Victimology

To be honest I didn't have the patience to listen to the President all the way through last night. The things said at events such as that have little to do with what ultimately happens. Now for some reason, it tends to go over well to hear tough talk at times like this. I simply would like to see a solution. This was a horrendous event, and while BP may very well have ignored risks that ended up causing it, they clearly didn't want it to happen. That brings us to the question of competence and/or negligence.

In making decisions we all have to decide the proper line between cost and safety. Certain threats always exist but are so remote that for us to take preventive action would make us, well odd. For example, we all take are exposed to many potential contagious opportunities in a given day. Sometimes we actually get infected. Most of the time we don't. Most of the time the contagions are relatively minor and we recover. Sometimes they are major and sometimes fatal. However, we all hopefully take some preventive actions, such as washing our hands, but if you end up wearing surgical masks and gloves at all times, you are, in the opinion of most people, overreacting.

It should always be remembered that when you look at risk from the point of view of the victim, it always seems much worse than it really was. The victim is a victim and the risk potential has become real. If the victim's chances were only 1 in a million to start, well now it is 100%. So of course when you see a show that interviews victims it seems pretty dire. Of course if you only interviewed non-victims, it would represent reality better but be pretty boring.

Despite all the things we see in the news every day, generally most of us avoid being victims the vast majority of the time. Now, I don't know how much the oil in the gulf is going to hurt the economies of those states. I actually think that the amount of income generated through recovery efforts and victim compensation may well exceed the income lost. Of course in addition there is the environmental damage, but cleaning that up will also create a lot of jobs and income. Will the income go to the people who were the actual victims? I don't know, but as bad as it seems, I would be willing to bet that, from a purely economic point of view, more money will be generated than is being lost. Of course we see habitat destruction and other impacts and it surely is sad but nature has a way of healing itself over time. Getting the spilled oil out of the water is a challenge that can be met once the flow into the gulf can be stopped.

This is mostly rambling and there are victims from the oil spill (remember 11 died) and there will be others. However, if you can't fish, but get compensated, I'm not sure that makes you a victim.