Even in the Olympics, Central Planning Fails

Why do Olympic games suffer from financial losses? Because Olympic planners think that they have it all worked out.

From the Telegraph,

-Large areas of empty seats seen in stadia for the second day running

-London 2012 chairman Lord Coe reveals students and teachers are also being called in at the last minute

-Every tout arrested had tickets sent to foreign VIPS

-Organisers Locog have begun an investigation into the ticketing fiasco

To the chagrin of political authorities, to cover on the scores of empty seats, students and soldiers had to be bussed in.

This is a familiar scene in the Philippines which we call the “hakot crowd”

Again from the same Telegraph article,

Last night, Team GB cyclist Geraint Thomas said: ‘It’s quite sad, seeing all the empty seats.’

Lord Coe revealed yesterday how troops, students and teachers were being drafted in to help end the embarrassing spectacle of empty seats at Olympic venues.

By discriminating against the markets, authorities had these coming to them after all

Professor Christopher Westley at the Mises Blog rightly points out,

The Olympics are essentially mercantile events in which planning takes place outside of market forces so as to achieve outcomes preferred not by consumers but by states. (Peter Hitchens argues here that this trend started with the 1936 Olympics in Berlin when Hitler and Goebbels transformed them into “grandiose and torch-lit” spectacles.) Regardless, the events in London are demonstrating once again what an LSE economist in the 1930s said about economics–that its “curious task” was “to demonstrate to men how little they know about what they imagine they can design.” Why did Sebastian Coe and his team think they could effect a better outcome than what would result from the price system? These are practical men, but even Keynes might admit that they are probably slaves of some defunct and incorrect economist.

So at the end of the day, financial losses extrapolates to the debasement of medallions for winners or may even lead to higher taxes for the unfortunate London residents whom has hosted such grand boondoggle.