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Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. — Andrew S. Tanenbaum

After reading about the new 10GB ethernet switches from Cisco and hearing about the severed submarine cables disrupting the Middle East, the germane sneakernet quote came to mind.

And yea, that is the same Tanenbaum who emailed Linus Torvalds and let Linus know that his new kernel project wouldn’t work. See the text of the old debate.

Over the past few years I have discussed the half-truths that proponents of publicly-financed stadiums promote in their press releases. [See: 1 2 3]

I currently live in a city of 1.5 million that is set to host the World Games next year. The various sporting events are sanctioned by the official Olympic committee as it is used as a proving ground for new Olympic events in the future.

While one of the stipulations of hosting the World Games involves not constructing new stadiums (the facilities already have to exist), somehow that message was mistranslated to the politicos here.

A couple blocks away from my school I can see the construction crews walk around on the scaffolding of a new taxpayer-financed stadium. While the ballyhooed Solar Stadium is relatively “green,” I can think of a million other useful things that could be done with that money, including: give it back to the taxpayer.

Yesterday, in an op-ed with The Philadelphia Inquirer professor Rick Eckstein makes the case for why building stadiums never generates the revenue promised by its proponents:

There’s only one problem with this scenario. It’s not true. Never has been. They do come, but cities are not saved. Over the past two decades, academic research has generated literally hundreds of articles and books empirically challenging the alleged economic wonders of new stadiums, even when they’re part of larger development schemes. I have been studying and writing about publicly financed stadiums for more than 10 years and cannot name a single stadium project that has delivered on its original grandiose economic promises, although they do bring benefits to team owners, sports leagues and sometimes players.

There are many reasons why this same song and dance plays out. Arguably the number one reason is that only privately financed endeavors have the incentive to design and develop an enterprise that is profitable.

On the other hand, government construction projects do not have to be effecient or even profitable because they are financed by faceless taxpayers who are typically disenfranchised and unable to reverse the political tide.

For the record, while I enjoy watching and participating in athletic events, I don’t think it is fair to use taxpayer funds for - anything in general - let alone entertainment purposes.

If the political class is going to dole out the dishonest revenues on public projects, how about filling in the potholes on Fumin, Yucheng, Mingcheng or Boai? Or investing in dust-blocking barriers that can be placed around construction zones? Or actually completing the metro? What point is there of hosting tens of thousands of tourists and athletes when the surrounding infrastructure falls apart under the current load?

For more on sport subsidies, see the following Cato publications: 1 2 3 (all in pdf).

Via CoyoteBlog