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I don't fine the Summer Olympics that interesting to watch
I actually didn't mind watching the last Winter Olympics, but now the co-vivant has been compelling me to watch rows of identical-looking faceless things flinging themselves uneventfully back and forth in swimming pools, and I can't express the waves of boredom I have been experiencing.
Compare that swimming stuff to speed skating -- where you can watch the faces of the competitors ... and watch them try to knock one another over. And other sports where things actually happen. The bike races come close, but are really still pretty tedious.
Compare figure skating to those anorexic dwarfs flouncing around on mats on the floor.
I don't generally watch things on TV that don't have a plot. The Winter Olympics events come a little closer to meeting that criterion than the summer ones do.
As for funding them -- well, if I were taking any credit for what they do, or getting something out of it, I'd think I should be funding them. I'm not, and I don't. I don't notice anybody funding me for watching TV. That's what I like to do. They like to run races, and to try to win them. That's nice for them, I'm sure, and also their choice to do it. Not my responsibility to support them while they do it or train for it.
Other people work for a living by doing something that someone wants to pay them for. If they can find someone who wants to pay them for running races, more power to them. I just don't think it should be me.
Yeah, fine, I'll grant them a little something -- travel expenses, some facilities for training; they do serve some public purpose in what they do, there are people who enjoy it and think it's important, and I'm not actually saying we should not participate at all in the Olympics, which do serve some public international purpose too. We all get some stuff from tax spending that isn't strictly necessary and that other people don't get. And my personal preferences don't rule tax spending.
But I won't go so far as to put them on the public payroll in return for them engaging in their hobby. And if it isn't a hobby, it's a job, and then somebody who actually regards it as worth being paid for should pay them to do it.
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