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    • A Leaderless World

      The past 100 years we human beings have made tremendous strides in inventing things that have made our lives more pleasurable. For example inventions like electricity, transportation, electronics, software, air travel, computers, the internet and communication have developed in most parts of the world in the past 100 years only.

      But unfortunately, the above mentioned [...]

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    • The Wealth Myth

      You must have been noticing in the print and media the erosion of wealth in the world and the billions of dollars being pumped in to save this wealth. Many of us must be wondering from where all this money is coming from. To get a fair idea of the value of 1 billion US [...]

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    • The Wealth Myth
      by Benjamin Alvares, October 20, 2008 in Ruminations

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A lot of hype has been created about the Olympic movement and its lofty ideals. To me it’s a lot of hogwash. The olympics is nothing but a big business opportunity for the multinationals who sponsor the telecast and other rights. The host country can never make a profit under the guise of nationalistic pride.

For a start - is the olympics really fair? I certainly do not think so. The rich/developed countries spend phenomenal sums of money is training their participants. Many of the sports like rowing, sailing and equestrianism are very elitist and expensive. (The last olympics had a total of 186 medals for rowing,sailing and equestrianism). Then , many of the events look downright stupid to me. What is the sense of having events like the shot put, javelin, weightlifting and discus? What’s so great about throwing an iron ball or a spear or a round plate as far as possible? Only the first three in each contest are given medals. So what happens to the majority over 80% who lose? What about the 10% who come in last and embarrass their respective countries? The percentage of participants who end up as heroes would be less than 10%. That means at least 90% will return to their countries disappointed and unhappy as they have wasted years of their prime life.

Like the beauty contests held every year, the olympics can never truly represent the best sportspersons of the world. It is just simply a money making machine for the sponsors, the sports goods manufacturers and the gambling industry. The colossal amounts of money spent by the host country for the massive stadia and other facilities could have been put to better use, but then most countries are running up massive deficits to sustain themselves (nobody knows how China manages its deficit, even their defence budget is not known). That means every citizen of the country hosting the olympics is subsidising its cost.

To me, the olympics is a wasteful extravaganza that the world can ill afford. The olympics is purely eltist and for the benefit of the minority rich. The rest of the world could’nt care less.

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