Authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism: do they exist?

[Travis B.]

Philosophically speaking, my problem with reparations is that they only make sense if you accept the idea of inheritance. Only then does it make sense to say that, if your ancestors should have gotten something in the past and didn't get it, you are entitled to getting it now. And I'm far enough to the Left on economic matters that I'm very sceptical of the whole idea of inheritance.

But practically - well first of all, you won't get anywhere in politics without a certain amount of coalition building, and you can't really built an effective progressive coalition these days without at least some people who are big on reparations.

And, as Ares Land points out, it's not as if they're likely to happen anyway, so if you assume that they're bad, they're still not that much of a concern.

However, in the unlikely case that it ever becomes feasible to confiscate and redistribute the wealth of the rich, I don't see why I should mind it if people descended from survivors or non-survivors of historical atrocities would get preferred treatment in getting redistribution payments, or if their part of those redistribution payments would be officially labelled "reparations".

I'd prefer it if this wouldn't become a reparations thread, though.

As I mentioned above, reparations conceptually require not just inheritance of being a victim of some wrong but also inheritance of guilt, and run smack into the problem that in many cases it is hard to ascribe any guilt, direct or inherited, to those who would end up paying for them.

Here in the US, one could argue that wealth inherited from slaves' stolen labor ought to be expropriated and redistributed, but what about, say, Bill Gates' wealth? Regardless of what one says about Microsoft's business practices or about wealth taxes (which I am very much for), that wealth was not stolen from slaves. As a result, it would be wrong to use his wealth specifically for reparations, rather than to simply help support society as a whole, because it would wrongly indicate that that wealth was accumulated from the stolen product of slaves' labor.

[Raphael]

Here in the US, one could argue that wealth inherited from slaves' stolen labor ought to be expropriated and redistributed, but what about, say, Bill Gates' wealth? Regardless of what one says about Microsoft's business practices or about wealth taxes (which I am very much for), that wealth was not stolen from slaves. As a result, it would be wrong to use his wealth specifically for reparations, rather than to simply help support society as a whole,

I don't see who would be hurt by doing that, though, whatever philosophical objections you or me might have.

[Travis B.]

Here in the US, one could argue that wealth inherited from slaves' stolen labor ought to be expropriated and redistributed, but what about, say, Bill Gates' wealth? Regardless of what one says about Microsoft's business practices or about wealth taxes (which I am very much for), that wealth was not stolen from slaves. As a result, it would be wrong to use his wealth specifically for reparations, rather than to simply help support society as a whole,

I don't see who would be hurt by doing that, though, whatever philosophical objections you or me might have.

My objections are w.r.t. that reparations should specifically punish those guilty in addition to benefitting those who are victims -- so even if one accepts both inherited victimhood and inherited guilt, reparations should flow from the guilty to those who are victims. As a result, if we are to have reparations for slavery (even though I have significant doubts as to their practicality), they money to pay for them should solely be inherited and institutional wealth derived directly from slavery rather than just anybody's wealth simply because they happen to live in the US and have wealth to expropriate.

[Raphael]

Again, that's a fair point from a theoretical perspective, but it doesn't really address my point that practically, confiscating the tech brollionaires' wealth and using it to pay reparations for slavery wouldn't really hurt anyone (not even the tech brollionaires themselves, if each of them would be allowed to keep enough for a reasonably comfortable middle class retirement).

[Travis B.]

Again, that's a fair point from a theoretical perspective, but it doesn't really address my point that practically, confiscating the tech brollionaires' wealth and using it to pay reparations for slavery wouldn't really hurt anyone (not even the tech brollionaires themselves, if each of them would be allowed to keep enough for a reasonably comfortable middle class retirement).

The question I would have, though, is then could we really call it a reparation, as that then would be non-selectively applied to anyone with excessive wealth to expropriate rather than people with ill-gotten wealth specifically derived from slavery. Reparations are specifically recompensing people for past wrongs based on one's guilt, and if one does not have such guilt, whether directly or through possessing stolen wealth, how can such justly be considered a reparation?

Of course, you could easily argue that much excessive wealth in general is ill-gotten if it is stolen from people's wage labor, which would provide a theoretical basis to expropriating it and using it to help support society as a whole overall. But in this case it similarly ought to recompense the people as a whole for the theft of the full product of their labor, not just a particular part of society for a specific past wrong.

[Raphael]

IMO this is getting into really hair-splitting questions of the "proper meaning" of words.

[Travis B.]

IMO this is getting into really hair-splitting questions of the "proper meaning" of words.

Tis true, but that comes from questions about who should be responsible for compensating those wronged. If we simply do a wealth tax equally on everyone and then give money to everyone in a group that has been wronged, that also implies that everyone, or at least everyone with wealth, is somehow responsible for their having been wronged -- even when it can be clearly demonstrated that they have no actual connection aside from being a citizen of the wrong country. This may be 'easy', we can even demonstrate that those from which wealth was expropriated can still live comfortably without it (i.e. we leave them with some wealth afterwards), but it still means that we are holding people responsible who can't have been responsible, whether directly or indirectly.

[Travis B.]

As to the 'right' way to do this, if we were to have reparations, would be to first apply reparations using a selective wealth tax on those who have inherited or institutional wealth derived from slavery, and then after that apply a progressive wealth tax across the board to all of society to help fund society as a whole.

[Raphael]

IMO this is getting into really hair-splitting questions of the "proper meaning" of words.

Tis true, but that comes from questions about who should be responsible for compensating those wronged. If we simply do a wealth tax equally on everyone and then give money to everyone in a group that has been wronged, that also implies that everyone, or at least everyone with wealth, is somehow responsible for their having been wronged -- even when it can be clearly demonstrated that they have no actual connection aside from being a citizen of the wrong country. This may be 'easy', we can even demonstrate that those from which wealth was expropriated can still live comfortably without it (i.e. we leave them with some wealth afterwards), but it still means that we are holding people responsible who can't have been responsible, whether directly or indirectly.

Well, if a city government acts in a criminally negligent way, and as a result, a large building collapses, and the survivors and families of those who didn't survive the collapse sue the city for compensation, and the city agrees or is ordered to pay compensation, the compensation money is ultimately paid for by the tax money of people whose only crime is being inhabitants of the wrong city.

[Travis B.]

IMO this is getting into really hair-splitting questions of the "proper meaning" of words.

Tis true, but that comes from questions about who should be responsible for compensating those wronged. If we simply do a wealth tax equally on everyone and then give money to everyone in a group that has been wronged, that also implies that everyone, or at least everyone with wealth, is somehow responsible for their having been wronged -- even when it can be clearly demonstrated that they have no actual connection aside from being a citizen of the wrong country. This may be 'easy', we can even demonstrate that those from which wealth was expropriated can still live comfortably without it (i.e. we leave them with some wealth afterwards), but it still means that we are holding people responsible who can't have been responsible, whether directly or indirectly.

Well, if a city government acts in a criminally negligent way, and as a result, a large building collapses, and the survivors and families of those who didn't survive the collapse sue the city for compensation, and the city agrees or is ordered to pay compensation, the compensation money is ultimately paid for by the tax money of people whose only crime is being inhabitants of the wrong city.

That is true; while one could argue that those in the city who voted in the city government which acted in such a manner are to some small extent partly responsible themselves (after all, they voted for them), there is also all those who voted against said city government who are also being made to pay through their tax money.

[Civil War Bugle]

Insofar as reparations are hypothetically being enacted as public policy, I feel like my preferred frame is less about white people with inherited guilt paying money and more about the government as an institution with its guilt paying money, as far as where the money is coming from. If the president, acting in an official capacity, harms someone and the harmed person successfully sues, the president isn't going to personally pay the judgment; the office of the presidency is going to pay it. If there's an election between the harm and the payout, fine, the office of the president is still paying it. Someone's mad at Frank over Japanese internment, not a problem, Frank wasn't going to pay the money awarded in the lawsuit and George (or Bill or whoever was president at the time that people started being compensated for internment) isn't going to personally pay for it either. If the government engages in systematic institutional racism and decides to pay, or is sued into paying, reparations, great - the government as an institution is going to pay money for institutional acts it took institutionally.

If private people or private companies want to pay reparations too, that can be good but I think there can be a bit of a conflation here. If you think you aren't responsible for reparations because your family wasn't here yet (generic you), fine, don't personally pay reparations. But all taxpayers are still on the hook for taxes and would be regardless of what the taxes get spent on. I may be failing to notice spaces where the debate is framed differently, but everywhere I see this debated, it seems to be presumed that the government is the entity, or is among the entities, which would pay any hypothetical reparations, and the government of the United States has been acting for a couple of centuries, and in a society which isn't organized around anarchistic principles, I think it's reasonable to pay the appropriate level of deference to the fiction of institutional continuity.

Put another way, everyone hates paying taxes, so to speak, but for every policy which gets taxpayer funding applied to it, you can find people who hate that policy, and I don't think in most cases that it's reasonable to say the taxpayers who dislike a given policy are being punished on that basis.

[zompist]

Insofar as reparations are hypothetically being enacted as public policy, I feel like my preferred frame is less about white people with inherited guilt paying money and more about the government as an institution with its guilt paying money, as far as where the money is coming from.

Yeah, that seems pretty obvious.

Reparations are not some kind of pie-in-the-sky impossibility. They were paid (by the government) to Japanese-Americans interned during WWII... but note that only about 120,000 people were involved, and the total cost was just $1.6 billion.

Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out, only 11 years ago, that losses due to discrimination and profiling are in recent memory: the victims were still alive, and often the perpetrators too. It's all very well to complain that "I, a white person, didn't do anything"; but it's remarkable how actual crimes in recent history have victims but apparently no criminals. Somebody created those racist laws, those racist red lines, the racist police departments that are still killing people of color, and somehow there's no prosecution or reform. Obviously nothing is going to happen under the GOP, and it would be a hard sell under a Democratic government in 2029, too. If you just refuse to deal with the crime for enough decades, the victims and the direct perps die off and everybody can say "I didn't do it."

The Japanese-Americans were paid $20,000 each— not exactly generous, but it's a baseline. What if every Black American got the same? That would be a one-time cost of $960 billion. That's a lot of money but it's hardly unaffordable. It's about what we spend on Medicaid every year; also about the size of the military budget. Also just 1/4 the size of Trump's tax cut for the rich. Like other aspects of a just and prosperous society, the problem isn't the price tag, its the political will.

[Civil War Bugle]

Insofar as reparations are hypothetically being enacted as public policy, I feel like my preferred frame is less about white people with inherited guilt paying money and more about the government as an institution with its guilt paying money, as far as where the money is coming from.

Yeah, that seems pretty obvious.

Reparations are not some kind of pie-in-the-sky impossibility. They were paid (by the government) to Japanese-Americans interned during WWII... but note that only about 120,000 people were involved, and the total cost was just $1.6 billion.

Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out, only 11 years ago, that losses due to discrimination and profiling are in recent memory: the victims were still alive, and often the perpetrators too. It's all very well to complain that "I, a white person, didn't do anything"; but it's remarkable how actual crimes in recent history have victims but apparently no criminals. Somebody created those racist laws, those racist red lines, the racist police departments that are still killing people of color, and somehow there's no prosecution or reform. Obviously nothing is going to happen under the GOP, and it would be a hard sell under a Democratic government in 2029, too. If you just refuse to deal with the crime for enough decades, the victims and the direct perps die off and everybody can say "I didn't do it."

The Japanese-Americans were paid $20,000 each— not exactly generous, but it's a baseline. What if every Black American got the same? That would be a one-time cost of $960 billion. That's a lot of money but it's hardly unaffordable. It's about what we spend on Medicaid every year; also about the size of the military budget. Also just 1/4 the size of Trump's tax cut for the rich. Like other aspects of a just and prosperous society, the problem isn't the price tag, its the political will.

I also want to note that I agree that individual blameworthy private individuals should be held accountable (I don’t think you’re disagreeing with me, Zompist; I’m just meandering more) but that it’s seemed to me for years that a lot of people only focus on the individual responsibilities, which can irritate me. I think the first time I consciously considered this was in the context of British reparations for claims arising from their actions in Kenya in the 1950s; I saw comments online which may as well have been treating the British Empire like it was as far in the past as the Roman Empire, when really it was Queen Elizabeth compensating living people for actions her ministers took during her reign. (I forget the exact details as this particular compensation happened maybe 20 years ago but the substance is as described.)

[Travis B.]

Even for reparations for crimes in living memory, they have perpetrators, and because they are in recent memory those perpetrators may be alive to be made to pay without invoking hereditary guilt -- or at least the institutions they belonged to may still exist or have successor institutions. For instance, institutions such as banks responsible for redlining and loan discrimination still largely exist and can be forced to recompense those whom they discriminated against.

Similarly, going back further in the past, there still exist institutions (e.g. a number of Ivy League universities) which profited from slavery, and these institutions can be forced to recompense the descendants of those whose labor they stole.

I think that this approach is better than the US gov't simply cutting a check for each Black American because that approach effectively absolves the guilt of those who did indeed profit from slavery or redlining or like without making they themselves pay much in the big scheme of things and diffuses responsibility to the whole American people regardless of their role in the matter.

[Civil War Bugle]

I think limiting it to that can have the effect of setting aside the responsibility of the government for things such as the segregated armed forces, differentiation between races for programs such as the New Deal welfare programs, and other similar things where the government itself (or some unit of government) was doing the discrimination. I'm happy for banks, colleges, and other private entities to step up and take measures to rectify their own wrongs, but it was not only those private actors engaging in wrongs, in my view.

[Travis B.]

I think limiting it to that can have the effect of setting aside the responsibility of the government for things such as the segregated armed forces, differentiation between races for programs such as the New Deal welfare programs, and other similar things where the government itself (or some unit of government) was doing the discrimination. I'm happy for banks, colleges, and other private entities to step up and take measures to rectify their own wrongs, but it was not only those private actors engaging in wrongs, in my view.

There can be reparations for specific government actions and policies as well, but the key thing is that those paying should be those with responsibility, either direct (as in the case of still-existing institutions) or indirect (as in the case of inherited wealth derived from slavery).

(You could argue from this that slavery in general was a 'specific government action or policy', but as I mentioned I think that a blanket government payment would effectively absolve those with responsibility while effectively making the people of America foot the bill unless it was funded at least in part by expropriating such ill-gotten wealth from those who possess it.)

As for "stepping up", I am against the idea that if we are to have reparations that they be voluntary on the part of those paying, because if we make them voluntary they obviously won't pay or will only pay a pittance.

[Civil War Bugle]

I think limiting it to that can have the effect of setting aside the responsibility of the government for things such as the segregated armed forces, differentiation between races for programs such as the New Deal welfare programs, and other similar things where the government itself (or some unit of government) was doing the discrimination. I'm happy for banks, colleges, and other private entities to step up and take measures to rectify their own wrongs, but it was not only those private actors engaging in wrongs, in my view.

There can be reparations for specific government actions and policies as well, but the key thing is that those paying should be those with responsibility, either direct (as in the case of still-existing institutions) or indirect (as in the case of inherited wealth derived from slavery).

(You could argue from this that slavery in general was a 'specific government action or policy', but as I mentioned I think that a blanket government payment would effectively absolve those with responsibility while effectively making the people of America foot the bill unless it was funded at least in part by expropriating such ill-gotten wealth from those who possess it.)

As for "stepping up", I am against the idea that if we are to have reparations that they be voluntary on the part of those paying, because if we make them voluntary they obviously won't pay or will only pay a pittance.

I will concede the last point - when I used the phrase 'step up', I was being somewhat agnostic about the methods by which reparations come about, but was envisioning at minimum a moral obligation. My general opinion is that things like this are at least a moral obligation and could be a legal obligation, depending on the details of what some given set of reparations are for. The type of thing I take this discussion to be about shouldn't be purely a matter of what the perpetrator considers a benevolent gift granted out of the kindness of the perpetrator's heart.

[Travis B.]

As for "stepping up", I am against the idea that if we are to have reparations that they be voluntary on the part of those paying, because if we make them voluntary they obviously won't pay or will only pay a pittance.

I will concede the last point - when I used the phrase 'step up', I was being somewhat agnostic about the methods by which reparations come about, but was envisioning at minimum a moral obligation. My general opinion is that things like this are at least a moral obligation and could be a legal obligation, depending on the details of what some given set of reparations are for. The type of thing I take this discussion to be about shouldn't be purely a matter of what the perpetrator considers a benevolent gift granted out of the kindness of the perpetrator's heart.

I am very much against the idea that reparations should be a benevolent gift granted by those with responsibility, because that effectively allows them to set the terms of the compensation that is given to the victims of their wrongs or their descendants while simultaneously allowing them to clear themselves of any further responsibility. At the federal level, I think such compensation, if there is to be such, should be at the initiative of the people as opposed to some politicians simply deciding to hand out some money to clear their institutional responsibility.

[Richard W]

How much responsibility for American slavery should be assigned to the Barbary Pirates?

Of course, much of the current ill-consequences arise from the belief that one's actions should be defensible.

[Travis B.]

How much responsibility for American slavery should be assigned to the Barbary Pirates?

Of course, much of the current ill-consequences arise from the belief that one's actions should be defensible.

Americans did not profit off of the taking of slaves by the Barbary Pirates, though, whereas there are Americans who have inherited wealth today which was stolen from slaves of African descent.