Obviously, the Olympics as it currently exists has a lot of problems - building stadiums over poor neighbourhoods, using slave labor (or close to it), promoting nationalism, etc.
But do you think the concept of "People from different countries (or regions or whatever once borders are removed) around the world compete to see who can run the fastest, throw things the furthest, jump the highest, and so on, and win some kind of prize based on their performance" is a fundamentally good one or not?
And if it is good, how do you think it would be different to the regular Olympics?
I mean yeah, the trappings and context of the Olympics as-is would need to go. You could also make it a hell of a lot more efficient by not changing the venue literally every time.
It’s the concept of having a global athletic competition that might have some redeeming value, but not for the (ostensible) reasons that it was created in the first place.
The idea is that the new host undergoes a series of huge architectural projects in preparation for the games, and these building stay around as new fancy buildings for the locals to use. Of course it doesn't really work out that way because capitalism, but I see no reason why we couldn't continue that but have it actually do what it says on the box.
Yeah, that's a neat idea. The games themselves could be more like a celebration of a big public works project and the local culture, rotating around from place to place as the need arises for new infrastructure.