Here's the thing though - those are both entirely fair uses of the word.
Economic violence is a real thing.
And selling rice with internationally illegal levels of arsenic and other toxins is violent too.
Economic violence is a real thing.
And selling rice with internationally illegal levels of arsenic and other toxins is violent too.
What is complicated about that?
There are two things in discussion:
- the “economic violence” of food relief programs because it makes it hard for local farmers.
- high arsenic levels in US rice
Both are perfectly valid uses of the word violent.
Stunned that people are defending this tbh. American exceptionalism is a hell of a drug.
>Stunned that people are defending this tbh.
It’s frankly shocking that you think deriding the author for calling food programs “economic violence” is defending this scenario. Take a step back and realize that multiple things can be wrong at once.
Do you consider cheese exports from France to be economic violence against Wisconsin?
But if France was knowingly shipping arsenic-laden cheese to the US in a way that displaced the local economy to the degree that the only available cheese is poison? That'd, at least, cause some violent diarrhea.
You either don’t understand the meaning of “bike shedding” or you think one small portion of the economy struggling to compete on the price is “violent”. Either way, I think you’re confused about the definition of something pretty fundamentally.
If it was really the choice between, “you’ll get poisoned and have violent diarrhea if you eat this cheaper option” or “keep buying the previous local option”, both options would stay available.
So the point you tried to make really missed the mark. The way that arsenic rice could crush the local market is only if it had essentially no near to mid term side effects. If it was obvious people wouldn’t buy it.
You’d have to prove intent to call it violence. Seems more like negligence. Its also puzzling why someone would assume an intent to harm in this scenario .
Are we supposed to believe no one involved in selling this massive amount of rice knows what we learned in 2007 [0] ?!
> At one point during the reign of King Cotton, farmers in the south central United States controlled boll weevils with arsenic-based pesticides, and residual arsenic still contaminates the soil. Today, rice paddies cover fields where cotton once grew, and a large market basket survey published in the 1 April 2007 issue of Environmental Science & Technology now shows that rice grown in this area contains, on average, 1.76 times more arsenic than rice grown in California.
'Negligence' is not the word for this. It's violence, and it's inexcusable.