Valerie Yule,

Some taxpayers do indeed begrudge the enormous amounts of public money wasted on this Olympic nonsense and don't care whether Australians win a medal or not. Let those who support this exercise in chauvinism pay for it.

The author quotes Parknson's Law of Triviality which limits understanding of numbers to 999. I disagree. I think people can comprehend numbers up to the number of people they have seen on one occasion. For many this is a sporting event - live or on television - where the viewer knew how many people were there. So I'd go up to 100,000. We understand numbers under this by saying to ourselves "that's one for each person at that footy final." If we have a bigger number, we can't relate it to our actual memory, and therefore there is less, if any, real meaning.
This rule does not apply as strictly if the number is read - because big numbers usually have more digits than smaller ones. If they look longer they might be bigger. (This overlooks decimal points, and the use of style such as "3 mill".)

It would a poor world indeed if we didn't have large-scale events like the Olympic Games. I am unconcerned about the money spent on athletes as it is difficult to measure the return the value of enjoyment people get when they watch the spectacle. It's like complaining about a movie star's paycheck when they make a film that gives enjoyment and pleasure to millions of people.

To bring the equation down to money is to take away those intangible benefits that public events, be they sporting, artistic, or celebratory, bring into everybody's lives.

To those miserly people whose world is all about 'the money', I say that you are probably a little out of touch with the wider benefits of events like the Olympic Games and you should the role such events play.

Thanks for that analyst that was a big help!

So Phil how much of these unlimited funds that Gov should spend on our entertainment, should go to reality TV, after all they bring enjoyment to many Aussies?

Phil and analyst. One way to help the public with numbers is to indicate what goods and services that could be purchased with the $200million+ spent on this super circus and its useless athletes. Like all subsidised entertainments the Olympics leave nothing but fleeced taxpayers, fans of this ludicrous spectacle should pay for it themselves. What "intangible benefits".."into everbody's lives", not my life and many others, I refer tangible benefits anytime. All the Olympic medals ever won are less use then a pile of compost.

"Is there a way to ensure that all Olympic athletes have a more level playing field in the amount of support they are given?"

Short answer: no. When I went to Rome in 1960, as a schoolboy funded entirely by my newspaper delivery earnings, the Games were still for athletes and sportslovers, for a modest price I saw two great days of athletics finals. But those days are long gone, sport is only one element in a massive politco-economic-commercial enterprise with its own momentum, and much of the emphasis is on attracting lovers of spectacle rather than sport.