Suppose I had a grandfather. And suppose this grandfather was a mean bastard who killed lots of people. In fact, he was a full blown serial killer.
Imagine that this man died before I was born.
Now imagine that somewhere in the course of my life, I met up with a perfect stranger who demanded reparations from me. This person wanted money, and lots of it. S/he felt that s/he was entitled to my money for the sole reason that her grandpa may or may not have been killed by my grandpa before we both were born. Neither of us know. But since my ancestor was a killer, and hers was killed, its a logical conclusion.
Should I be made to pay reparation?
(If no one has guessed yet, I just got into an arguement with someone about whether or not the caucasions of the US owe the citizens of the darker skinned variaty reparations for slavery) Azakias fucked around with this message on 07-21-2006 at 09:58 PM.
The idea of atavistic guilt is popular among collectivists going all the way back to Marx. They do not view people as individuals capable of autonomy, but rather as rigidly defined classes. Therefore when a class, such as white people, wrongs another class, such as black people, culpability for that crime may be placed on the entire class for as long as that class exists. This is the mentality at the root of the modern slave reparations movement.
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x--AzakiasO-('-'Q) :
(If no one has guessed yet, I just got into an arguement with someone about whether or not the caucasions of the US owe the citizens of the darker skinned variaty reparations for slavery)
Realize that the person you are arguing with has absolutely no logical grounds for anything they're saying, and that they are arguing entirely out of baseless emotion. Because of this, they will view any logical argument as an insult directed toward them. In short, you have no chance of changing their mind by arguing rationally because their belief is not based in rationality.
The next day, my white friend came back with a list of all the crimes committed in our state by black males and immediately demanded reparations, since he was distantly related to one.
It goes both ways and it's extremely stupid.
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Mr. Parcelan had this to say about the Spice Girls:
The next day, my white friend came back with a list of all the crimes committed in our state by black males and immediately demanded reparations, since he was distantly related to one.
I like that!
Also Azakaias, the analogy you use is an utter strawman, there is no one other than angry black teens arguing the individual responsibility of contemporary whites for slavery. Let's say your grandfather started a company with capital gained by selling the belongings of his victims. You inherited this company and are wealthy because of it, a descendant of one of the victims approaches you about reparations. Would it still be unreasonable for him to demand you pay him the value of the stolen goods with interest out of the estate of your grandfather, given that they were ill-gotten in the first place and you were deriving utility from the crimes of your grandfather all along?
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Quoth Mod:
Maradon for the love of god get an understanding of 'class' in the Marxist sense before you start raving about it. Classes are defined through their position relative to the means of production not arbitrary criteria like skin color.Also Azakaias, the analogy you use is an utter strawman, there is no one other than angry black teens arguing the individual responsibility of contemporary whites for slavery. Let's say your grandfather started a company with capital gained by selling the belongings of his victims. You inherited this company and are wealthy because of it, a descendant of one of the victims approaches you about reparations. Would it still be unreasonable for him to demand you pay him the value of the stolen goods with interest out of the estate of your grandfather, given that they were ill-gotten in the first place and you were deriving utility from the crimes of your grandfather all along?
Actually, it would be both wrong and illegal.
The only way things like that can work legally is by suing the corporation itself, because corporations are legal entities and if one could prove it was the same legal entity that comitted a crime then one could recover.
--Satan, quoted by John Milton
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Peanut butter ass Shaq Mod booooze lime pole over bench lick:
Maradon for the love of god get an understanding of 'class' in the Marxist sense before you start raving about it. Classes are defined through their position relative to the means of production not arbitrary criteria like skin color.
When Marxism was created, yes, property was the source of the class struggle that the collectivists use to seize power.
Today's neo-marxist doesn't have such a luxury, as property is not such a great bone of contention as it was, and yet they still need a shoehorn with which to assert themselves as despots and so they use whatever divisive force they can get their hands on. Race is a common one.
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Over the mountain, in between the ups and downs, I ran into Mod who doth quote:
Would it still be unreasonable for him to demand you pay him the value of the stolen goods with interest out of the estate of your grandfather, given that they were ill-gotten in the first place and you were deriving utility from the crimes of your grandfather all along?
Not only unreasonable, but morally bankrupt and absurd in the extreme.
Atavistic guilt. Maradon! fucked around with this message on 07-22-2006 at 06:46 AM.
The problem is that if you include familial inheritances and the like, you set up a domino effect. Say my distant ancestors were carpenters and architects. And they developed a work ethic they instilled in the scions they bore. That ethic, over successive generations, endured, and may have come at the cost of the civil liberties of other people, which at the time was completely legal. But my relatives became very financially comfortable. Not wealthy, not rich, but comfortable. And that financial comfort and stability was now ALSO passed from generation to generation. Now, perhaps a half-dozen or more generations down the line, I live in a house bought with my own money. The only person I essentially borrowed money from is my future self. My father and mother didn't give me the money. And their parents didn't give them their startup money. The only thing they really got was a comfortable home life to grow up in. Heck, I'm sure some of them didn't even get that.
What you're saying is that the comfortable home life is a measurable commodity with a dollar value that can and SHOULD be distributed. Because that's what it comes down to. People who want "reparations" are actually asking you to pay for not only whatever success YOU may have, but all of the success all of your ANCESTORS may have. And where does it end, anyway? Slaves were often sold into slavery by other blacks to Europeans, and Europeans with the means to traffic in slaves had to have gotten their ships, capital, etc, from somewhere, and you can generally trace major veins of wealth back to key sources. Say, the major empires of the past (Roman, Egyptian, Macedonian, etc), and ultimately anthropologists say we all came from Africa (or thereabouts) so...if we, today, are responsible for carrying the weight of the sins of our ancestral pasts on our shoulders...we should all be pissed at the Africans, right? They didn't get it right and now I have all this guilt on my head for all the choices made in the intervening millennia.
The simple fact is that we have laws to help regulate the fairness of wealth. Yes, some people get more to start than others, but you can't go digging up the past forever in hopes of proving something. That's what this whole load of bull in the Middle East between Israel and it's neighbors is all about. I would never say black folks are terrorists, but I would also not say that as a race they are martyrs victimized by the world around them. I believe that there are still some cases of institutionalized unfairness. I saw it all the time down south. But I also know there are laws set up specifically to seek ways to settle those problems. Attacking me for what my ancestors did on the grounds that it caused the hardship in your life is stupid. You would have to argue every...single...case. Geneologists would get rich tracking down family lines, and most people simply weren't interesting enough to keep journals that lasted more than a generation or two, so how would you be able to substantiate anything one way or another?
sigpic courtesy of This Guy, original modified by me
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Bloodsage had this to say about (_|_):
Actually, it would be both wrong and illegal.The only way things like that can work legally is by suing the corporation itself, because corporations are legal entities and if one could prove it was the same legal entity that comitted a crime then one could recover.
Well he could claim the debt while the estate was executed. He could also claim it if it were transferred to the company solely as a means of avoiding the debt. It clearly is not possible under current law, however since most of the debate is on whether it should actually be possible this doesn't really enter into it. I question how just it is to allow a criminal to establish a legal claim to his loot for his beneficiaries, as long as he is not found out before his estate is divided up.
Maradon: The idea of classes as related to the means and forces of production is central to Marxism. You cannot have classes in the Marxist sense based on race, if anything whites could be called an 'elite' in the Marxist sense, which is explicitly distinct from a 'class'. I'm willing to believe that there is some moron of a 'Neo-Marxist' out there who may be spouting something like that, most likely due to having as much of a clue as you do about actual Marxism, however making an argument about Marxism based on that is utterly invalid.
Deth: You are perfectly right, the historic argument is one of the main reasons I cannot accept modern capitalism as meritocratic. Lots of current inherited wealth and opportunity traces back to historic injustice.
Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite. - John Kenneth Galbraith
