemic (it might be hard to realize for the many Americans on this site, but many places, including Japan, are still only getting a trickle of vaccines for example).

It would be possible to just vaccinate every athlete (talking less than 10k people). It might be possible vaccinate all of the staff as well. But in a country where not even all the doctors have gotten vaccinated yet, it's not a great look, politically.

And if you choose not to do mass vaccinations, you're talking about doing a mass event with huge risks of spread at every level.

[fomine3]

More importantly, canceling saves lives. There are not much medical resources.

[fomine3]

Sunk cost.

[Danieru]

Yes that's the point.

[admax88q]

You're actievly committing the sink cost fallacy. You need to ignore how much has been spent already and just look at how much it more it will cost from right now to host the Olympics, compared to potential value it would produce.

[Danieru]

These comments are old but I figured I should point out the meta: if the japanese government cuts contracts they would just have to spend yet more on subsidies. Japan already has extensive subsidy programs for companies with reduced revenue from Corona. Not only would Japan lose out on any upside, there would not be any savings. Further more: it is Japan: the government is not for want of cash.

[throwaway_kufu]

Maybe Elon could give Japan a insider tip before he pumps Doge again and everyone call it a day.

In all seriousness though I think Japan has plenty to gain by acting as a global leader, it’s not all about money, and even if it were all about money then unfortunately sometimes cutting loses is the best you can do...and no one really knows how it might work out legally/financially, there may be refunds, or more accurately legal remedies for many of the contracts and investments, and there could be untold amounts of insurance coverage.

[bsder]

> At this point, there are only two groups of people who are clearly incentivized for the Olympics to happen: the IOC, which would lose all the revenue; and the athletes who would "age out" for the 2024 games.

You are forgetting the most important constituency driving this: "Senior Japanese politicians also in on the take."