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> "The flooding of U.S. rice into Haiti is not only economically violent for Haitian peyizan who struggle to sell their local product, but also violent toward t

by rafram 3y ago

> "The flooding of U.S. rice into Haiti is not only economically violent for Haitian peyizan who struggle to sell their local product, but also violent toward the long-term health of Haitian consumers," the report said. I was really hoping that the academic writing trend where you call everything “violent” had died around 2021, but apparently it’s still with us!

lo_zamoyski 3y ago
It is overused, for sure, and stylistically obtuse, but nitpicking when the meaning is clear ("destructive"). And it is true: NGOs and "aid" that indiscriminately flood a market with cheap products under the lazy and foolish belief that giving away free stuff is a Good Thing does incredible damage to economies. It's one thing to distribute aid during a crisis. It's another to keep shipping free stuff indefinitely. In this case, free rice is having the effect of price dumping. You can't compete with free, so local agriculture and cuisine is being wrecked, and diets are changing for the worse. Another example is the distribution of so-called mitumba, where, say, ragpickers from New Jersey ship tons of used and second hand clothing to Africa, destroying the local textile industry. This, and intentional Chinese tactics (and probably American, among others), is how, for example, Nigerian cotton and textiles were destroyed. If you want a country to flourish, often it's a matter of fucking off and letting it develop. Investment is good, of course, as long as it's done on the basis of a partnership between labor and capital, not taking over and pumping and dumping competition so you can effectively colonize the country economically. Unregulated free trade is always promoted by the powerful, as they can easily swoop into developing economies and entrench themselves before the local industrial base even has a chance to establish itself.
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  > but nitpicking when the meaning is clear ("destructive") But “destructive” and “violent “ aren’t synonymous. Its not nitpicking at all.
  - lo_zamoyski 3y ago
    Then you are not familiar with the historical range of uses of the term, because it can certainly be synonymous. To "do violence to" does not imply physical force, but damage. I already said the particular manner in which the term is used is obtuse, but it is most definitely nitpicking, especially when all the original comment has to offer is a comment on how he doesn't like this particular usage of the word (as I said, I am also not a fan), paying no attention to the much more important substance of the article.
    - chaps 3y ago
      Indeed. Just look at phrases like "violent contrasts" [1]. That phrase has lasted throughout the entirety of its history back to 2004, too! [2] Tenebrism, from Italian tenebroso ("dark, gloomy, mysterious"), also occasionally called dramatic illumination, is a style of painting using especially pronounced chiaroscuro, where there are *violent contrasts of light and dark*, and where darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenebrism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenebrism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tenebrism&oldid=8534527 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tenebrism&oldid=8...
- nitwit005 3y ago
  > t's one thing to distribute aid during a crisis. It's another to keep shipping free stuff indefinitely. Everyone agrees, but Haiti is essentially in perpetual crisis. If you have to pick between economic harm and starvation, people are going to pick economic harm.
- kortilla 3y ago
  Don’t confuse “pumping and dumping” with “offering a cheaper product”. Nearly any time a country that has figured out how to produce something in a scalable fashion for cheaper (including shipping), it will wipe out local alternatives. It doesn’t matter to the local competitor if it’s being subsidized by a foreign government, it’s just as “violent”. It’s stupid to replace “cant compete” with “violent” when there are a lot of actual examples of competition where real violence is involved (mafia).
anonporridge 3y ago
Future headline... > In a violent act against the Haitian people, the US halts export of low cost rice, leading to mass starvation and food insecurity. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
- MSFT_Edging 3y ago
  I mean, its not far off. The country has been in immense debt over freeing themselves from slavery. Economic violence is real, you undermine local markets then make them dependent on your exports, hurting the local economy and resiliency.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Could a Haiti ag industry (people, land, systems) that isn’t interfered with support the domestic nutritional needs of the current population?
    - lo_zamoyski 3y ago
      '"There's a long history in Haiti of groups like USAID flooding the market with rice and other imports," said Victor. "This is not what we need. We need real help and that means completely changing the agricultural system."' 'Paul O'Brien of Oxfam America says the lessons of the harm of flooding a country like Haiti with subsidized rice should have been learned a long time ago. '"The days are gone when we can throw up our hands in terms of unintended consequences; we know now what these injections can do to markets," he said. "The question we want asked is what is being done to guarantee long-term food security for Haitians."' '[...] there is plenty of malnutrition. 'Some 2.4 million Haitians — out of a population of nearly 10 million — cannot afford the minimum daily calories recommended by the World Health Organization.' 'But donors often sink more money into emergency aid than such long-term projects.' 'Before the 1970s, Haitians only ate rice once or twice a week, getting starch from other local staples like sorghum and manioc, Woolley said. 'Today, rice is a staple but often U.S.-subsidized rice costs less than locally grown crops. On Friday, a 55-pound bag of US rice cost about $36, compared with $60 for the same size sack of Haitian rice.' 'In the 1970s, fearing indigenous pigs could spread swine fever, the United States — in conjunction with USAID — moved to replace all of Haiti's hearty Creole pigs with pigs from Iowa. The end result was the fragile U.S. pigs often became sick, preferred expensive feed and had fewer litters.' '[Haitians need] cheap credit, cheaper fertilizer and more government aid, he said.' [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna35608836 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna35608836
mandmandam 3y ago
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.
- kortilla 3y ago
  Why don’t we ratchet the Overton Window a bit further and introduce the term “economic rape” when you force product into an economy. That’s bound to produce some useful discussions.
  - mandmandam 3y ago
    Dude, poisoning people is violent. Fucking up their economy for profit is violent. What is complicated about that?
    - kortilla 3y ago
      Don’t be obtuse. When people say “economic violence” they aren’t referring to poisoning. 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
      - mandmandam 3y ago
        Both of those things were addressed - in tfa, by OP, and by me. Both are perfectly valid uses of the word violent. Stunned that people are defending this tbh. American exceptionalism is a hell of a drug.
        kortilla 3y ago
        It’s not exceptionalism, it’s perspective. Anyone who has been exposed to actual economic violence (severe embargoes, depression collapses, hyper inflation, etc) sees writing like this and discredits the author for being an out of touch desk warrior. >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.
boringuser2 3y ago
Speaking of violence: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haitian_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haitian_massacre There aren't many instances in history where people are actually systematically exterminated on the grounds of their race, so Haiti is of historical significance.
- vkou 3y ago
  It is indeed quite unusual for a chattel slave uprising to actually succeed. It's more the norm for them to be crushed and for their oppressors to continue to brutalize them with no consequences for decades and centuries to come. Nobody bats an eye at the reprisals that follow when the slavers win.
  - boringuser2 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - enterprise_cog 3y ago
      Your race baiting and lying is what should be removed. “ The massacre excluded surviving Polish Legionnaires, who had defected from the French legion to become allied with the enslaved Africans, as well as the Germans who did not take part of the slave trade. They were instead granted full citizenship under the constitution and classified them as Noir, the new ruling ethnicity.”
    - kingkawn 3y ago
      If you read the Wikipedia page rather than being inflammatory they extended full citizenship to Polish and German people there who turned against the remands of the slave state, so your assertion that this massacre was based on skin color rather than affiliation is false.
    - vkou 3y ago
      If you're going to heap moral outrage on events 220 years ago, apply it to the whole situation, not just the part that makes you uncomfortable. Chattel slavery is utterly unconscionable and irredeemable, as is every society that participates in it. (It's also weird how you're excluding the part where the Polish and the Germans were enfranchised by the Haitian government.)
overstay8930 3y ago
Some people really want to normalize violence
downWidOutaFite 3y ago
It is not economically violent for the poor people who buy the rice.
tptacek 3y ago
Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by rafram 3y ago

lo_zamoyski 3y ago

It is overused, for sure, and stylistically obtuse, but nitpicking when the meaning is clear ("destructive"). And it is true: NGOs and "aid" that indiscriminately flood a market with cheap products under the lazy and foolish belief that giving away free stuff is a Good Thing does incredible damage to economies. It's one thing to distribute aid during a crisis. It's another to keep shipping free stuff indefinitely. In this case, free rice is having the effect of price dumping. You can't compete with free, so local agriculture and cuisine is being wrecked, and diets are changing for the worse. Another example is the distribution of so-called mitumba, where, say, ragpickers from New Jersey ship tons of used and second hand clothing to Africa, destroying the local textile industry. This, and intentional Chinese tactics (and probably American, among others), is how, for example, Nigerian cotton and textiles were destroyed. If you want a country to flourish, often it's a matter of fucking off and letting it develop. Investment is good, of course, as long as it's done on the basis of a partnership between labor and capital, not taking over and pumping and dumping competition so you can effectively colonize the country economically. Unregulated free trade is always promoted by the powerful, as they can easily swoop into developing economies and entrench themselves before the local industrial base even has a chance to establish itself.

nonethewiser 3y ago
> but nitpicking when the meaning is clear ("destructive") But “destructive” and “violent “ aren’t synonymous. Its not nitpicking at all.
- lo_zamoyski 3y ago
  Then you are not familiar with the historical range of uses of the term, because it can certainly be synonymous. To "do violence to" does not imply physical force, but damage. I already said the particular manner in which the term is used is obtuse, but it is most definitely nitpicking, especially when all the original comment has to offer is a comment on how he doesn't like this particular usage of the word (as I said, I am also not a fan), paying no attention to the much more important substance of the article.
  - chaps 3y ago
    Indeed. Just look at phrases like "violent contrasts" [1]. That phrase has lasted throughout the entirety of its history back to 2004, too! [2] Tenebrism, from Italian tenebroso ("dark, gloomy, mysterious"), also occasionally called dramatic illumination, is a style of painting using especially pronounced chiaroscuro, where there are *violent contrasts of light and dark*, and where darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenebrism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenebrism [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tenebrism&oldid=8534527 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tenebrism&oldid=8...
nitwit005 3y ago
> t's one thing to distribute aid during a crisis. It's another to keep shipping free stuff indefinitely. Everyone agrees, but Haiti is essentially in perpetual crisis. If you have to pick between economic harm and starvation, people are going to pick economic harm.
kortilla 3y ago
Don’t confuse “pumping and dumping” with “offering a cheaper product”. Nearly any time a country that has figured out how to produce something in a scalable fashion for cheaper (including shipping), it will wipe out local alternatives. It doesn’t matter to the local competitor if it’s being subsidized by a foreign government, it’s just as “violent”. It’s stupid to replace “cant compete” with “violent” when there are a lot of actual examples of competition where real violence is involved (mafia).

anonporridge 3y ago

Future headline... > In a violent act against the Haitian people, the US halts export of low cost rice, leading to mass starvation and food insecurity. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

MSFT_Edging 3y ago
I mean, its not far off. The country has been in immense debt over freeing themselves from slavery. Economic violence is real, you undermine local markets then make them dependent on your exports, hurting the local economy and resiliency.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Could a Haiti ag industry (people, land, systems) that isn’t interfered with support the domestic nutritional needs of the current population?
  - lo_zamoyski 3y ago
    '"There's a long history in Haiti of groups like USAID flooding the market with rice and other imports," said Victor. "This is not what we need. We need real help and that means completely changing the agricultural system."' 'Paul O'Brien of Oxfam America says the lessons of the harm of flooding a country like Haiti with subsidized rice should have been learned a long time ago. '"The days are gone when we can throw up our hands in terms of unintended consequences; we know now what these injections can do to markets," he said. "The question we want asked is what is being done to guarantee long-term food security for Haitians."' '[...] there is plenty of malnutrition. 'Some 2.4 million Haitians — out of a population of nearly 10 million — cannot afford the minimum daily calories recommended by the World Health Organization.' 'But donors often sink more money into emergency aid than such long-term projects.' 'Before the 1970s, Haitians only ate rice once or twice a week, getting starch from other local staples like sorghum and manioc, Woolley said. 'Today, rice is a staple but often U.S.-subsidized rice costs less than locally grown crops. On Friday, a 55-pound bag of US rice cost about $36, compared with $60 for the same size sack of Haitian rice.' 'In the 1970s, fearing indigenous pigs could spread swine fever, the United States — in conjunction with USAID — moved to replace all of Haiti's hearty Creole pigs with pigs from Iowa. The end result was the fragile U.S. pigs often became sick, preferred expensive feed and had fewer litters.' '[Haitians need] cheap credit, cheaper fertilizer and more government aid, he said.' [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna35608836 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna35608836

mandmandam 3y ago

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.

kortilla 3y ago
Why don’t we ratchet the Overton Window a bit further and introduce the term “economic rape” when you force product into an economy. That’s bound to produce some useful discussions.
- mandmandam 3y ago
  Dude, poisoning people is violent. Fucking up their economy for profit is violent. What is complicated about that?
  - kortilla 3y ago
    Don’t be obtuse. When people say “economic violence” they aren’t referring to poisoning. 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
    - mandmandam 3y ago
      Both of those things were addressed - in tfa, by OP, and by me. Both are perfectly valid uses of the word violent. Stunned that people are defending this tbh. American exceptionalism is a hell of a drug.
      - kortilla 3y ago
        It’s not exceptionalism, it’s perspective. Anyone who has been exposed to actual economic violence (severe embargoes, depression collapses, hyper inflation, etc) sees writing like this and discredits the author for being an out of touch desk warrior. >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.

boringuser2 3y ago

Speaking of violence: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haitian_massacre https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haitian_massacre There aren't many instances in history where people are actually systematically exterminated on the grounds of their race, so Haiti is of historical significance.

vkou 3y ago
It is indeed quite unusual for a chattel slave uprising to actually succeed. It's more the norm for them to be crushed and for their oppressors to continue to brutalize them with no consequences for decades and centuries to come. Nobody bats an eye at the reprisals that follow when the slavers win.
- boringuser2 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - enterprise_cog 3y ago
    Your race baiting and lying is what should be removed. “ The massacre excluded surviving Polish Legionnaires, who had defected from the French legion to become allied with the enslaved Africans, as well as the Germans who did not take part of the slave trade. They were instead granted full citizenship under the constitution and classified them as Noir, the new ruling ethnicity.”
  - kingkawn 3y ago
    If you read the Wikipedia page rather than being inflammatory they extended full citizenship to Polish and German people there who turned against the remands of the slave state, so your assertion that this massacre was based on skin color rather than affiliation is false.
  - vkou 3y ago
    If you're going to heap moral outrage on events 220 years ago, apply it to the whole situation, not just the part that makes you uncomfortable. Chattel slavery is utterly unconscionable and irredeemable, as is every society that participates in it. (It's also weird how you're excluding the part where the Polish and the Germans were enfranchised by the Haitian government.)

overstay8930 3y ago

Some people really want to normalize violence

downWidOutaFite 3y ago

It is not economically violent for the poor people who buy the rice.

tptacek 3y ago

Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]