Then there are the excessive demands that the I.O.C. makes on host cities. For instance, the host cities have had to change their laws to comply with the Olympic Charter, which states that “no kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.” When Vancouver, British Columbia, hosted the Winter Games in 2010, the city passed a bylaw that outlawed signs and banners that did not “celebrate” the Olympics. Placards that criticized the Olympics were forbidden, and the law even empowered Canadian authorities to remove such signs from private property.

The I.O.C. also makes host cities police Olympics-related intellectual property rights. So Parliament adopted the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act of 2006, which defines as a trademark infringement the commercial use of words like “games,” “2012” and “London” in proximity.

Such monomaniacal brand micromanagement points to another problem: the I.O.C. has turned the Olympics into a commercial bonanza. In London, more than 250 miles of V.I.P. traffic lanes are reserved not just for athletes and I.O.C. luminaries but also for corporate sponsors. Even the signature torch relay has been commercialized: the I.O.C. and its corporate partners snapped up 10 percent of the torchbearer slots for I.O.C. stakeholders and members of the commercial sponsors’ information technology and marketing staffs. Michael R. Payne, a former marketing director for the committee, has called the Olympics “the world’s longest commercial.”

Most worrisome, perhaps, is that the I.O.C. creates perverse incentives for security officials in host cities to overspend and to militarize public space. The I.O.C. tends to look kindly on bids that assure security, and host cities too often use the games as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stock police warehouses with the best weapons money can buy.

Visitors to London, where the games are scheduled to run from July 27 to Aug. 12, would be forgiven for thinking they had dropped in on a military hardware convention. Helicopters, fighter jets and bomb-disposal units will be at the ready. About 13,500 British military personnel will be on patrol — 4,000 more than are currently serving in Afghanistan. Security officials have acquired Starstreak and Rapier surface-to-air missiles. Even the Olympic mascots look like two-legged surveillance cameras.