Comment by brnt | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brnt | Hacker News Reader

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Well, its a pity you start by accusing me I don't know what I'm talking about, when you support that by precisely ignoring my point: what is the 'Dutch' you're referring here? I argue that is not people now living in the territory of that state, that no people in the Dutch state right now (well, a few oldies excepted) played part in those atrocities.

I hesitate to say more. Yourexample is particular bit of history is actually for me family history, so I think I know quite a bit, but you tone and neglect of my argument makes it seem you have a bone to pick, which you can do very well without me.

I for one will never accept people being dragged into blood feuds, carrying over unto I don't know how many generations of descendants. That's just reusing classic nationalist/capitalists arguments.

I hope any reader got my point that inequality is a huge problem and that blood feud accounting is not a solution, just continuation.

You're right that my tone wasn't great. I was surprised by your confidence coupled with what seems like complete ignorance of the severity of the treatment of native peoples during the colonization of the islands in Indonesia and elsewhere.

> blood feuds

Again, no one is arguing for that. We're trying to create policies which incentivize good behavior and disincentivize bad behavior in the world, in the long term. The straw person that you're fighting there has been defeated, but this has not (from my above comment):

> They're making the very reasonable claim that one group of people oppressed another and that this put the oppressed people at a significant disadvantage relative to those who benefited from the oppression, and thus that resources should be redistributed to balance that - a policy that makes perfect sense in terms of economic incentives.

The treatment of the native peoples is a subject I am very familiar with, far more than I'd like to. I have to count a murderer and torturer in my family because of this history. However, and perhaps I didn't make that clear, I was trying to respond to something else, GPs first line:

> Forcing colonialist countries to return their ill-gotten wealth is nothing but justice.

Even though I am a firm believer that we are not nearly doing enouhhto equalize wealth in general, that statement seems to be to be all about some sort of blood debt. That I cannot agree with, which I have tried to make clear.

The matter of these particular victims is in my view another one, and I wish the compensation would have come decades sooner (and any other victims that have died by now), and had been compensated much better, by trials preferably.

But that is a far cry from what I understood the GP meant with his or her post, in particular the first line.

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