I believe the Beijing Olympics will be the biggest, most expensive, most lavish, most over-the-top Games in Olympics history. And I can’t even imagine when another Olympics might eclipse this one.

Let’s consider the factors at work here. And then you can try to create a scenario that might be similar enough to prompt the sort of spending and energy expended here.

1. A big country wants to make a huge impact on world opinion. China is ancient and has a great history, but not much of it is recent. Now that it is enjoying an economic surge, it wants to show that it matters again. And it is spending money and doing things 99 percent of other nations simply could not afford.

2. China has an authoritarian government. That is, it can spend whatever it chooses ($40 billion, is one estimate) on its Olympics preparations. That makes for stunning new facilities. But facilities and expenditures that a representative government would never get past its taxpayers. Chinese communist bosses didn’t have to ask permission.

Thus, we are prepared to begin what I believe will be The Mother of All Olympics.  Cost is no object. Showing off is. Showing off by a nation of 1.3 billion people.

London has the 2012 Games, and the English already are telling people their Olympics won’t match these.

Chicago is bidding for the 2016 Olympics, but U.S. Olympic Committee boss Peter Ueberroth said the other day that Chicago has no chance of putting on the kind of show Beijing has planned. It simply will not spend the money. Voters won’t allow it.

Remember the 1984 Los Angeles Games? The ones staged on a shoestring because SoCal voters wouldn’t allow any serious spending?

The L.A. organizers used existing facilities for all the major venues — the Coliseum, the Rose Bowl, the Forum, the Sports Arena. It built almost nothing, and what it did was often temporary and makeshift. And cheap. Those Games went off grandly — and turned a profit that still supports sports in the SoCal area. About the only infrastructure L.A. got out of those Olympics? The Bradley Terminal at the airport, which it badly needed.

Since 1984, Olympic cities have tended to build more new facilities. South Korea spent lots of money, but its economy just isn’t that big, and there were limits. Barcelona was fairly modest. As was Atlanta, where only the main stadium was new. Sydney and Athens built lots of stuff, but not as much as Beijing has.

The long-term question always is, “What do you do with all those venues when the Games are gone?” Most host cities/nations eventually stop the financial bleeding and do a batch of venues on the cheap.

China has not. Leaving us to wonder what happens next.

The baseball stadium? What possible use does China have for that?

The National Stadium where Opening Ceremonies will be held in a few hours? What can the Chinese put in there to make its existence cost-effective? The country doesn’t play football or futbol of any significance. What do they need a stadium of 91,000 for? That huge tennis stadium? What does that become?

All those facilities, many for sports the Chinese have marginal interest in. What next?

Thing is, those questions were not in play, here in China. They have built gilded cages for the athletes, and what happens next doesn’t seem to matter much.

Future Olympics will not be this grand. They just won’t. Unless the IOC can arrange to get an emerging superpower with an authoritarian government to put on the Games.

Looking around the globe, I don’t see many candidates.