In that same year Bob Dylan wrote and performed a song entitled “Who Killed
Davey Moore?” The song incorporates the structure of the children's rhyme
Cock Robin. Before each verse there is a chorus posing the question of who
was responsible. It says: “Who killed Davey Moore,?Why an' what's the
reason for?” In successive verses the song takes the perspective of the major
parties involved - the referee, the angry crowd, the manager, the gambling man,
the boxing writer, and Sugar Ramos. Each attempts to explain their lack of
fault for the death. Each includes with the same words: “It wasn't me that
made him fall. No, you can't blame me at all”.
Structured in this way, along with moving lyrics, the point is clear. Individually
no one person was totally to blame. But, collectively, they all killed Davey
Moore.
Hidden Causes: Famine in Bangladesh
Causes can be hidden. Already one example has been considered, namely Roe
v Wade
as a possible cause of the decline of the crime rate in the United
States. A second example concerns famine. Based on empirical evidence,
Amyrta Sen challenged the then prevailing view that famines always arise from
a shortage of food. In its place he proposed additional explanatory factors.
For example, part of his explanation for the Bangladesh famine of 1974 rested
on the fact that there was considerable flooding throughout the country in that
year which prevented a substantial part of the crop from being harvested. This
caused at least two economic effects. It caused a food shortage, which
significantly raised food prices, while work opportunities for agricultural
workers declined drastically since some of the crops could not be harvested.
Both of these happenings caused substantial decline in the real incomes of
agricultural workers (loss of wages and loss of purchasing power through
increase in food prices) so that they could not purchase as much food as they
required. In this lies the major explanation as to why this group was
disproportionately stricken by starvation.
421
Hidden Effects: World Trade Centre
Effects of an event can be hidden. An illustration comes from the attack on 11
September 2001 of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York.
Terrorists flew an aircraft into each of the towers, causing a huge explosion
and fire, and the subsequent collapse of the towers. Some people were killed
or died from injuries received on the impact of the aircraft. Some died from
the fire. Some died from the collapse. Some jumped to their death from the
building to avoid death by fire.
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421
Sen (1981)
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