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Comment by throwaway197812 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway197812

What a bizarre screed. "Baron Von Ripper-off"? Who exactly is Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post writing to? I'd be quite surprised if any of the decision makers in Japan give a flying fuck what she thinks. Most likely they are acting in their own self-interest, just like the IOC. Billions have already been spent; all the revenue from foreign spectators has already been cancelled. If the games are cancelled entirely, any chance of revenue will be destroyed, not to mention a huge loss of face.

The paternalistic tone here is also way off-base. Many Japanese are quite tired of being told what to do by Americans for the past 75+ years.

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This might be paternalistic, but the Japanese public is pretty much against holding the Olympic Games this year. I felt that pretty well from anecdotal evidence, but public opinion polls seem to back this trend. Taking this poll[1] for instance, 39.7% were in favor of calling off the games and 25.7% were in favor of postponing them to 2022 or later. Only 28.9% were in favor of hosting the games as planned in 2021.

[1] https://www.jiji.com/jc/article?k=2021041600807&g=pol

This would be the third time the Japan Olympics have been cancelled or postponed?

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?

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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

Sunk cost.

Yes that's the point.

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.

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.

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.

> 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."

It's just an opinion piece in an American newspaper. This is an odd post to be sure.

What's sad here is that loss of face and sheer inertia seem to be the primary (only?) reasons the Olympics are still going ahead. Japan's vaccination rates remain pathetic, since only 2% have had even a first shot, so even without the Olympics there's a real risk of one of the new variants laying waste to Japan's elderly population. Something like 8 Olympic torch bearers have already come down with COVID, and they had scheduled the world's oldest person to take part until she wisely pulled out.

I believe the main reason is cost. If IOC call it off, IOC bear the cancellation cost. If Japan does, Japan bear the cost. So Japan is waiting for IOC to call it off.

Wow. You're not kidding. And apparently they're not alone: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/17/world/asia/japan-south-ko... (April 17)

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/05/01/national/japan-... says 1.3% as of May 1. It appears things have been partly delayed due to ... well, it's not clear:

> The EU said on Monday that it had authorized some 52.3 million doses made in European factories by companies including Pfizer Inc. and Moderna Inc. for export to Japan, the highest volume among all 43 countries to which vaccines have been shipped.

> As the revelation caught fire on social media, vaccines minister Taro Kono tweeted that the numbers were wrong. His office said in an emailed statement Friday that only 28 million shots from Pfizer had arrived in Japan. Chief Cabinet Secretariat Katsunobu Kato confirmed on the same day news reports that shots of the Moderna vaccine — which the local drug regulator has not yet approved for domestic use — had also been received though did not disclose the number of doses.

And the latest numbers Google gave me was indeed 2%. So it's climbing, but not quickly. They're at least two months behind schedule, I'd suggest.

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