I dont really understand the basketball analogy as Im australian and there is little to no interest in basketball here. But, as long as they played by the rules I dont see a problem. I dont have a problem with having a governing body to make rules for competition, but as long as the rules are adhered to I couldnt care less who competes. I never said there would be "no certified standard to play by", I fully believe you need one set of rules that all competitors adhere to, but there are literally thousands and thousands of tkdists all over the world who spar using the WTF ruleset but belong to clubs that are not kukkiwon affiliated. I know you can compete at certain events without kukkiwon certification but most major events would require the cert I imagine. I know when I tell people (outside of the tkd world) that you need to be a kukkiwon member to compete at the olympics they find that concept very "odd".
True, but what about the thousands of quality black belts world wide who cant compete due to the fact their club is not affiliated with the kukkiwon? It seems the couple of people who would show up and "not know the rules well enough and end up punching someone in the face" would pale in comparison to the thousands and thousands of good quality black belts world wide who have to miss out. Personally, I have no interest in competing so I dont really care but it did seem odd to me that years ago when my club would send competitors to "open" tournaments we had guys who would wipe the floor with tkdists who were well and truly in contention for olympic trials. Dont get me wrong, we also had some of our guys get their asses kicked. It wasnt just our club either, there were some great tkdists at these tournments who were "ineligible" which is a great shame because at something like the olympics you want to see the best vs the best, not just the best of what is available. It just seemed odd that they were ineligable due to not having a piece of cardboard, despite still being a tkd black belt. It just seems odd to me.
I am taking into account the cost of paper to print the cert as well as the material to print out the id's. Currently they are using plastic before it was cardboard type paper that was laminated. So let us lower it to $5.00 you are still looking at $34.50 profit. As for the mailing, you are right that it will depend on where you send it, I would guesstimate the average is $10.00 for sending anything out of country, so I will still stick to that pricing. Again, this does not include adding any other outside fees such as other staff members, rent, maintenance, etc.
