Hacker News Reader

Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

I'm talking about all the other 'unfair' trade practices that have been cited.

If you don't want the developing world to follow in the West's footsteps, perhaps we should share some of our wealth with them? Would that be a more palpable alternative?

Earlier today, a study was posted on HN about how the British Empire plundered ~$50T (inflation-adjusted) of wealth from India over it's colonial history. If you want to even the playing field with the developing world, we have a lot of reparations to look forward to.

View on HN

> If you don't want the developing world to follow in the West's footsteps, perhaps we should share some of our wealth with them?

We are, it's called the global economy, and it has performed a wealth transfer of unprecedented scale these last decades.

> we have a lot of reparations to look forward to.

Colonial reparations are complete crock, because they are based on counterfactual history speculations, and there are absolutely no concrete limits on those.

The Roman empire obviously plundered the British isles for inflation-adjusted astronomical amounts during its colonial history, should modern-day Italians pay reparations to England?

It's absurd.

Arguably, had the Romans not invaded and expanded, much of the Mediterranean and the rest of Europe would have remained 'barbarian' for quite a while. They arguably brought civilization with them into the far-reaches of Europe (obviously at a great toll to the local populations)..

Arguably, the British brought a lot of things with them to India as well, infrastructure, medicine, industry, language. All these things benefit Indians living today, and many millions of Indians living today wouldn't be alive if the course of history hadn't been changed.

How do you put a value on that?

Also, many Indians were killed resisting the colonial invasion, and their descendants are not living today as a result, but would have if the course of history hadn't changed.

How do you put a value on that?

You can twist yourself silly arguing these things back and forth, because there are no physical limits. There are no principles to fall back on, there's only human imagination, you're free to dream up whatever pricetag you want on them.

And that is why colonial reparations are ridiculous.

> Arguably, the British brought a lot of things with them to India as well, infrastructure, medicine, industry, language. All these things benefit Indians living today, and many millions of Indians living today wouldn't be alive if the course of history hadn't been changed.

India's share of the world economy went from 24.4% in 1700 to 4.2% in 1950. India's GDP (PPP) per capita was stagnant during the Mughal Empire and began to decline prior to the onset of British rule.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_India_under_the_Bri...

Well, African Americans were enslaved, but were also taught valuable skills in cotton agriculture. Having carefully weighed the pros and cons of the two, we've concluded that slavery in the United States was a net wash, and, if we were to repeat the experiment again, slaveowners should not owe their slaves any reparations.

> infrastructure

Infrastructure that was paid for, and built by the people of India.

> medicine

Then why did life expectancy in British India go down during the colonial period? And why were millions of people dying in famines, all the while British India was a net exporter of food, to the rest of the empire?

> industry

How did countries that did not get colonised ever manage to industrialize?

> language

What, did Indians communicate with eachother through chest-thumping, and grunts, before someone had the bright idea of teaching them how to speak English? Christ on crutches... This reads a bit like satire.

You can start the negotiations. If things are ridiculous, bring them back to earth.

"Your grandfather's grandfather owes me money"

Where do you go from there, exactly?

Recent history reparations wouldn't be absurd. For instance, the US should start with the American Indians and then the African slave trade.

How about Russia returning the wealth of the Ukrainian people, the Jews, Tuvans, Tatars, Lithuanians,etc? Will you do the numbers please?

I think reparations are the way to go.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com