in america there is currently some support for making financial reparations for past social injustices. things like cash payments to descendants of american slaves.
the argument is that while nobody claims that current black people were ever directly harmed by being enslaved, that the culture imposed on them and the social disadvantages they suffered as a result of being descendants of slaves requires the active efforts of todays society to correct.
opponents claim that nobody is due anything for injustices that were inflicted on other people years or centuries ago, and certainly that living people shouldnt pay for things that they disavow and were never a part of.
the idea seemingly can be expanded. i am a citizen of the cherokee nation on my fathers side, and a member of the chickasaws on my mothers. does anybody owe me anything?
what is your opinion?
there are other related questions. i was reminded of this by the british discussion over the kohinoor diamond, whether it should be returned and to who.
I'm still waiting for the Romans, the Vikings, the French, the Spanish and the Germans to pay me money for their historical wrongdoings.
thats exactly the point. especially the spanish, for you
take me, fr example. the europeans attacked the chickasaws as far back as lasalle's expedition up the mississippi some 350? years ago. then th eunited states stole their lands and frced them to oklahoma.
i have genetic connection to those people, but i do not think i have experienced any hardships due to that original theft and persecution.
but there are living people in oklahoma right now who grew up experiencing hardship because of the results of that persecution. i am sympathetic to assisting them to overcome the current results.
but i am also eligible for assistance, and i dont deserve any. how do we parse that, and what do we owe the inheritors of persection?
tom, you mentioned the vikings and the romans. an excellent point. what is the statute of limitations on this stuff?
as an aside, its not any of my business, but i think charles would do well to give the kohinoor diamond back to the descendants of whoever victoria took it from. there are lots of bad imagery in hanging on to it, and lots of good press available in giving it back to the indians and washing his hands of it. but im not sure that anybody in a position to do it would agree with my assessment.
There is a lot of stuff in museums around the UK that should go back where it came from.
not just tbere.
ive been in museaums in east berlin thst shkuld hsve been repatriated.
but then east berlin no longer exists so what the hell
The idea of reparations isn't bad. Problem however is where to draw the (historical) line and how to decide who gets what, how much needs to be paid and by whom. The complexity is just enormous. People have been enslaved from all races and by different groups of people throughout the entire human history.
I assume that if we are talking about reparations, it means reparations for the African slave trade. Africa had a long slavery tradition. Many nations such as the Bono State, Ashanti of present-day Ghana and the Yoruba of present-day Nigeria were involved in slave-trading. Groups such as the Imbangala of Angola and the Nyamwezi of Tanzania would serve as intermediaries or roving bands, waging war on African states to capture people for export as slaves. Some historians have estimated that of the Africans captured and then sold as slaves to the New World in the Atlantic slave trade, around 90% were enslaved by fellow Africans who sold them to European traders. So if reparations have to be paid then it should, in my opinion, be done by the descendants of these African slave traders.
Quote from: billy rubin on May 07, 2023, 03:15:06 PMwhat is your opinion?
Quoteopponents claim that nobody is due anything for injustices that were inflicted on other people years or centuries ago, and certainly that living people shouldnt pay for things that they disavow and were never a part of.
It's this, in so many words. Either you, as a functioning adult, are responsible for your actions - or you are not. If you are, they are
your responsibility. Not your aunt's, nor your grandkids'. If you are not - then we can talk about reparations, in which case, do let us also come up with a sum "we" collectively "owe" Great Britain for their efforts in ending the practice.
My opinion is best summed up as follows; if I have been wronged by you, then I have a claim against you. My children may also have a claim against you, should they have been wronged by your wronging of me. However, neither I nor my children have any claim whatsoever against your mom, your cat or your best friend's girlfriend
unless they were involved in the deed.That said, on a personal note, slavery may be wrong in most of the world
today, but it was not so for most of human history. I, for one, am hesitant to pass moral judgement on the aeons past from my top of Mount Current Year.
^I fully agree with the message above.
in california in tbe ladt century black peoplr's property was often taken tnrough eminent domain preferentially for roads and recreational facilities for white people. wasnt anything they did tbemselves.
the claims are against municipalities, which dtill exist and still use the land..
theres also the american GI bill, which subsidized college education for white veterans, but often excluded black veterans.
and the government exclusion of black farmers from agricultural loans and payment programs.
the.offending entities were governments, and the stgument is thst the governments are liable.
The black community has come a long way in the last 50 years. There is still some difficulty in certain places, mainly in the south, but not exclusively in the south. White supremacy is still alive and well in too many minds.
And then there are the Jews who are the victims of much discrimination,even hatred. Are the Germans obligated to award reparations to the Jewish community?
I am with Billy in sympathy for the native Americans. We arrived on their land without invitation. We then declared them savages and took their land away from them by force. In fact we have awarded them some isolated reparations in the form of mineral rights. We have also allowed them to set up Casinos so to take our white mans money. That is working well for some, but not all of them.
it worked great for the san carlos apaches. i used to drive tbrough tbe reservation on highway 50. junk houses and hogans, cars ovrturned to get at the suspension parts, people aimlessly walking down the highways, trash blowing and caught in the fencelines. no money, no opportunities, drugs and alcohol.
last time i went there it was transformed. clean, de junked, people had jobs, all because of this huge casino they built.
it was a plus for tjem.
Quote from: billy rubin on May 08, 2023, 06:32:15 PMthe claims are against municipalities, which dtill exist and still use the land..
This
may situationally make a difference, but my overall argument is still the same;
If I were not alive to partake in the government - or too young or too disabled to legally do it (For example through voting) then no action of that government can be my responsibility.
if you were the inheritor of a vast fortune which was discovered to have been stolen, are you under an obligation to return it?
or can you keep the inheritance because you were not the one who stole it?
Quote from: billy rubin on May 09, 2023, 12:52:05 PMif you were the inheritor of a vast fortune which was discovered to have been stolen, are you under an obligation to return it?
It depends. For instance, if you inherit land which came into your family's possession as a result of military occupation in the "age of conquest," then no. If you inherit a million bucks in a duffle bag from your dad, who stole it from a still-open bank, then yes.
There are multiple facets to this, but the first question to ask should be, "was the original acquisition of X the result of a crime in the context of said acquisition?" If the answer is "no," then there is no problem. If the answer is "yes," then it may deserve further examination, but that does not automatically invoke a different outcome.
To put it in terms demonstrative hypothetical extremes, let us say that my society grants me the ability to take whatever I please and call it my own. I take your stuff. I don't owe you anything for it - it's mine now. My own. My preciousssss. By the same token, whoever inherits it does not owe any of it to
your descendants. Why? Because I acquired it within the socially acceptable norms of the time.
Now, let us say I did, in fact, what passes for theft by contemporary standards, but then was
granted my loot by the society within the domain of which said theft occurred. Well, then my claim to it, while not legitimate at first, was legitimised down the line, bringing us back to
mine now.It's a bit unpolished, I know, but I hope the underlying argument makes sense. It has to do with the legitimacy of claims and counter-claims, the arbiter for which is the society in whose domain they take place. It is worth noting, however, that I do not equate "society" with "government" here beyond the latter being an arm to exercise the will of the former. Thus, whether the king
is the country is not particularly relevant.
so in your view right and wrong are solely determined by current culture?
in other words, putins invasion of ukraine is completely justified because most russians think so?
i avoid that dilemma by denying the existence of right and wrong in the first place.
Quote from: Icarus on May 08, 2023, 08:10:19 PMAnd then there are the Jews who are the victims of much discrimination,even hatred. Are the Germans obligated to award reparations to the Jewish community?
The reparation payments to the victims of the Nazis ended in 2021. The German government paid in total 80.53 billion Euro till the end of 2021. What still is being worked out is the return of stolen art and other possessions during the NS regime.
I have languished in ignorance. I was unaware that any reparations were awarded to the Jewish community or relatives of long ago executed Jews. :-[
i didnt know either
Quote from: billy rubin on May 09, 2023, 02:56:45 PMso in your view right and wrong are solely determined by current culture?
Oh, it's more than that. They are determined at the individual level, the level of individual societies and the various international entities. It's... Who can enforce what when.
Quotein other words, putins invasion of ukraine is completely justified because most russians think so?
According to Russia, it is indeed justified. According to Ukraine, it is not. Thus, we are at war - which I, for one, am not above calling what it is.
My special proxy military operation is indeed a war.
Let's have a closer look at whence cometh the perception of right and wrong, shall we?
Assume you view all people as equal and your society broadly agrees. Now, in Afghanistan, a woman's value is less than that of a man. Is it any less so because you disagree from outside the scope of local cultural influence? Are you
right while they are wrong? Or are you "just some infidel," while they are on the way to heaven? The answer depends on who you ask. It really is as simple as that.
Quote from: Icarus on May 10, 2023, 02:23:39 AMI have languished in ignorance. I was unaware that any reparations were awarded to the Jewish community or relatives of long ago executed Jews. :-[
It's a bit closer to us, Europeans. I wouldn't say they paid to some community though... In part and in a manner, yes, but mostly to the victims. The wider community of "unaffected" Jews are not necessarily that.
That, by the way, is in part an example of what I was talking about with regard to having a claim against someone that wronged
you. Had The Reich won the war, however... A completely different reality with different perception of such things.
The Wiedergutmachung (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiedergutmachung) was a painstakingly complex process to compensate the NS victims. It started just a few years after WW-II, but even at that short period of time it was a very difficult job to identify the victims and their family. Imagine that these reparations would have taken place two or three centuries later. That would have made the reparations practically impossible.
Indeed. After all, merely being a part of the affected population does not mean that you yourself were affected to any degree beyond "everyone else."
A hypothetical Jew who moved to Costa Rica in 1925 would have "sailed through" WW2 about as well as the rest of his new countrymen, so I think an argument for reparations to that individual would be difficult to make.
That's also much of the reason why I balk at the use of terms like "community" in such instances. It's an individual issue rather than an umbrella one. (It is more compound in that communities may receive reparations in terms of for example nations getting paid for the shit that was bombed, burned and broken to be rebuilt - but that's "public" stuff, following broadly the same principle of the wrong having a claim against the one who did the wronging. Both still have to exist for it to work. Additionally, such settlements are not intended for "end consumer." And again, of course, in the ages of conquest, to the victor went the spoils, and the Reich lost.)
We cannot undo the past but we can surely make up for it.
We can treat every citizen of our respective nations as precisely that, then past a certain point, leave them alone to build their lives as they would.
What rights I have - you have. From there, it's effort and luck.
It all comes down to money in the end. The people just don't want to pay for shit that they didn't do.
It's more than money, and it's "all" in what you wrote after that statement. Look at it thusly;
Quote from: MarcusA on May 30, 2023, 04:39:37 AMThe people just don't want to pay for shit that they didn't do.
If they did, it's not unreasonable to assume that more people would be on board with making some sort of restitution. Guilt can be a powerful drive in social creatures like humans and such. There is a reason why there are movements out there which try to actively guilt people into taking responsibility for actions not their own.
The Germans will not live down the Holocaust in a thousand years.
i dont think cash payments are a good idea.
i am completely in favour of expanded scholarships, educational outreach, targeted farm and business loans, and stuff like thst.
fixing whats wrong rather than throwing money and running away.
Quote from: billy rubin on June 01, 2023, 12:28:36 AMi dont think cash payments are a good idea.
i am completely in favour of expanded scholarships, educational outreach, targeted farm and business loans, and stuff like thst.
fixing whats wrong rather than throwing money and running away.
Too right, billy, the same goes for me.
I'd say that as long as such arrangements do not directly disadvantage other competitors, that sounds like a fine idea.
Hypothetically, if a bright student had to give up his spot for a less-so one because the latter had money the former did not - that would be a less-than-ideal outcome. On the flip side though, if a less-bright student got "pushed through" at the expense of the brighter one, regardless of their financial situation, that would be a potential disservice to their profession as well