"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."
While Salman Rushdie is in intensive care, our sympathies and prayers go to him. Hang in there, Rush!
This event will hog headlines and news channels for days to come - it ticks the right boxes: (a) those savage Muslims; (b) freedom of expression, a religious western value as strongly-held by the anti-clerical West as the sacred is held by Muslims, has again been threatened.
And, of course, the West has the loudest megaphones.
I do not owe the Stalinesque insight above entirely to the Communist: the view has been confirmed by behavioural economists. An identified life/death resonates more strongly than a statistical one.
Thomas Schelling, an early supporter of behavioural economics, distinguished between a "statistical life" and an "identified life" (Ricard Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics (London: Penguin, 2016), pp 12-13). The hospitals represent the former concept while the six-year-old represents the latter.
"Let a six-year-old girl with brown hair need thousands of dollars for an operation that will prolong her life until Christmas, and the post office will be swamped with nickels and dimes to save her. But let it be reported that without sales tax the hospital facilities of Massachusetts will deteriorate and cause a barely perceptible increase in preventable deaths - not many will drop a tear or reach for their chequebooks ."
The (Very Brief) Life - and Death - of Hassan Ali
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