Why should scale matter when deciding if something is a violent act? If punching someone is a violent act and so is a crowd doing so then why is a large boycott violent but an individuals purchasing choices aren't?
In addition why should the degree of harm matter significantly? A large number of people live on a knife's edge when it comes to money and I know a few store owners who are often a couple of missed sales away from not being able to pay their bills.
It's not a matter of scale, it's a matter of intent and responsibility. You are not individually responsible for ensuring another person's livelihood, but you are responsible for actions you take that knowingly cause detriment to it.
Clear distinction: Not taking an action that would benefit someone else is not the same as taking an action that harms someone else.
Except exploring that subject would lead to the possible redefinition of corporate competition as violence. Which would then mean the only non-violent form of corporation would be those that have a monopoly.
It's a deep rabbit hole, and one of many reasons I don't like capitalism. It encourages people to do harm to each other. It rewards the benefit of one at the cost of another. That's the nature of being forced to compete for livelihood. I didn't want to explore this, because I knew it would lead into a much larger tangent.
Bad ethics or production standards do not merit a self defence argument. The early runs of the X-Box 360 had poor standards on the soldering but I doubt you could justify any argument that the people in charge of that should be treated as if they had physically assaulted someone.
That was a mistake in engineering. Maybe a result of some carelessness. Even if it did result in a couple house fires, I'm sure nobody expected this design flaw to result in actual harm to anyone. Likewise, causing someone to fall off a cliff by accidentally bumping into them wouldn't be considered violence. It's called a mistake.
Because violence refers to acts of physical assault, it does not refer to any act that causes harm to someone. The proper terms for causing someone harm vary based on the method of harming them. Screaming insults at someone is not referred to as violence, it is verbal assault, it can be harmful to a person emotionally and psychologically, but that doesn't make it violent.
If a company is polluting the environment the proper description of what they are doing is just that; polluting. The word violence carries additional connotations that aren't relevant to any discussion of how to treat polluters and is detrimental to attempts to have the issue dealt with appropriately.
I understand the connotation as being harm willfully caused by one person to another. Violence is a blanket term that applies to a broad range of actions, so trying to narrow it in that fashion doesn't work. "The proper description of punching is just that; punching".
If somebody paid me to fill your house with nerve gas, would you consider that an act of violence? Most people would. So why isn't it violence if I refuse to put a filter on a factory chimney in order to make more money, knowing this will contribute to a higher rate of deadly lung cancer in the community? The intent and consequence is the same both ways. Kill people; receive money.
If direct physical assault and pollution both result in death due to willful actions, then using language that recognizes these like consequences is conducive to making sure they're dealt with appropriately.
Author
Topic: Murrican Politics Megathread 2016: There Will Be Hell Toupée (Read 1547260 times)