‘You Just Feel Like Nothing’: California to Pay Sterilization Victims | Hacker News Reader

‘You Just Feel Like Nothing’: California to Pay Sterilization Victims

nytimes.com

29 pointsmistersquid18 comments

"California is prepared to... pay... an estimated $25,000 each."

What a joke. Compensation for state forced sterilization should be orders of magnitude greater than that.

edit: P.s. How have these cases not gone to the supreme court? I understand these people might be of little means, but surely some org like the ACLU could represent the case.

They have gone to SCOTUS and SCOTUS said it was constitutional. This is generally seen as one of their worst decisions and it still technically stands:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buck_v._Bell

Dread Scott and citizens United probably right up there

Looks like that ruling was made in 1927. This absolutely needs to be overturned. At the risk of godwinning[1] myself, this is literally a Nazi policy.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

Its the other way around actually. The nqzis were copying América

I think these people should absolutely be compensated, but I cannot help but notice one thing. CA will use my tax money to compensate them. In this case, I don't mind, because it's the right thing to do. But I was obviously never a part of any of these decisions, I obviously have never voted for people who did this stupid shit, etc etc. Yet I end up paying for it. That seems to be a pretty big problem with the decision making process then. I would like to hold the fuckers who wasted 2.26 trillion dollars, ~3000 American lives and countless local lives over 20 years to hand Afghanistan from Taliban back to Taliban, achieving absolutely nothing. But who do you hold accountable for it? Using the democratic process, you punish Bush by voting him out? Well, he's long gone. Most of those fuckers are enjoying their retirement, they will never be held accountable for any of this, yet here we are paying for their insane decisions.

There are actions that we’re responsible for individually and actions we’re responsible for collectively, and in the case of the latter, there is often inherited responsibility that we must answer for even though we individually didn’t have anything to do with it.

It’s the reality of being a community, large or small.

On the average, we need more smaller communities.

In theory, war criminals get tried and punished accordingly. Since none of them do, clearly the majority isn’t in control of state power in most countries.

As always, the solution is for the majority that do all the work to directly seize state power in a revolution.

Oh, they're in control.

They just can't compete with the State & media power that convinces their peers that everything is business as usual.

"Manufactured Consent"

Bush is long gone, but Obama and Trump continued the war.

https://archive.is/5CvQR

Non-paywalled source: https://nypost.com/2021/07/08/california-paying-victims-of-f...

In Virginia c. 1956, my grandmother was supposed to have an appendectomy. The Navy surgeon did this and also performed a radical hysterectomy (involuntary sterilization). It was said the surgeon was drunk, but it could've been a purposeful policy back then too.

Sorry for her loss, but the surgeon reminds me of Doctor Benway from the book Naked Lunch

If her appendix burst, the doctor might have been trying to remove infected tissue.

But she was obviously owed an explanation she did not receive.

Forced sterilization is horrible. Eugenics is a sad 'replacement' for widespread education and a fair society.

-adopted orphan who grew up in an intelligent house full of books and is seemingly considered above average in most metrics.

So let’s sterilize those dirty poors...? What the hell are you getting at?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com