We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
“The idolatry of victimhood”
“Victims petrify politicians”, writes “Bagehot” in the Economist. (Alternative link here.) “They are apex stakeholders. Normal rules for decisions—risk, cost, proportionality—are thrown away when they are involved. What if a headline suggests ministers snubbed victims? Write the cheque. Civil …
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
“The idolatry of victimhood”
“Victims petrify politicians”, writes “Bagehot” in the Economist. (Alternative link here.) “They are apex stakeholders. Normal rules for decisions—risk, cost, proportionality—are thrown away when they are involved. What if a headline suggests ministers snubbed victims? Write the cheque. Civil servants, always cautious, become cowards. Campaigners know this. The unedifying spectacle of a grieving parent wheeled in front of cameras to push a particular policy, whether limits on smartphones or ninja swords, has become a political trump card.”
“Has become”? One of my few criticisms of this admirably unaccommodating article is that it talks as if this development were new. That the government cannot bear to disagree with a victim was already an established fact in the days when the cheques being written really were cheques. It was old news in 2001 when I wrote a piece for the Libertarian Alliance in about the reaction to the gun massacre at Dunblane.
. . . nowadays we give the bereaved parents at Dunblane, the survivors of rail crashes, and similar groups both the license to say anything due to the distraught and the intellectual consideration due to experts. They can’t have both. Not because I’m too mean to give it to them, but because the two are logically incompatible. The press and public have handed power to those least able to exercise it well.
(Alternative link here.)
Bagehot continues:
Trade-offs are ignored when victims campaign. Martyn’s law, named after a victim of a suicide-bombing at a concert in Manchester in 2017, requires any venue that can hold more than 200 people to have an anti-terror plan, even if it is a village hall. It is likely to cost businesses about £170m ($225m) a year to comply and bring about £2m of benefits, mainly from lower crime. A careful balancing of interests is close to impossible if a victim’s mother is involved. “This would not have happened without your campaigning,” said Sir Keir at a meeting with Martyn’s mother, rightly.
The word “rightly” is not here a term of praise. “Martyn’s Law”, like nearly every law named after a victim, is a bad law that should never have been passed. But the blame for it should not fall on Martyn’s mother. God knows she never wanted to be labelled “Victim’s Mother” on the chyron. She never wanted to be in a position such that her opinions on measures to take against terrorism were of interest to anyone. She never sought to be a lawmaker. The man who should be blamed did.
Who Are We?
The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.