| If that's your perspective, I think we can both agree that slavery has been abolished in the west for more than a century. This was done not for the incentives you reference, but due to the moral conscience of western societies. However, Mauritania still has slavery on a private basis. Libya has slave markets. China and N. Korea have forced labor camps, despite the liberation theology of their political fore-bearers. These countries and slave owners are outside the bounds of any incentives you suggest. Getting back to the point at hand, judging past abuses is pessimistic and regressive. Yes, slavery in the past was a terrible (although somewhat acceptable at the time) institution. But there are also advantages to being a descendant of a slave in the developed world rather than living in an impoverished country. Judging the past by the standards of the present, for mistakes which have already been corrected is illogical in my view. It dismisses the possibility for Panglossian optimism, that we live in the best of all _possible_ worlds. It suggests that the struggles endured were not for the best. It is cavalier to make such judgement. What else would have been possible? No slavery and no contact, thus no life in the developed west for millions? We can always point to an idealized vision of a purely altruistic contact between Europeans and Africans, but was that _possible_ under historical circumstances? I must politely disagree. I find this line of judgement regressive. The incentives you suggest do nothing for current circumstances. They only narrowly apply where amends have already been made. On the grander scale they perpetuate a toxic culture of unending victimhood. Finally, if colonialism were still active in Libya, then the aforementioned slave markets wouldn't exist. There's something of a contradiction between narratives here. |