Mal Fletcher examines the value of the modern Olympics movement in light of it being an extension of the market economy

Mal Fletcher

Walt Disney, world-class dreamer and founder of the fantasy empire that bears his name, once said: 'I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn't know how to get along without it.'

In the age of so-called mass collaboration, international sporting endeavour has the potential to remind us that not all competition is unhealthy; that testing one's mettle against one's peers can bring out the best in all concerned.

Nothing has the potential to celebrate the virtues and values of sporting endeavour like the Olympic Games. Yet the modern Olympiad and the organisation that supports it have arguably become little more than a celebration of jingoism and a promoter of market values.

The virtues that once defined sporting competition at the elite level now seem but a secondary consideration. The success of any modern Olympiad is, at the end of the day, measured in terms of the potential monetary gain for the host nation and for those nations which produce winning competitors - especially in the big sports.

In his new book, What Money Can't Buy, ethics professor Michael Sandel poses an apt question. In the wake of the global financial crisis and the ongoing problems with major currencies such as the euro, do we want a market economy or a market society? Do we want the market to serve us or to define us?

Are there some things in life, he asks, to which we could attach a fee or price but should not, because in doing so we might actually devalue them? Is there more to measuring value than attaching a monetary cost?

To illustrate his point, he takes up the issue of limiting childbirth in the age of population explosion. Some serious population scientists are now advocating an approach not unlike China's one-child policy for less regimented societies, as a way of slowing population growth.

If a society were to take on such an approach, asks Sandel, would it be appropriate to allow women to buy and sell their reproduction rights, making money in the process and allowing wealthy families to have more offspring? Whilst this might make sense in a purely economic universe, Sandel argues that in a moral one it does not.

Indeed, to most of us there is something mildly repugnant about this idea. The right to childbirth ought not to be commoditised. Children should know that they were born out of love, not as a result of some economic trade-off.

Some things in this life have intrinsic rather than extrinsic value; they require no external price tag to establish their value.

We might apply Sandel's observations and questions to the modern Olympics.

The London Olympics will have cost £8.4 billion, which is 101 percent over its original 2004 budget. They will be the most expensive Games ever. Does attaching a monetary value to the Games - and by extension to the athletes who participate in them - actually devalue sport itself?

Despite vigorous denials on the part of the IOC, doubts remain about the propriety of the host bidding process for each new Games, with perennial claims of bribery and nepotism. Even without these stories, however, the high price tag attached to hosting the Games likely works against the very sporting ideals the Olympics are supposed to reinforce.

Ancient Olympiads, as far as we can tell, were celebrations of sporting endeavour as an aspect of human achievement - in much the same way as were artistic exhibitions.