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Comment by CuriouslyC | Hacker News Reader

I assume your interest in reparations is to create an even playing field. Reparations won't do that. It'll just create a lot of opportunities for capitalist predators to milk a poorly educated population that is now flush with cash. Once they've been squeezed dry, most of them will be in an even worse situation, because reparations will have assuaged the white guilt of their supporters while stoking the racism and anger of their opponents.

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So you are assuming all black people are poorly educated and will suddenly be flushed with cash?

I wasn't talking about wealth transfer. I was mainly talking about stopping discrimination and providing loans and scholarships to a section of the population that has been discriminated against to redress centuries of oppression.

The average educational attainment of black people in the united states is lower, that's not racism, it's data. You can attach racial causes to it if you want, but it doesn't change my point.

"Reparations" is basically code for wealth transfer. If you mean crafting a more just, fair society, you probably want a different word.

Firstly, the milking you refer to is already happening, and has been happening for hundreds of years. Second, as i've already said, the way i see reparations is not a simple cash transfer. Its stopping the systemic injustices and having programes in place to help black communities in terms of loans, grants and educational scholarship.

If you agree that the New Deal and GI bill helped spur economic development (though they were not perfect) and lifted poor white people out of poverty, why not do that today for black people? Black people were systematically left out of that help, so time to give them the help they are owed.

Not "suddenly" and not "all" but the point is perverse incentives and unintended consequences. Some scholarship of a conclusion you reached there :)

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