The Online Safety Act stands against Britain’s liberal tradition
- We live in the age of managerialism, and the Online Safety Act is one of its bitter fruits
- A law intended to protect children has ended up exposing many of them to a broader, darker internet
- This growing obsession with correcting people is not the solution – it’s the problem
Marx was wrong, Burnham was right: capitalism wasn’t replaced by communism, but by managerialism. In ‘The Managerial Revolution’ (1941), James Burnham wrote that the bourgeoisie weren’t sinking into the proletariat – they were being replaced by ‘administrators, technicians, managers’. If, like me, you love Edmund Burke, this might remind you of his mournful line: ‘The age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded’. We live in the age of managerialism – and the Online Safety Act is one of its bitter fruits.
Familiar because the trend is familiar, but the whole piece is well worth reading while we still can. It may be an exaggeration to put while we still can, but we don't yet know if it is an exaggeration. There are no free speech fans in this government and nobody who seems to understand the vital corrective functions of free speech.
More broadly, the Online Safety Act stands against our liberal tradition – the one that runs from John Stuart Mill to Frank Knight. For Mill, free speech is a process of discovery; for Knight, democracy is ‘government by discussion’. In both views, progress happens through debate and dissent – not by bureaucrats deciding what we are allowed to say.
This growing obsession with correcting people is not the solution. It’s the problem.
More broadly, the Online Safety Act stands against our liberal tradition – the one that runs from John Stuart Mill to Frank Knight. For Mill, free speech is a process of discovery; for Knight, democracy is ‘government by discussion’. In both views, progress happens through debate and dissent – not by bureaucrats deciding what we are allowed to say.
This growing obsession with correcting people is not the solution. It’s the problem.
5 comments:
If the recent governments were beyond reproach then their manageralism might be worth putting up with. But the chief purveyors of spin, nudge, omission and disinformation are those very governments who wish to make us conform to their version of consensus.
I wonder if the Online Safety Act will be called upon to control access to political speech?
“… I wonder if the Online Safety Act will be called upon to control access to political speech?”
You don’t need to, it has been already.
DJ - there should be some penalty for political disinformation. It's supposed the democratic right to vote them out, but we know how well that works.
Peter - yes, that's the point of it.
Don't mention Ukrainian arsonist rent-boys. I did once but I think I got away with it.
Doonhamer - it's just as well, I think they are the ones who cause injunctivitis or something.
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