Olympians being "people with really intense hobbies" is still weird to me. I haven't reconciled in my mind that the life of AA baseball players getting paid a little more than minimum wage plus a meal stipend is a dream for 90% of Olympians who, if they win, become national symbols of excellence for a week every 4 years.
Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)
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Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)
#22Sensationalistic headline aside, this is a very thorny issue. On one hand you want to provide livable wages to your athletes, but Canada just registered a deficit of 62 billions. Cuts are coming and more money to Olympians will be put up against funding for healthcare, education, etc... At some point you have to make hard decisions.
> On one hand you want to provide livable wages to your athletes Why? Sports are just another form of entertainment for others. Same as any other performance artist.
Athletes are also prestige for the country.
Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> Criticizing a system built mostly on government handouts (by definition a socialist or communist structure) as being a late-stage capitalism problem shows you’ve got no clue what these terms actually mean.
That's just the capitalists outright purchasing the legislators, so Walmart can employ people at minimum wage and let the taxpayers foot the bill for their healthcare and food stamps.
Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)
#24The story is not about the Olympians.
It's about Platformization (+ Datafication + Finacialization). When Platform Capitalism the book came out, feels like a decade ago, literally everyone agreed its Unsustainable. Its not just about how well your mindless dumbfuck platform milks the consumer and producer simultaneously. Its about all the Platforms doing it simultaneously across every single sector you look at.
Just look at GDP by sector, and ask yourself which sector hasn't been platformized?
Sooner or later the only option on the table for Govt will be to ask China how they handled Jack Ma.
Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)
#25Opinion: I stopped thinking the olympics was cool when I saw a 14 year old win gold in diving. Now I think it's a business exploiting people for money. Like any other business, if they don't like it they can stop doing it. Sports has a bad ROI on average afaik.
I think the Olympics in particular are mostly supposed to be a less violent outlet for nationalism, but I think we learned from the Anger Management craze that safe outlets lead to a normalization and more of the original problem.
Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> Criticizing a system built mostly on government handouts (by definition a socialist or communist structure) as being a late-stage capitalism problem shows you’ve got no clue what these terms actually mean. That's just the capitalists outright purchasing the legislators, so Walmart can employ people at minimum wage and let the taxpayers foot the bill for their healthcare and food stamps.
In that case, we’re not in a capitalist system at all, but a capitalist-socialist hybrid. Arguably, we’ve been in the hybrid since the New Deal, and it seems to have inherited the same socialism issues China is also grappling with.
Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)
#27In the early 1990s a paddler named Eric Jackson was fast enough to make the U.S. Olympic team in whitewater slalom kayak. But he lacked funds to go.
So he dressed up in his full paddling outfit and brought his boat (4m long in those days) and paddle to a street corner in downtown DC. He set up a “meet an Olympian” sign and charged people cash to have their picture taken with him. Much hustle, very entrepreneurial of him, and he made a decent amount of money.
But he got into huge trouble with the U.S. Olympic establishment, and was almost dropped from that team. They said they were scandalized that he would dare to try to make personal money from his Olympic team status. It became clear to some that they were also mad he dared to demonstrate how poor many Olympic athletes actually were—by essentially begging on a street corner in a part of town full of prominent people.
Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)
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Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)
#29This is the reality of building your life around sport—-there’s basically no money in it unless you’re on the extreme edge. I wish people would stop dumping their entire life’s energy into chasing it—-do something more useful like stamping parts out in a factory. Olympic athletes are stunningly focused achievers—I’d love to see that energy and drive applied to something that mattered.
Is this meant to be sarcasm? If we're comparing only stamping parts in a factory vs. pushing the human body to its limits, you probably ain't gonna make money in either. But one of them is going to be a far more satisfying way to live for the soul. We can talk about other things that matter, but there's probably less of that out there than you might think.
Re: Olympians turn to OnlyFans to fund dreams due to 'broken' finance system (2024)
#30This is the reality of building your life around sport—-there’s basically no money in it unless you’re on the extreme edge. I wish people would stop dumping their entire life’s energy into chasing it—-do something more useful like stamping parts out in a factory. Olympic athletes are stunningly focused achievers—I’d love to see that energy and drive applied to something that mattered.
Is this meant to be sarcasm? If we're comparing only stamping parts in a factory vs. pushing the human body to its limits, you probably ain't gonna make money in either. But one of them is going to be a far more satisfying way to live for the soul. We can talk about other things that matter, but there's probably less of that out there than you might think.
I think the point was pretty simple: there's no reason that pursuing your Olympic dreams would be a way to make money. So feed your soul, but unless you come to it with money, be prepared to find another way to feed your wallet.