[pessimizer]

Affirmative action shouldn't ever have been a contest with prizes for the most unfortunate. It was sold as a way to fix the wrongs of slavery. Having been enslaved legally in the US is not a race, it's an atrocity.

The reason we should be paying for foster kids' college is because the state is their parent, so it's our responsibility. In a country that wasn't shit, regular people would be jealous of how kids who were wards of the state lived, and how well-raised they were. There's no clearer illustration of our values than the fact that children who, through no fault of their own, have become the responsibility of the state are treated like unwanted trash. The idea that a society like that could figure out how to ethically treat prisoners or immigrants is laughable.

[steve_adams_86]

I agree completely. Something so striking about the situation as well is that on balance, we have a staggering amount of wealth to share with the less fortunate.

Yet these are children, specifically, who deserve every opportunity we can afford them by default. Not “hopeless addicts” or some other group deemed not worth saving by so many of us, but people quite literally the epitome of worth saving. These people need every ounce of reassurance that we care and that they can integrate and function in society. That they deserve opportunity as anyone else does.

If we had to be self serving we could look at it like “each one of these people is statistically far more likely to be a burden on my own children in the future, so a small investment now could save a lot later”, but we seem to fail even in being selfish about it. I find this topic heart breaking.

[pessimizer]

For me, state wards are one of the four metrics for judging the quality of a country.

Wards of the state: our responsibility, through no fault of their own.

Prisoners: our responsibility, their fault.

Immigrants: not our responsibility, but an indication of how well we can manage our economy. We should be able to put anybody who comes here to work.

Emigrants: we should let people leave who don't want to be here.

The first three are connected because there's no way to sustain providing anything for prisoners and immigrants that you don't provide for regular citizens. Wards of the state are the nation's children; there's nothing that normal citizens get that they shouldn't get. If they don't get anything, normal citizens are getting less than nothing.

[shric]

> Prisoners: our responsibility, their fault.

What percentage (approximately) of prisoners in the United States would you categorize as "their fault" and not some product of their upbringing/situation?

[phpisthebest]

At the end of the day, and this will be controversial it does not matter.

Prisons should be a place to house people that have been deemed unable to function in society until such time they can (sometimes that is never). This is not necessarily only violence but violent offenders should be the majority, but people that simply refuse to follow the rules of a society also degrade and are a danger to the society over all. We see this today in the way of rampant shoplifting, and car thefts/breakins taking place in some communities.

These are deemed "non-violent" so the offenders are just let go, however once these "non-violent" crimes reach an extreme level businesses close, people stop shopping in the area, insurance companies stop offering insurance, etc etc etc. That is all with out getting into the real psychological effects of having your property stolen and violated in that way.

At the end of the day I am not concerned about their upbringing/situation, I am concerned about their criminality

[superchroma]

We've tried it your way for decades - where prisons are permanent storage for badly made humans - and it doesn't work. They fill up, cost the taxpayer and become yet another thing to exploit. Society looks the other way whilst they get mistreated. Obscenities like rape are constant grim realities of such facilities, and organizations like gangs thrive in them too. Recidivism rates are alarming to boot.

The point of prisons, which Americans consistently fail to grasp, given their penchant for cruelty and selfishness, is reform.

That's what "our responsibility" means. We need to take these broken people and try to rebuild them, because they, their parents and society failed them the first time. Not all of them can be helped, but not to try produces what we have now, which is an abomination.

[phpisthebest]

In reality no one has "tried it my way", you have made the assumption I agree with the current prison system, I dont.

I also do not agree that the "reform" we need is simply letting criminals go who commit property crime, or because of the socio/econimic circumstance, or any of the other "liberal" or "left" visions of reform

Today's system is centered around punishment, not protection of society, or reforming people, etc. It is just punishment. The criminal owes a "debt to society". I disagree with this model.

There is a whole host of reforms I would support both to prisons, and to criminal justice over all. However simply refusing to prosecute shoplifting, or other "minor" property crimes is not one I can support.

[refurb]

Take a look at California if you want to see a failed attempt at reform - namely NOT incarcerating criminals.

The results is worsening crime rates and multiple examples of serial recidivism where the public pays the cost through lower quality of life.

I’m not saying there isn’t room for reform, but some people need to be in prison not for their own good, but for the public’s good.

[bugglebeetle]

Okay, but this logic is explicitly filtered through class in the US context. Some of the most antisocial members of our society are CEOs, politicians, and similar leaders. The damage they inflict on society often far exceeds that by individual acts of violence, fraud, thievery etc. Think about what has been wrought by Sacklers, the people running 3M, or those who led the country into war premised on lies.

Indeed, your example of how urban cores have been affected by wealth inequality and real estate speculation is a great example of this. San Francisco was a lovely city until landlords and real estate speculators turned it into a casino for gambling on housing and office space.

[seanmcdirmid]

> San Francisco was a lovely city until landlords and real estate speculators turned it into a casino for gambling on housing and office space.

People were complaining about land speculators in SF in Mark Twain’s time. That was literally when the city started growing. So I’m trying to figure out when you thought SF was a lovely city? Maybe during the property bust of the 1990s?

[phpisthebest]

>>>San Francisco was a lovely city until landlords and real estate speculators turned it into a casino for gambling on housing and office space.

before I even begin to address your others points, many I probably agree with we need to stop with this gas lighting narrative.

landlords and real estate speculators are not the villains of the San Francisco of the story. The city government (and the larger state government) is.

From the endless zoning regulations, environmental regulations, and building regulations that make it impossible to build affordable housing, and a decades long process to build any housing at all to the activist prosecutors refusing to prosecute crime in the city, to the "de-fund the police" movement that has put the local police dept at a huge understaffed situation.... Those are the root causes of the problems. not landlords and real estate speculators

You want to have an honest conversation about corporatism I am game, but you are starting out with disinformation and lies so....

[lr4444lr]

You do realize that most people in a "bad upbringing" don't go on to commit crimes?

[nverno]

> Wards of the state: our responsibility

People that really feel this responsibility become foster parents. But saying the state should deal with them isn't taking on that responsibility - at the end of the day actual people need to be their parents. I'm happy to support those people by having taxes directed their way, but the state doesn't get credit for their good deeds.

[Retric]

It’s unreasonable to expect individuals acting on their own to solve social issues. I am perfectly willing to support 1% of the financial needs of a severely disabled child, but in no way willing to step up and provide 100% of the support they need. There are people willing do do so but it’s not 1:1 with the existing need and so it’s simply not an option.

The common US system where foster families receive funds to provide temporary care for kids in the system isn’t parenting it’s a disaster that’s a massive disservice to kids in the system. In many individual cases it works, but overall it also results in unacceptable amounts of mental, physical, and sometimes even sexual abuse.

[CobaltFire]

This is uselessly dismissive and reductionist. I have a special needs child who just hit remission from Leukemia. To feel that the state has a responsibility for those kids I'm now supposed to also take in a foster child?

Your statement reeks of someone who lives in an ivory tower somewhere.

[edmundsauto]

IMO, the state bears the responsibility to structure the laws and regulations to make it easier for regular people to be heroes. Servant leadership is generally not a characteristic of democracies, as politicians need to take credit in order to win votes.

[nverno]

I agree, but this is also a problem with heavy reliance on government - people can just punt responsibility, and the wrong people get the credit.

[edmundsauto]

Is it because of a heavy reliance on government, or a general issue that we face when dealing with hard problems?

Put another way, when we don't rely on governments to help with things like this - does that incentivize people to take on responsibility? I suspect not...

[jewayne]

> we have a staggering amount of wealth to share with the less fortunate

Many Americans will stop you at that first word. Who is this we you speak of?

If the pandemic taught me anything, it's that to all too many Americans the most important freedom is freedom from strangers' problems. They don't want to see them, they don't want to hear them, and they sure as hell don't want to pay for them.

Now, if THEY happen to have that problem, that's a different story...after all THEY are real people, unlike...checks notes..."foster kids".

[coffeemug]

America is the most charitable country in the world[1]. But, as evidenced by the parent's comment, there is no shortage of people willing to spend other people's money, and Americans are justifiably cautious of that.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-char...

[magicalist]

> America is the most charitable country in the world

Maybe double check your link next time?

> The most noticeable change was arguably the United States, which ranked first in the world in giving for the years 2009-2018 but fell to 19th in the world in 2020.

(I also seriously doubt the methodology of this confident ranking of the world's charity based on self reported charitable behavior in surveys, but this was more humorous)

[coffeemug]

And the next few sentences from the link:

> However, the U.S. was not the only high-level giver to drop. In fact, many countries that landed in the top 10 most charitable countries in previous years slid completely out of the top 20. According to Charities Aid Foundation Chief Executive Neil Heslop, these changes are not a sign that people's willingness to donate decreased, but that their opportunity to donate diminished, largely as a result of pandemic-related lockdowns. Charity-based retail stores were forced to close, fundraising events were canceled, and many elderly charity volunteers had to shelter themselves instead of volunteering.

[jewayne]

I think what you will find is that a stunning amount of that "charity" falls within the giver's social circle. My understanding is it includes donations to the giver's own religious organization. Or even donating to a cause once it's touched you personally -- your mother dies of cancer so you donate to a cancer charity. Giving within your own monkeysphere, and being willfully ignorant of everything outside it, is what I am talking about.

[coffeemug]

As a spot check I googled "turkey earthquate donations by country". The result is a table with US on top donating $185M, followed by UAE donating $100M, Kuwait $68M, and finally the UN $50M.

[rayiner]

I’m convinced this is a structural characteristic of America, resulting from the immigration patterns that built the population.

If you look at polls worldwide, most people wouldn’t leave their home country even if they had the choice to emigrate somewhere else: https://news.gallup.com/poll/468218/nearly-900-million-world.... In South Asia, where I’m from, it’s just 11%. Even in sub-Saharan Africa it’s under 40%. Immigrants are the outliers who are willing to leave everything they know behind.

Of course over time there’s regression to the mean, and new communities form here in the US. But most of the US population traces their ancestry only back to the late 19th century or early 20th century. This constant population turnover means there’s a very limited ability to develop the kind of solidarity required to make sacrifices on behalf of strangers in your community.

[steve_adams_86]

You're correct, and I don't think this has to be true indefinitely but it's certainly in the DNA of most of North America.

I could go on at length about this. I'm deeply convinced this component of North American culture has contributed significantly to many aspects of decline and general loss of well-being. I won't go on at length of course, I just wanted to say I think you're on point and this feature of a lot of our cultures here is quite harmful.

[stcroixx]

Not sure who we is, but I have 4 kids and live paycheck to paycheck and nobody helps me or my kids. We can’t spare what we don’t have.

[steve_adams_86]

"We" is North America collectively. I don't think it's on you to fix this at all; rather that our nations have the wealth to do a better job.

[remote_phone]

I think you deserve help as well. This is why I suppose universal basic income, because for someone like you, an extra $1000/month would help tremendously.

[subsaharancoder]

Who pays for this magical UBI? Pretty sure you'd have to at some point increase taxes for the very people you're trying to "help" in order to give them back that $1000

[l33t233372]

Taxing mega corporations more aggressively is one often cited approach, but I agree this doesn’t really provide enough for UBI. 1000 a month to each household would be about 1/20th of our GDP.

[slashdev]

Do reparations for slavery even make logical sense? Please cut me some slack here, by the nature of the world we live in, I have not uttered these thoughts to another human being, and they might have obvious flaws. It's tough when you can't talk about ideas out of fear of the consequences.

I think nobody argues that it's a vile, morally repugnant thing to enslave another human being. But that was a long time ago, and all those slaves and the people who enslaved them are all dead.

The descendants of those slaves are now much wealthier and better off by pretty much any metric than their relatives who were not enslaved. How do you make an argument that those descendants are victims in need of reparations? No crime was committed against them directly, and they seem to have benefited from the crimes committed against their ancestors.

I must stress that this is not in any way excusing or justifying the wrongs that occurred. But how would you make an argument for reparations, given how things turned out?

[jonathanlb]

It's true that enslaved people and their enslavers are no longer alive, but the legacy of slavery has left significant and enduring socio-economic disparities between descendants of enslaved people and those who are not. Inequalities in wealth, education, health, and opportunities persist, often along racial lines. These disparities aren't merely coincidental, but have been reinforced by racially discriminatory policies and practices like segregation, redlining, and racial violence, all of which have historical roots in the institution of slavery.

Also the argument that descendants of slaves in America are better off than their counterparts in Africa is problematic because it assumes that the progress of African nations would have been the same without the devastating effects of the Atlantic slave trade, which significantly hindered their development. Furthermore, it risks minimizing the experience of ongoing racial discrimination faced by Black Americans.

The idea of reparations isn't necessarily about compensating individuals for specific harm done to them, but about a society taking responsibility for historic wrongs and making a concerted effort to rectify those systemic inequalities. Reparations could take many forms, including investment in education, healthcare, housing, and economic opportunities for communities disproportionately affected by racial discrimination.

[slashdev]

> the legacy of slavery has left significant and enduring socio-economic disparities between descendants of enslaved people and those who are not. Inequalities in wealth, education, health, and opportunities persist, often along racial lines. These disparities aren't merely coincidental, but have been reinforced by racially discriminatory policies and practices like segregation, redlining, and racial violence, all of which have historical roots in the institution of slavery.

This is a fact.

> Also the argument that descendants of slaves in America are better off than their counterparts in Africa is problematic because it assumes that the progress of African nations would have been the same without the devastating effects of the Atlantic slave trade, which significantly hindered their development.

Maybe, don't forget the slave trade enriched tribes inhabiting those regions. It was Africans enslaving other Africans and selling them (at least to my limited understanding on the subject, which may be wrong.)

> Reparations could take many forms, including investment in education, healthcare, housing, and economic opportunities for communities disproportionately affected by racial discrimination.

Why make it about race? Just make those things available to all disadvantaged individuals, period.

[smogcutter]

> Why make it about race? Just make those things available to all disadvantaged individuals, period.

Because…

> the legacy of slavery has left significant and enduring socio-economic disparities between descendants of enslaved people and those who are not. Inequalities in wealth, education, health, and opportunities persist, often along racial lines. These disparities aren't merely coincidental, but have been reinforced by racially discriminatory policies and practices like segregation, redlining, and racial violence, all of which have historical roots in the institution of slavery.

Parent made the case very plain.

Try a thought experiment: your ancestors were enslaved in America. After emancipation, every generation of your ancestors was subject to both systemic and individual discrimination and violence.

The question is, what would you want done? Do the answers “well that’s all in the past” or “how about these other people though” satisfy? It’s worth thinking about. Personally I do not know what my own answer would be, other than that I would almost certainly be angry and distrustful.

[slashdev]

I do know what my answer would be. I don't make excuses or play the victim card or blame my current condition on external circumstances. I accept what has passed, what my current situation is, and try to play the hand I was dealt the best way I can. That's my personality, I don't think that'd change.

I can certainly understand why one would be bitter about "every generation of your ancestors was subject to both systemic and individual discrimination and violence". They have a right to be upset. A lot of people have a right to be upset about a lot of things. I don't think you can jump from that to reparations though.

[bnralt]

> Also the argument that descendants of slaves in America are better off than their counterparts in Africa is problematic because it assumes that the progress of African nations would have been the same without the devastating effects of the Atlantic slave trade, which significantly hindered their development.

Slavery in Africa was widespread before the Atlantic slave as well as after the Atlantic slave trade. There's some apologism (interestingly enough, quite similar to Southern U.S. slavery apologism) claiming that it wasn't that bad, but if you look at the actual accounts it could be extremely brutal. Like with the U.S. there was certainly a degree of different experiences, but like in the U.S., that doesn't justify the practice.

In the end it was actually European powers that ended most slavery in Africa, often with a great deal of local opposition ("The End of Slavery in Africa" is a decent starting place if you want to see how it happened in each individual area).

Ethiopia is an interesting example - it wasn't colonized[1], and so slavery there persisted long after it ended in most of the continent. The League of Nations kept pressuring the country to end the practice, but it kept dragging it's feet. It only ended when Italy invaded in the run-up to WWII (it's also interesting as a non-colonized control country when it comes to colonization).

[1] It was conquered by fascist powers for some years, the same as most of Europe.

[rayiner]

> Also the argument that descendants of slaves in America are better off than their counterparts in Africa is problematic because it assumes that the progress of African nations would have been the same without the devastating effects of the Atlantic slave trade, which significantly hindered their development

That’s the hight of results-oriented reasoning. The historical norm is that different societies did not progress at the same rate. Europeans got ahead of Africa and Asia in the 1500s-1900s. That’s why they were positioned to engage in things like colonialism to begin with.

But go back a bit further—Britons were about a thousand years late to the Bronze Age. Nobody held them back. It’s just that key milestones of civilizational development aren’t distributed evenly. Because of course they aren’t.

[l33t233372]

> the devastating effects of the Atlantic slave trade, which significantly hindered their development

It was my understanding that most of the slaves traded were already slaves, so it wasn’t just plundering the continent to kidnap people.

I’m not particularly well studied about this. Am I wrong? What were the effects that hindered the continent’s development? Was it the incentive to capture slaves to trade led to more wars of capture/conquest?

[inemesitaffia]

Demand drove increased supply.

[JamesBarney]

Why do you think Africa would have been significantly better off without the slave trade?

I really don't see how the slave trade could lead to a 95% reduction in GDP over 200 years later.

[jmerz]

So there's actually a lot of academic debate on the merits of reparations, and exactly what and how much reparations should be.

A very oversimplified pro argument: if it wasn't for slavery, these families would have generational wealth and better social situations. African Americans in the US ARE disproportionately lower wealth/income and this has CLEAR historical origins.

The oversimplified con argument: Okay, but if you come from a wealthy African American family, why should you have a leg up over a poor (or otherwise more disadvantaged) white student? What about an immigrant, who didn't benefit from slavery at all?

Fundamentally there's a huge swath of different injustices across society, and we obviously can't fix all of them at once, so a big challenge in this sort of debate is how you slice the injustices and how you prioritize fixing them.

[slashdev]

I don't think it's possible to do that, in general. Anyone can find an injustice if they look hard enough.

I have some ancestors that fled religious persecution in France. Many died. The ones that fled gave up everything. Should I play the victim card and petition France to restore the land my ancestors were chased off of?

History is pretty ugly, I'm sure everyone could find a justified grievance if they tried hard enough.

I think the logical thing is to focus on equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. What things can we do to distribute opportunity more equally in society? Things like free post-secondary education, free health care would seem to be a better use of resources.

[nomat]

you know the reason that we don't have those things is precisely because politicians campaigned on the narrative that black people (welfare queens, etc) would unfairly take advantage of a system like that and they won.

So it seems like you understand what needs to be done but what not what the blocking issues are.

[tadfisher]

To reinforce your point, those same politicians are fighting against student loan forgiveness. This is telling; to them, only suffering under the burden of non-dischargeable debt entitles you to the same opportunities as a wealthy family.

[slashdev]

I don’t like student loan forgiveness as a policy because it is unequally distributed and benefits those most who were least responsible.

I think one could come up with a more fair proposal than that.

[celu]

> A very oversimplified pro argument: if it wasn't for slavery, these families would have generational wealth and better social situations. African Americans in the US ARE disproportionately lower wealth/income and this has CLEAR historical origins.

I'm confused by the pro argument. My known lineage was not enslaved, but my grandparents immigrated with 0$, and my family has no generational wealth and we don't receive reparations.

Isn't being freed from slavery the same as being freshly immigrated with 0$?

Furthermore, there are tons of Asian immigrants that come from a third world country with virtually nothing, but become top earners because of their cultural values of education and filial piety

[iamjackg]

> Isn't being freed from slavery the same as being freshly immigrated with 0$?

Well, if you're immigrating, it isn't <country you're moving to>'s fault you have no money.

If you've been enslaved, it's very much <country you were enslaved by>'s fault you have no money.

[l33t233372]

But it’s not their fault they were born to parents that had no money.

[slashdev]

One could argue that despite being free, African Americans still had to work against racism, unfair laws, and a system rigged against them in many ways. Those are things a white immigrant wouldn't have had to deal with, but black immigrants would have. Is the black immigrant excluded or included in any potential reparations?

[snotrockets]

> Isn't being freed from slavery the same as being freshly immigrated with 0$?

The US economy, and hence those immigrants, were better off, because of the gains made from slavery.

[slashdev]

By that logic, African-Americans also benefit from that economy, and ironically the gains made from slavery.

[snotrockets]

Not as much as white people did, and still do.

PS your terminology shows your biases.

[tadfisher]

Your grandparents chose to immigrate.

[Manuel_D]

The overall precedence is that reparations are paid to the people who experienced the harm, and the reparations are paid by those culpable of the harm. The Japanese who experienced internment were paid reparations by the United States government that took their property. Holocaust victims that had their property stolen were paid reparations by the former Nazis.

By contrast Irish Americans could very justifiably claim that were it not for Anglo oppression, they would be far wealthier. But we wouldn't fine Anglos today to pay Irish Americans. Slavery hits a similar issue, limiting the reparations to the party that did harm is very vague when you're approaching two centuries later. Most proposals for "reparations" aren't anything remotely close to actual reparations. A recent immigrant is assigned as much liability as a descendant of plantation owners. This isn't a reparation, this is a tax assigned without regard to culpability.

[nomat]

The harms from slavery didn't end after the civil war. We had to pass laws a century later in the 1960s to outlaw the racist policies implemented by federal and state govts after reconstruction. The social (and legal) structure of american society has always had black people at the bottom, and until that is fixed then black people as a group are still being actively damaged by the legacy of chattel slavery.

[Manuel_D]

And now you have to start picking which racist policies are worthy of compensation and which aren't. Asians faced the Chinese exclusion act, as well as redlining for example. Will the aforementioned anti-irish and anti-catholic discrimination also receive reparations? And again, how wilp you identify the liable party, or will we just tax everybody?

[slashdev]

That's true. There are still people alive who were hurt by those laws.

[slashdev]

This argument makes a lot of sense to me.

[golemotron]

What injustice? Each of these people have the same rights: those enumerated in the bill of rights. That is justice. If there were economic rights in our system there would be case for calling the status quo injustice but there aren't.

(this isn't to say that things can't be changed, but it would require the adoption of new amendments).

[nomat]

I think the numbers tell a convincing story.

The median net worth of Americans in 2019 was $121,760.

In 2019, the median net worth of white Americans was $189,100.

The median net worth of Black Americans was $24,100

I forget how to link on hn but it's from the motley fool.

[slashdev]

Yes, that is true (I don't know about the exact numbers, but there's no question there's a difference.)

Asian Americans are even better off, but why should they have to pay for reparations? Their ancestors weren't involved in slavery in the US.

Hispanic Americans are also pretty poor (more so than African-Americas if memory serves), but they weren't disadvantaged by slavery, should they have to chip in for reparations?

Southerners were clearly disadvantaged by fighting and losing the civil war, does the North owe them anything?

What about the survivors and next of kin of the soldiers that put it all on the line for their country in Iraq and Afghanistan only to find out the government lied to them and everyone else about why they were there?

Everybody could find a grievance if they look hard enough. Which ones do we try to address?

[tadfisher]

Honestly, who gives a shit? We are a society, not a bunch of White people and Asian people and Black people and Hispanic people. A functioning society would work to fix those numbers, because it's absolutely a problem that needs to be fixed, not a punishment for being a member of a "successful" ethnicity.

[slashdev]

I agree, work on creating a more equal society, with better opportunities for all, instead of playing the game of who's the bigger victim. Because we can all play the victim card, including me and you, and it's just not productive or beneficial to anyone.

[l33t233372]

I agree exactly. And what about people who’s families moved here in the last 140 years. They surely didn’t own slaves.

And who even gets reparations? If someone’s great great great grandmother was a black slave but every other relative was white, does this person get reparations?

[macintux]

You can simply paste the link into your comment.

[agentgumshoe]

I think the key question is: do reparations actually change anything? You give one generation a 'payout' so the politicians can wipe their hands of the issue, then what, are we back to the same point with the next generation? What about those old enough where the handout won't do anything for them?

How do reparations actually move the relationship forwards? Handing out money does not solve anything fundamentally. They need to focus on understanding and building a positive future for all, which means working towards ensuring legally and policy-wise there is no remaining racial bias or discrimination (equal opportunity for all - not outcome) and working away from holding the grudges of previous generations.

[themitigating]

The descendants of those slaves are now much wealthier and better off by pretty much any metric than their relatives who were not enslaved

Do you mean each successive generation of blacks were wealthier than the previous? What about a comparison to the average white person?

There were many laws that existed well after slavery that could prevent a black person from succeeding.

That's my justification for affirmative action (not reparations). Should it last forever? No but it hasn't been that many generations since the civil rights act

[slashdev]

> Do you mean each successive generation of blacks were wealthier than the previous? What about a comparison to the average white person?

No I mean the average African-American is easily over 10x wealthier, and has far better opportunities than the average citizen of the countries that now inhabit the lands they originally came from. Were it not for slavery, again as abhorrent as it was, they'd be a lot worse off today.

> here were many laws that existed well after slavery that could prevent a black person from succeeding.

Yes, that's a fact.

[troupe]

It is also easy to forget that the suppliers of slaves were African nations that practiced slavery themselves. They found the Europeans to be great customers for their slaves. So descendants of the Ashanti and others benefited from the selling of slaves. If we really want to look at reparations, we probably need some way to determine what percentage each person benefited from slavery and what percentage they suffered from it. Also there were slaves from Asia and other places that are probably just as deserving of payments if that happens. But all of this flies in face of the narrative that slavery was something whites did to blacks.

A better approach would be to try to provide opportunities that people can take advantage of. The US actually does a great job of this which is why we don't see mass exodus of people trying to go back to the African nations.

[ribosometronome]

Easily forgotten? It's brought up in just about every discussion on the subject, including this one, already, by the person you were replying to agree with.

[troupe]

I've never seen it as something that was thought about as part of any reparation ideas.

[themitigating]

No I mean the average African-American is easily over 10x wealthier, and has far better opportunities than the average citizen of the countries that now inhabit the lands they originally came from.

Because those countries were devastated by Europeans

[slashdev]

Those countries were created by Europeans, they didn’t exist before that. The tribes that were there before were not much of a civilization. They weren’t behind the rest of the world because of colonialism, they were colonized because they were behind the rest of the world.

[themitigating]

Behind the rest of the world how? Technology?

Would you say Native Americans were behind? They had a thriving society.

[inconceivable]

nobody gives a shit about the logical arguments. it's social maneuvering for power and money. in other words, it's politics. the sooner you understand that people are looking out for their own monetary interests the less confused you will be about the whole thing.

[eli_gottlieb]

> Do reparations for slavery even make logical sense?

Yes. The slaves did labor. That labor demands wages. The fact that the formerly enslaved also benefited from public goods to which all citizens had access does not pay down the debt owned to them for their labor.

[qwytw]

I guess a better question is whether reparation paid out to 5th+ generation descendants of slaves make sense. How do you even implement that practically?

[Ygg2]

It's a great distraction. It's like Eris' golden apple. Very appealing but impossible to fulfill.

Gets people really against each other, and away from your profits.

[MisterBastahrd]

Figure out how much the labor was worth. Throw on punitive damages for having enslaved them against their will their entire lives. Now calculate for having invested that money at the time that slavery ended.

That's a good STARTING point.

Japanese-American citizens got locked up for a few years during WWII and the result was that Reagan signed a bill allowing for their descendants to receive $20K for each incarcerated person.

Now consider how many LIFETIMES were wasted in slavery.

Turns out that the same people who always complain about others having their hands out are just upset at any situation that doesn't personally enrich them.

[qwytw]

> their descendants

Or themselves since plenty of the victims were alive. This was a single event that lasted ~4 years with comparatively very good records.

Slavery lasted for several hundreds years, there are not records for most slaves and even cases where they can identified good luck tracking down all of their descendants. That's several magnitudes more complex, to an incomparable extent.

> Figure out how much the labor was worth

So do you need to find specific ancestors who were slaves and the payout would be based on how long did they work for? So... somebody who's great-great-great-great-grandfather died when he was 72 years old would receive twice as much than someone who's ancestor only lived to 36?

Of course you'll be especially lucky if you can find any ancestors who were shipped to the America in the 1600s. I bet slaveholders kept perfect record, especially back in those days.

Then you have to figure out how to split the payout between 50 to 1000 (un)verifiably descendants of the same individual or will be on first come first serve basis?

All this just seems so bizarrely impractical that I can't believe anyone would seriously suggest it after spending more than 2-5 minutes thinking about how would it work.

[MisterBastahrd]

Your argument is that we should never do anything because attempting to do the right thing to people who have had their pasts and futures stolen is hard.

Meanwhile we've got censuses going back hundreds of years. Do the math. It's not that difficult to come up with a minimum standard unless you're in the "do nothing" category.

[MisterBastahrd]

Are they wealthier and better off than the people whose ancestors stole their labor?

No?

Then we need reparations.

[snotrockets]

> The descendants of those slaves are now much wealthier and better off by pretty much any metric than their relatives who were not enslaved

This is such a loud dog whistle, even deaf dogs can hear it.

[tomcam]

One of the basic principles in Western law, stretching back 700 years or so, is that prosecuting people not involved in a crime is unacceptable. The slaves and the enslaved are long dead. No one has legally owned slaves for 150+ years.

How do you apportion the taxes? Do new immigrants owe the same as people here generations? Do the descendants of Irish immigrants owe the same as descendants of slave owners? What about the black descendants of black slave owners, of whom there were over a thousand?

And how far does this go back? The Comanches were extremely brutal. They killed and enslaved many people from many tribes, especially the Apache. Should they be responsible for reparations to the Apache and other tribes they crushed?

[tyg13]

You're missing the point. No one is being "punished" for their ancestors having owned slaves. The idea is to assist people whose ancestors were exploited, legally and systemically.

[wrs]

It may help to think of it as assistance for victims of a natural disaster, which seems pretty universally acceptable. The disaster being a very messed up society. Or as something like the Marshall Plan that helped restore Europe after, again, society’s global screwup.

[whall6]

If foster children were raised so well that people were jealous, maybe that would create an adverse incentive for people to create more children than they can handle and desert children that they’ve already had?

[XorNot]

You live in a democracy. If ward's of the state were well taken care of, it would imply a voting majority who recognize this as valuable. Maybe they would also do other things with that power, like vote for increased assistance and benefits for parents in general, or expand the program to be a blanket "everyone can have free state college".

[simple-thoughts]

Social constructs don’t determine what is real or not. Instead they function as processes within a wider ecosystem. Every political decision that’s made has adverse consequences since they require force, no matter the political structure. If something is valuable to people they will do it freely without requiring force; but if something is valuable to a select group at the expense of others, the result is always some degree of negative side effects. It may be possible to argue some social good outweighs those effects, but dismissing them because “we live in a democracy” reveals a totalitarian view of the state.

[nemo44x]

The word “democracy” is never mentioned in the declaration if independence or the constitution. Very specifically because the founders recognized how dangerous democracies are. To prevent the runaway issues you’ve pointed out.

Democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for lunch.

[rlt]

This is called a “moral hazard”, and I agree.

[bagacrap]

> regular people would be jealous of how kids who were wards of the state lived

In this utopia you describe, I'd think all kids lived like kings.

[pessimizer]

Utopia has a really low bar if we get it from treating foster kids like middle-class kids.

[qwytw]

So lower class kids (through no fault of their own as well..) should not have access to higher education? That's was very weird of phrasing. What about making education accessible to all people regardless of their who their parents were instead of trying to make people jealous?

[bagacrap]

Wait, regular people are jealous of how middle class kids live?

[BurningFrog]

Status is relative. If everyone is a king, no one is a king.

[j45]

Learn like kings

Grow like kings

Dream like kings

Give back like kings

[noah_buddy]

History is not my forte but it’s funny to use kings in this metaphor.

[j45]

It sure is. Not my choice of word. ;)

[nobody9999]

>The reason we should be paying for foster kids' college is because the state is their parent, so it's our responsibility. In a country that wasn't shit, regular people would be jealous of how kids who were wards of the state lived, and how well-raised they were.

Absolutely. As my mother used to say, parents should (at a minimum) pay for education and therapy (not to mention housing with electricity and indoor plumbing, food, clothes, etc.). Since the government of California is the legal guardian of these children, it's really the least they can do.

[nemo44x]

Disagree. It is not the states job to raise foster kids. It’s the states job to match them with families that want to take them in and care for them like their own. There’s a line a mine long of people that are desperate to adopt but have to job through endless hoops.

Fix the adoption system and stop needlessly expanding the state and taking on more clients.

[kevin_thibedeau]

It was sold as a way to fix the wrongs of institutionalized bigotry. Unfortunately certain minorities get turned away from AA benefits because the narrative is focused on only one group despite historical slights affecting many more. As implemented, it wasn't even fair to the people it was claiming to assist.

[throwawaysleep]

> regular people would be jealous of how kids who were wards of the state lived

Given that the money to do that would have been taken from those parents, you can see why in a democracy parents would object to having their resources stolen for government kids to have better lives over their own.

[pessimizer]

They should give their kids up if they don't want them.

[qwytw]

This makes me think that your original comment was some form of sarcasm. So your plan is to incentivize lower class parents to abandon their children because the state would be able to take better care of them?

That does not sound dystopian at all..

[seanmcdirmid]

Affirmative action came in response to Jim Crow. When slavery ended during the civil war, people had the idea that it wasn’t needed. It wasn’t until reconstruction ended and southern states leaned heavily into racist policy making that it became popular.

[themitigating]

It wasn't just about slavery but also racist laws that existed until the 70s~.

[nonethewiser]

> In a country that wasn't shit, regular people would be jealous of how kids who were wards of the state lived, and how well-raised they were.

Actually this sounds completely dystopian. In what world should people really wish they were foster kids? Its no wonder people warn against an effort to destroy the nuclear family.

[Glide]

It's probably the most dystopian and I'm very glad I didn't have to scroll to the bottom before someone said otherwise.

The logical end of this thinking is that people who would otherwise be perfectly capable of raising children would put them up for adoption because they would want the best outcome for their kids.

It's like Black Mirror episodes write themselves.