It goes into the very deep question of "How much is one life worth?" - even though it wasn't intended. I'm pretty sure that the deaths weren't, but a consequence of the bias created by abuse of information, as well as other circumstances that lead to military shooting sharp. I've always struggled with sacrificing life for the economy. If the strike would've started to starve people and become more than an inconvenience (which it was for most people, except some singular cases), then yes, we're at the trolly problem.
There was a humanitarian corridor, which worked well in most of the cases - what we hear about are usually the exceptions. Climbing over barricades, changing vehicles, getting passes, yes, that's inconvenient. But it's not life threatening.
Nobody was starving. That's why I see the argument of economy as a very macabre argument to justify the excess of violence.
As I wrote in my second post about it, there are indeed many other factors that lead to the tragic events, the two deaths through shots. But using money-not-made as an argument to justify all those injuries and the three dead? That's disgusting in my eyes, and I hope I understood that wrong somehow. I personally can't ever put money over humans. In any way. As said and written, there are many other arguments.
As to the bureaucracy - yes, that's like it everywhere. But as well as everywhere - as soon as you get a critical mass, you can more or less do what you want. I wrote about that as well, how the protesters became a state within the state - unfortunately, with the same flaws, too. If your wife gets a critical mass together, she'll be able to do the same. We've done it, with bikes in Ibarra, 12 years ago. Becoming so many biking down the road that nobody could do anything against it, creating awareness for bicycles. In the end, it became famous enough to be supported by municipality and police.
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You seem to take as the starting point: “The protesters have blocked all the roads” and then all the injuries and deaths that happen after that are the government's (and military’s) problem.
That is just wrong. The starting point is when the indigenous say “We are going to close all the roads in the Province”. And if it was up to UNORCAC they would do it for the entire country. They should take at least some of the responsibility for what happens after they block the roads. After all - it is not difficult to predict that deaths and injuries will occur eventually. I predicted it - and I’m just a foreigner who doesn’t speak Spanish.
My argument about the true cost of closing the roads is not just about money at all. Look at all those reasons I list for why people are on the road. Here are a couple more that I did not list:
There are 75,000 stories every week about the true cost of closing all these roads. There is no way anybody can really estimate it. Obviously - I think it costs a lot more than whatever benefit anybody gets out of it. In this last Paro I don't think there was any tangible benefit at all (something I also predicted from day 0 of the Paro).
Yeah, it looks like the true argument is about preserving the privilege of playing pickleball. Seriously...
And yes, those are exceptions. I know as many people who never had any problem as I know those who did. Depended on the time of the day and the people at the corridor. And I'm not saying that the paro was a good thing or thought through or beneficial, I think quite the opposite is the case and how it was done was incredibly counter productive - I just wholeheartedly reject your arguments of economy and privilege to justify the killing and injuries. You have many good arguments, that's why it surprises me that you go all in on those two.
Also, the starting point was the governments decision to break their word and take away the subsidies for Diesel abruptly. Unfortunately, the civil organizations fell for that trap, as we discussed before. And if you could predict that outcome - the government could predict that 10 times over. As I said before, they're not my kind of people, but they're very smart.
OK - we agree on a lot more than we disagree on.
I think this concludes my contributions to discussions on Paros!
Going to move on with a discussion of speedbumps - coming soon!
Looking forward to it!