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Comment by stormbrew | Hacker News Reader

This analogy falls apart rather quickly when you recognize that the north american indigenous population still suffers greatly under legal systems built on the treaties that weren't even honored while the descendants of those who perpetrated great crimes against them collectively constitute the greatest mass of wealth in the history of the world while also pretending to have done nothing wrong.

Re-do your analogy but now it's that your dad killed someone and stole the deed to his land, found oil on it, and is now one of the richest people in the world and the person he killed's kid is now on the street begging for cash and tell me again how little you owe that kid who's father's land gave you your trust fund and your college education.

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tell me again how little you owe that kid

That's actually not that hard to do, both from a legal and a moral standpoint. Legally, the "you" in your analogy has never committed an unlawful act and is therefore not personally beholden to any restitution to the victim's side. It is the purveyance of a well-functioning justice system to provide adequate restitution for victims of crimes, but that does not extend to a personal obligation on people that had no part in said crime.

Morally, the story is a bit more convoluted but your premise falls back to the theory of original sin: that people can be personally held responsible for their heritage. In the past two-thousand years it has been proven a very powerful argument because it "feels" right, but at its core it is still a rejection of the individualist premise that all people are born equal. And I'm still on the side that believes all people should be born equal, even though that stance seems less and less prevalent nowadays. Once you start arguing for collective punishment of past crimes, it's very hard to argue your case without at the same time defending the same practice throughout many wars in history, and now explicitly outlawed in the Geneva Conventions.

Original sin is the idea that a dude ate an apple some number of thousands of years ago and an all powerful (and allegedly all knowing) being got grumpy at him for it for some reason and now we all suffer for his intransigence.

In fact, the concept of original sin requires that we exist in a state of punishment for that sin permanently, not that we continue to benefit from it by, again, existing in the wealthiest civilization that has ever existed on this planet.

This is again a poor analogy, framing us as victims of an aggressor who wants something from us that we cannot give.

As for the geneva conventions, please note that colonial relations to indigenous people violated just about every single one of the geneva conventions. Forced resettlement, biological warfare, collective punishment, the destruction of non-military targets -- it is not "collective punishment" to expect there to be at least a moderate reparation for crimes committed. What is even the point of the concept of "war crimes" if you can get away with them just because "oh it's been too long".

If you unintentionally buy stolen property, should you be obligated to return it to the original owner (with adequate proof of such) when requested? If you are forced to return it, are you being held responsible for your heritage?

Would you support the return of Armenians and Greeks to Turkey along with their historical land being given to them?

I think it is a false dilemma to assume that either person would become rich by means of owning the land at that time. The second the land was stolen it's future was changed forever but that does not change the original value of the stolen land. I assume the land was bought and sold between many parties before the person who finally found oil and became rich owned it, and assuming a tribe recognized ownership at the time the person who had the oil rich land stolen may not even have been of that tribe under an alternate timeline. I do understand the point though that the greater the size of the theft, the more reason to give back but I wouldn't go as far as to say there is an obligation by society in general towards that murdered man's grandchildren. I think the analogy still stands, in that the victim is long dead, the thief is long dead, and there was no crime knowingly committed by the living. I also think if we referred to the country of Spain as the "Spanish Tribe" and the country of England the "English Tribe" and the Colonists the "Colonist Tribe" and said they were warring with each other, then we probably would not even have this conversation.

Some crimes are not forgotten.

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