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Comment by concordDance | Hacker News Reader

> And then I think: you can't just stop doing a bad thing and pretend it didn't happen. You've got to try to make things right.

Here's where your thinking goes askew, you can't simply draw a boundary around a subset of people and declare that an agentic thing. Groups of people don't have guilt or automatic responsibility, only individuals do.

Thinking of very diverse groups of people as single entities is how you get sentiments like "Muslims did 9/11 and they must pay" without considering that the tendency-towards-9/11-ness might not carry over to the entire set of "Muslims". Less than half of Americans were even alive in 1971 and no one is alive from the days of US slavery.

Thinking "those who have inherited benefits due to negative treatment of African Americans should transfer wealth to the descendents of those African Americans" is a separate idea to race based affirmative action. Race based AA would see the children of a pair of Ukrainian immigrants put below the children of a pair of Ethiopian immigrants, even though neither group has anything to do with slavery.

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I'm not talking about guilt, I'm talking about getting hurt. Black Americans were quite clearly discriminated against as a group.

Your examples are all about punishment, I'm talking about lifting them up, correcting the wrongs, reimbursing the damage done. It's not about benefits they inherited, but obstacles they inherited, opportunities that were denied to them, unjust punishment that they received. This has been structural for a ridiculously long time, and it's still not gone. Black people still receive more severe punishment for the same crimes, are still often denied opportunities that are available to white people (months ago there was an article here about how black founders couldn't get funding if they didn't get a white co-founder who was then assumed by VCs to be the real CEO). Even if they are technically equal before the law, that still doesn't mean that they're treated as equal in practice.

> Your examples are all about punishment, I'm talking about lifting them up, correcting the wrongs, reimbursing the damage done.

Lifting one group up is almost always at the expense of other groups, which is isomorphic to punishment.

If you have a way to lift some up without any disadvantage to others, we should probably just do that to an infinite extent to everyone.

If some groups were so oppressed that they now put a cost on the rest of society via crime and welfare costs, fixing that will be a long term net benefit for other groups, not an expense. We can discuss the most effective way to fix it, but pretending the problem doesn't exist won't make it go away.

how is AA fixing problem of crime in inner cities?

Absolute Majority (>75%) of beneficiaries from AA at Ivy League are kids of rich black people and rich immigrants from African continent

1. https://www.aei.org/op-eds/affirmative-action-helps-black-im...

2. https://www.jbhe.com/news_views/52_harvard-blackstudents.htm...

That is a valid argument against AA if you can provide the data that shows that only a minority of AA beneficiaries are descendants of oppressed blacks and that therefore the net benefit of AA on oppressed communities isn't worth the cost it puts on society. If you can show that, society benefits because it can scrap a nonworking program and replace it with one that works.

My point was that simply saying there is a cost for programs that benefit black communities is not an argument against those programs. There is a cost to all regulations. We should keep the ones that are net beneficial and discard the ones that aren't.

Typically, the argument against these programs is about fairness, which you might call a "crybaby argument." Life isn't fair. These people should have learned that when they were three. The only correct arguments relating to policy are about whether they benefit society.

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/affirmative-action-helps-black-im...

https://www.jbhe.com/news_views/52_harvard-blackstudents.htm...

You still haven't presented a complete argument. Reread GP about how only the net effect matters, and then read https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra....

Is 75% fraud not enough for you?

“75 percent of the black students at Harvard were of African or Caribbean descent or of mixed race. According to Professor Gates, more than two thirds of all Harvard's black students were either the children or grandchildren of West Indians or Africans and very few of Harvard's black students were the descendants of American slaves. ”

I presented facts that >75% of AA recipients have nothing to do with inner city crimes and poor blacks.

If you think this is ok, I dont agree with this, and neither does Supreme Court

> Is 75% fraud not enough for you?

Are you unable to do math? If the net effect of the fraud is -1 per person and the net effect of the non-fraud is 5 per person, is the policy net beneficial or not? You have to show net negative benefit, not >50% fraud for a complete argument.

> If you think this is ok,

I don't think this is OK. I'm actually somewhat disinclined to believe AA for college admissions is good policy, preferring earlier interventions like better schooling and childcare in these communities. I am merely explaining what a complete argument looks like.

> I dont agree with this, and neither does Supreme Court

The Supreme Court didn't rule on whether the level of fraud is OK. It ruled on whether it violates the equal protection clause. Please read more carefully, both the comments here and the Court's opinion, both of which you have failed to understand.

Net benefit is not my argument, it is your argument so it is on You to provide proof that few percentage of native born Blacks at ivy league create any benefit (that exceeds the damage caused by fraudulent 75% )

> Net benefit is not my argument

Exactly. Your argument is incomplete and therefore wrong. If you were denied admission to a university you applied to, it is because you are incapable of making a complete argument, not just due to AA.

> it is on You to provide proof that few percentage of native born Blacks at ivy league create any benefit (that exceeds the damage caused by fraudulent 75% )

Why? I am not arguing for AA. Once again, please read and understand the comments.

Your baseless claim that my argument is incomplete is itself without ground.

I need to see proof to be convinced that your claim has any merit

And your ad hominem attacks do not make your claim any more credible (I did go to ivy btw)

> I did go to ivy btw

One of the lower ones, not the one you wanted, if your comments are representative of your thought processes.

> Your baseless claim that my argument is incomplete is itself without ground.

All policies are evaluated based on net benefit to society. I explained why your argument didn't meet that standard. If you didn't understand it, I can't help you. There is no simpler way to state it.

Again your ad hominem and baseless assumptions are irrelevant.

Net benefit - is your made up argument.

Is this “net benefit” in the room with you right now? Perhaps you could quantify it, if you could find any

> Net benefit - is your made up argument.

I already explained that this is how all policies are evaluated, not on arbitrary fraud thresholds. I cannot make you understand it any more than I can make you smart enough to have been accepted at your preferred university.

They don't need to be descendants of oppressed blacks specifically: The claim was that AA doesn't solve the issues of inner cities because the beneficiaries are not of low SES PRESENTLY. What their history is is irrelevant. If AA doesn't add stability to the people presently living in low income areas, it fails to solve the problem.

> Lifting one group up is almost always at the expense of other groups, which is isomorphic to punishment.

Not necessarily. Life is not a zero sum game.

Who is hurt by better funding for schools in poor neighbourhoods? Who is hurt by training cops to not shoot first and ask questions later? Who is hurt by encouraging home ownership by black people?

> Who is hurt by better funding for schools in poor neighbourhoods?

Whatever that money would otherwise have been spent on is harming the recipient of that now foregone benefit. If you raise taxes to do it, taxpayers are harmed.

> Who is hurt by encouraging home ownership by black people?

If home ownership is a good thing, whoever would have otherwise bought those marginal houses is harmed.

You missed the part where it’s not a zero-sum game. If you’re interested in the economic concepts behind why an economy is a positive-sum game in an open system, look up: production possibilities frontier (PPF) and comparative advantage.

An economy would become zero-sum if we ran up against the limits of the universe. Until then, rest assured that opportunity can grow for both sides in a transaction.

The whole economy is indeed nonzero sum, but the topic is not the entire economy, but allocation of limited dollars between different groups. It is zero sum here in this limited context.

Investing in education has a very high ROI. Investing in better education in poor neighbourhoods will actually save you money in the long run. The fact that that is not happening is what's really hurting people.

>Whatever that money would otherwise have been spent on is harming the recipient of that now foregone benefit.

This would only make sense if the amount of welfare for rich people weren't outrageously high in the form of regressive income taxation, non meaningful wealth taxation, corporate tax breaks and subsidies, loan forgiveness programs for business owners etc etc all that on top of a nearly trillion dollar budget for military kit that sees what 40% usage?

We actually spend more per year on paying off our national debt, which has been used to fund many social programs, than our military.

Great and all but we really can’t afford any of this.

Paying interest on our national debt is more accurate than paying off.

There’s no practical sense in which we’re paying it off nor even paying it down.

The national debt hasn't really risen because of social programs. It has primarily risen because of military spending.

That’s strange because the 2022 deficit alone exceeds defense spending by a factor of ~2. DoD spending was up ~10% since 2012, which social security spending was up ~50%.

Social Security spending is from a dedicated levy, which generates more income than it costs.

In 2012, the US was fighting two wars, so the fact that DoD spending didn't go down by 2022 is indicative of the problem.

It's also misleading to use the few years when there was substantial pandemic related spending as indicative of the US's normal spending habits.

> Social Security spending is from a dedicated levy, which generates more income than it costs

Your information is out of date. Costs have exceeded tax income since 2010 and have exceeded total income (tax plus interest) since 2021.

The OASI trust fund that pays social security retirement benefits is projected to have a $53B (3.8%) actuarial shortfall this year, up from $40B last year. The trustees project this shortfall will increase every year thereafter until the fund is completely depleted ten years from now (assuming no change in law)

https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TRSUM/tr23summary.pdf

To become solvent over 75 years the SS tax rate would need to be increased by 27.7%, from 12.4% today to 15.84%. Eliminating the payroll cap (currently $160K) would buy 25 years, but only if the corresponding benefit cap was not also raised.

https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/2023/tr2023.pdf

Do your numbers still hold with the vastly higher interest rates today compared to 2021?

Yes, those numbers are all from the document I linked, the most recent annual report released in March.

Social Security (OASDI) is not very sensitive to inflation since the salary cap on contributions is indexed to average wages and adjusts yearly. The benefits paid out are also adjusted by periodic cost of living adjustments. So when inflation goes up both contributions and withdrawals rise by roughly equal amounts.

The US national debt has risen because of extreme tax cuts. It was pretty low until Reagan, who cut a lot of taxes and had the debt start spiralling out of control, yet most social programs started way before Reagan.

The military spending that really added to the debt were primarily the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

> If you raise taxes to do it, taxpayers are harmed.

This is not true. If I, a taxpayer, want my taxes raised for the sake of extending equality to a historically and currently oppressed group, then I am not harmed.

If you, a taxpayer, disagree with the notion of restorative justice, I posit that your overall happiness would be helped more by empathy and less by "lower taxes".

> This is not true. If I, a taxpayer, want my taxes raised for the sake of extending equality to a historically and currently oppressed group, then I am not harmed.

If you want your money used to pay for reparations you can donate to a charity with aims aligned with that desire. No one is arguing about what you do with your money.

> If you, a taxpayer, disagree with the notion of restorative justice, I posit that your overall happiness would be helped more by empathy and less by "lower taxes".

A functioning society requires accepting other people have different priorities and values from yours.

> If you want your money used to pay for reparations you can donate to a charity with aims aligned with that desire. No one is arguing about what you do with your money.

I can also advocate for the state to do it on my behalf. I prefer that solution, because a larger amount of resources can be allocated.

> A functioning society requires accepting other people have different priorities and values from yours.

I accept this, but the values expressed disturb me.

> I can also advocate for the state to do it on my behalf. I prefer that solution, because a larger amount of resources can be allocated.

The only reason a larger amount of resources can be allocated is because you are advocating for using state violence to force people who don’t agree with you to also pay for your ideas. That’s what taxes are, fundamentally.

> A functioning society requires accepting other people have different priorities and values from yours

a functioning democracy requires accepting that, in the event that your values conflict with those of the majority, your values lose and theirs win

we saw on January 6th in the US what happens when a loud minority can't accept that

unfortunately, some are under the misunderstanding that democracy means all ideas are equal and have equal value, or indeed universally have positive value

it does not, and they do not

To tune this a bit: our society operates under a rule of law with checks and balances (and some bedrock law in the Constitution that is significantly harder to modify than the rest of it) because a system as simple as "in the event that your values conflict with those of the majority, your values lose and theirs win" is known as a "tyranny of the majority" and is not particularly desirable.

If the majority says, for example, some race is inferior, that's not sufficient to anchor the law and we have a 14th Amendment to protect against such abuse.

to elaborate: our society does indeed consist of checks and balances, and part of that is ensuring that, in the event that the values of the minority conflict with the values of the majority, we don't have a "tyranny of the minority", or minority rule

if the minority says, for example, some race is inferior, that's even less sufficient to anchor the law, and insufficient to overrule the majority saying it isn't

I completely agree and I cannot think of a single instance of that happening in the history of the United States, with a possible exception of the nation's ongoing collapse into oligarchy and rule by that minority.

"You aren't harmed because you could theoretically have my politics and priorities" is a take.

Dissent from your politics does not require a lack of empathy, and having your politics doesn't automatically mean having it.

This is a very similar argument to "piracy is a moral ill because it deprives corporations and artists of money that would otherwise be spent on them." And it falls apart for similar reasons.

When more people are capable of buying houses, more houses are built to meet the demand.

> Not necessarily. Life is not a zero sum game.

Life is a zero-sum game in way more ways than it is not, especially on the scale of a typical human life-span or important decisions that people make.

This is a bad trope that just won't die.

In fact you can see a lot of negative outcomes in spheres like housing and medicine precisely because of zero-sum issues.

College admissions at elite universities, what this SCOTUS case is about, is zero sum.

This is the trouble. If one believes that material leveling is tantamount to justice, then it doesn't really matter whether one group is lifted up or the other is reduced.

Your argument (A) implies that by raising one group another is lowered. Another poster here (B) states that if we can't raise one group, we must lower the other.

These are both Manichaean positions that obfuscate the mutual gains added to economic society when one group is raised and the mutual losses sustained when one group is reduced. [The counterpoint to both positions is "A rising tide lifts all boats".] I'd argue they both arise from a sense of group identity that is anathema to both universal identity and individual liberty; at root they are the pathologies behind (A) fascism wherein the group identity is based on a threatened victim race and (B) communism where group identity is based on a threatened victim class. That's why switching from one to the other is so easy; they're both simply material grievances, elevated through propaganda into mythic group struggles.

"Expense of other groups" is not at all isomorphic to punishment. In 1866 Southern America it would be strange to talk about how the poor plantation owners were punished by losing their slave labor force. Yes, they were materially worse off, but it was hardly a punishment. Even if those plantations had been broken up and given to the freed black people as reparations, it wouldn't have been punishment. It would have been backpay.

If I were there plantation owner, I would definitely consider the above a punishment.

That just goes to show that we can't rely on people's feelings to judge the world accurately, doesn't it? Or do you suggest we should take it seriously and give slave owners recompense when slavery ends?

That's exactly what the UK did when the Abolitionists ended British Slavery.

They achieved this by promising to repay slave owners for the "loss of chattel".

The UK Government repaid slave owners and carried the loss forward over the next 200 years until just a few years ago.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/12/treasu...

I know that this happened. I'm asking: is it right?

At the time it was neccesary otherwise British involvement in slavery would not have ended.

What would have made it much better was additional compensation to those enslaved.

What was a good outcome for society, other than the obvious end of slavery of course, was the relatively vast amount of money freed up to reinvest in other massive capital projects, rail, canals, free colonies (no prisoner labour | slaves) for agriculture, wool, timber, etc.

What was a poor outcome for broader society was that ownership of and direct benefits from all these new projects were largely concentrated in a small group of former slaveholders.

Such is the ebb and flow of reality which rarely examples purely black and white expressions of some particular notion of absolute right.

> I'm talking about lifting them up, correcting the wrongs, reimbursing the damage done.

I don't think people realize how dangerous trying to "repair" or "correct" history can actually be. It could literally go on for thousands of years, look at the Israeli's and Palestinians. While I'm fine if people who committed discriminatory acts are held accountable in the law, it's a period of time we should be ashamed of and need to stop revisiting.

In my opinion, the best way to respect people who were wronged is to let it go. Yes it will always be unfair, but people in history books are not "us". We are a different generation of human beings with the power to create the world we want to live in.

How would you feel on the other side of this? Given how recently discrimination was still legal, is it really great that you can shrug and say "well, tough tits I guess"?

I wasn’t admitted into better colleges while minority friends with worse grades and general resumes were. It upsets me that I was discriminated against. Should I pursue some reparations? How do you factor this in?

Maybe shrug and say "Well, I hope that's over now..."

Dangerous for who, exactly?

The current Israel-Palestine conflict is actually less than 100 years old. The Israelis and Palestinians weren't fighting under the Ottomans, which lasted over 400 years.

Mutual dislike and occasional violence was already there under the Ottomans, once substantial Jewish immigration to Palestine began in late 19th century.

Think the reference is to the claims and counterclaims to Palestinian lands which go back thousands of years.

if you're going to go back thousands of years, you're going to have to talk about Jewish lands again.

  > We are a different generation of human beings with the power to create the world we want to live in.

i get your point but i'm of two minds about it because tbh thats easy to say when one is on the advantaged side....

doesn't it make sense that nation-states that have done direct damage to communities should be held liable, just as individuals?

Lots of people also say that from the not-advantaged side. Most Indians aren’t sitting around insisting on reparations for the $41 trillion Britain took from them. They understand that it’s futile to do so, and making that the goal will only leave them in poverty long term.

FWIW, when reparations are discussed, it is usually a reference to the fact that after the civil War, the government somehow found a way to scrape down in its pockets and compensate the slave owners for their "loss of property."

One can I think reasonably ask how this government was able to find the resources to pay people for losing their slaves and not the resources to compensate slaves for the years of freedom stolen. Although it is almost certainly too late to reconcile that particular wrong directly as those slaves are now all dead.

Perhaps the payments were to appease the powerful slave owners so that another civil war does not happen. It was not done for some sort of moral duty or obligation.

The slaves had no power, and this would not pose threat of civil unrest.

This is a train of thought that appears to pull into the station of using civil unrest to balance the scales. After all, if the government only responds to power then power is the coin of the realm to purchase the justice one wants.

Interesting, and worth considering the next time there's a riot.

Palestine’s stolen land is from only the 20th century. Not thousands of years.

No I don’t think people getting their land stolen in the past 100 years is okay to let go. Same sort of people usually think Taiwan stealing the island from indigenous or America stealing Puerto Rico or Hawai’i is okay too.

Stolen land is stolen land.

Is any land not stolen land?

Yes! [1] (Hey, you asked.)

The ridiculousness of the reply enhances your argument though.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil

I think his point was clear enough: that almost all the places people lived used to belong to some other group back in time.

Ask the Dutch :-) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polder

Stolen from the mermaids!

Retaken. The sea stole it from us, and we took it back. With interest.

With due respect, you've made a very poor argument here. The harms caused by many historical actions have significant, ongoing consequences to this day. You've stated that taking actions to "repair or correct" those harms can be "dangerous" without actually presenting any evidence for it. The idea of "letting it go" feels vey much like it's coming from a position of privilege. I'd be happy to discuss these ideas further if you would like to.

I’m white, and my ancestors suffered through slavery and genocide.

How much am I owed in reparations?

I’m not sure why this is downvoted. Turkey with the slavs, Britain with Ireland, and many African countries profited greatly from slavery.

the last known victim of a lynching in the USA were Italians.

https://lasc.libguides.com/mass-lynching-italian-americans#:....

I'm expecting my reparation checks anytime now.

The idea of punishing people for something their ancestors may or may not have done based on skin color is racism.

Other commenters do not need to engage with you to refute this racism.

You're conflating pragmatism with "position of privilege". You're free to disagree whether "let it go" is ideal or not. However, assuming "privilege" here is just bad faith and discriminatory; you're making an unsubstantiated character judgement on the basis of someone's race or class.

Clearly, people, regardless of their race or class, have the ability to observe, to evaluate evidence, and to think critically. This is not a quality that's exclusive to "sacred victims". Surely it's possible that someone's race and class could introduce blindspots to their perspective (which extends to "scared victims" as well), but assuming that to be the default flaw in someone's position as opposed to actually finding that flaw in that person's position is intellectually dishonest.

Conversations about race breakdown because ideologues are more interested in enforcing their views as opposed to finding out the truth. Smear tactics like accusing someone of being blindsided by "privilege" is the modern day equivalent of writing off your opponents without actually addressing their actual points.

The United Kingdom essentially created what we consider to be modern day Israel. It wasn’t a sovereign nation going back thousands of years.

The Ottoman Empire controlled the region until about 1922. The British came in at that time and arbitrarily drew a line dividing the region into “Mandatory Palestine” and “Transjordan”. This lasted until 1948 and the creation of the modern state of Israel.

For thousands of years people of several religions and cultures (Jewish, Muslim, Roman, Druze, Armenian) lived together in that area; like most such arrangements there weren’t clear lines that differentiated cultural groups.

The lines on the map are and were always arbitrary. Same every time and every where the west has tried to draw lines on maps.

you should read a bit more about the history of that area.

> In my opinion, the best way to respect people who were wronged is to let it go.

Let what go ?

If someone was wronged by a corporation should they let it go ?

Even forgetting slavery, black people were wronged for generations by the state, municipalities, armed forces, banks, schools, restaurants, law enforcement, sports teams - and these were not random one off situations but discrimination by a system of racists.

A whole race collectively screwed over.

They wouldn’t let people into restaurants based on skin color alone - no one considered the individual

You are reintroducing group guilt concepts, discussed higher in this thread. Groups do not have guilt, individuals do. When someone is wronged by a corporation, that is an individual.

If you remain attracted to group guilt as being valid, some thought games. Does someone white who migrates to america thereby adopt guilt for wrongs? Does that person become liable due to the move? What about someone black who migrates? What about their child? Should the child be guilty or half guilty? Should the tax system be adjusted to compensate? What about descendants of former slave owners who are not american citizens? What if their parent was disinherited along the way? How about for gender issues? Does a man inherit responsibility for past wrongs done to women?

If you accept group guilt or intergenerational guilt you are constructing a cast society, where people are defined by their lineage and physical characteristics, rather their actions as an individual. This entrenches social divisions and undermines individual agency and freedom. Western culture, nations and law are grounded in individual responsibility not group identity and are the better for it.

> You are reintroducing group guilt concepts

Read my comment again, I never mentioned guilt.

Groups have responsibility.

Consider the opposing argument - groups have no responsibility for anything.

Does that seem like a reasonable position?

Consider an expansion of the argument - are there still situations in which one group consistently discriminates against and abuses another?

People are already in castes, defined by their lineage and physical (and economic) characteristics.

You don't break down the walls between castes by pretending they're not real.

> Groups have responsibility.

Only those that have proxies to accountable individuals, as in the example of the corporation, and with its exceptions such as with limited liability. Or an association, which has a board and a charter.

> Consider the opposing argument - groups have no responsibility for anything. Does that seem like a reasonable position?

Apart from formal corporations/associations, that is the reasonable position. In the context of the case, "Asian Americans" have no moral or legal responsibility to give up opportunities to "African Americans".

Westerners are not in castes.

So, as an extreme case, should we jail Asian Americans because of the crimes of Unit 731? They're part of the same group, no?

One quibble with the word 'group' there, too: Ethnic groups are reference categories, not groups in the sense it'd make sense to think of groups as eg. decisionmaking entities that can be responsible for something.

some people just don't want to throw out the baby with the caste-water.

If groups have responsibility as you say, then Blacks as a group would have tremendous culpability for excess ratio of interracial murder committed by that group.

That of course, is a racist idea, because it assigns group responsibility to the murders committed by individuals.

> Groups do not have guilt, individuals do.

When we can treat corporations as legal individuals, then groups also have guilt.

Your opinion is noted. It's always the people who benefit from discrimination who want the people who suffer from it to just "let it go".

Most white Americans today did not “benefit from discrimination” against black Americans. Most white Americans come from families who weren’t even here during the time of slavery. And slavery hurt the vast majority of white Americans who were not slave owners, by driving down the market value of free farm labor. Slavery made a handful of landowners rich, but impoverished the south as a whole. At the turn of the 20th century, the median income in the south was half of what it was in the Midwest.

It's sadly ironic and self defeating that they claim they don't benefit from discrimination (even though they do but delusionally refuse to acknowledge it), yet they keep on systematically and purposefully discriminating, and idiotically voting against their own best interests, like single payer health care, forgiving student loans, funding education, raising taxes on the wealthy, and ending corporate welfare.

And for all their shrill protests about reverse discrimination and communist Democrats handing out welfare to black people for votes to keep them "on the plantation", the red states are MUCH more reliant on federal government handouts that the blue states have to pay for, BECAUSE of their "conservative" policy choices.

https://apnews.com/article/north-america-business-local-taxe...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leaders have spent months promoting the myth that red low-tax states are subsidizing blue high-tax states because of the deduction for state and local taxes.

An Associated Press Fact Check finds it’s actually the other way around. High-tax, traditionally Democratic states (blue), subsidize low-tax, traditionally Republican states (red) — in a big way.

How does any of that show that the average white American benefited from discrimination against black people?

It doesn’t. And they think putting something in parentheses makes it true. This is not lisp god damn it!

> the red states are MUCH more reliant on federal government handouts that the blue states have to pay for, BECAUSE of their "conservative" policy choices.

Do you have any economics paper indicating that? The much more likely explanation is that red states are more rural and blue states are more urban (so have higher income). Florida and Texas' economies are doing great. Notice even California had a Republican governor until 2011.

Not only you are wrong, you are wrong and arrogant.

California was deep red when Silicon Valley was being built. And most “red states” voted Democrat until the 1990s (with the exception of Reagan). The richest ones, like Virginia, started voted Republican before the others. And richer areas, like the Atlanta suburbs in Georgia, started voting republican before the rest of the state.

> California was deep red when Silicon Valley was being built

The GOP was much, much different when Silicon Valley was being built.

Not with respect to “single payer health care, forgiving student loans, funding education, raising taxes on the wealthy, and ending corporate welfare.” Or taxes or regulation. The GOP has gotten more liberal with respect to the “policy choices” that OP claims causes red states to be “more reliant on federal government.”

I'm old enough to remember how, back in the day, the GOP had a decidedly-liberal wing; no longer.

> Not only you are wrong, you are wrong and arrogant.

Facing facts ≠ arrogance.

> Notice even California had a Republican governor until 2011.

And? California has long been a leading indicator of societal trends. (And 2011 was a dozen years ago.)

"Biden’s winning base in 509 counties encompasses fully 71% of America’s economic activity, while Trump’s losing base of 2,547 counties represents just 29% of the economy." [0]

[0] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/biden-voting-counties-equ...

I think this is flawed thinking. For one thing it benefits everyone to help those who have been systematically disadvantaged. Also, respecting people = giving them needed material benefits not saying “I respect you”

We need to keep revisiting the shameful times lest they are forgotten instead of forgetting about them and moving on.

Yeah I mean we said sorry, what more do those people want? \s

How far back do we go, right?

I'm sure I'm the descendant of people that at some point were treated brutally by someone else, but it's far back enough that the memory has been lost.

I'm all for fixing THE EFFECTS of racial discrimination in the US, but it can't be achieved by sclerotizing that incorrect view of life and dragging it into the future in perpetuity.

> In my opinion, the best way to respect people who were wronged is to let it go. Yes it will always be unfair, but people in history books are not "us". We are a different generation of human beings with the power to create the world we want to live in.

Many people alive today in the USA were directly harmed by legal discrimination against black people. Explicit legal discrimination stopped in 1971, not in the history books. And of course, significant administrative discrimination continued long after, probably persisting today in some places.

> I'm talking about lifting them up, correcting the wrongs, reimbursing the damage done

Most histories of WW2 end on the day the Axis surrendered. I was curious about what happened "the day after" and went looking for it. I discovered that with the collapse of government and institutions, the veneer of civilized behavior stripped away. People took revenge on old grudges, stole from each other, murdered each other, neighbors against neighbors, everyone with an axe to grind. It was savage.

It took maybe a year or more for the government to begin functioning, and found they were faced with a horrendous list of crimes. Upwards of half the population were criminals. What were they going to do about it? Put half the country in jail?

What they did do, in country after country, was to simply do a general amnesty for any crimes committed before 1947 or so. The slate was wiped clean, and things just started over.

Interesting, have any references you’d recommend on this?

https://www.amazon.com/Savage-Continent-Europe-Aftermath-Wor...

That's in response to individual violence. For state perpetrated violence, well, there were the Nuremberg trials, and Israel became a country.

> Black Americans were quite clearly discriminated against as a group.

This is clearly true, but it also reduces the impact of what really happened. Black Americans were discriminated against on an individual level. Ruby Bridges is still alive for goodness sake! She's only 68 years old. It isn't hard to estimate financial damages due to the Jim Crow era and it's extremely easy to figure out who was harmed due to explicit government policy.

> It isn't hard to estimate financial damages due to the Jim Crow era and it's extremely easy to figure out who was harmed due to explicit government policy.

Have any reading materials off of the top of your head that you can point me towards with this?

I'm against affirmative action, but I value your points here. I think affirmative action doesn't attack the root of the problem (leaving aside the moral arguments), and we should instead attempt to solve the problems you've stated (and others besides!) more directly. Chiefly, stringent enforcement of race-blind consideration and better funding for public health and school infrastructure to give all communities a respectable baseline of opportunity. Also, reduced or even nullified college tuition. I think that if these are implemented, there may not even be a need for the racial quotas that affirmative action implies. If quotas are to be set, they should be evaluated and gradually rolled back. As for funding...that's a whole other discussion that boils down to unassailable moral axioms, as everything does. I suppose if people were so enlightened to agree on heavily taxing billionaires, this whole mess with equal-but-not-really citizens probably wouldn't be happening either.

This is where things should be in general. Society benefits with cheaper and accessible medical care, education and policing.

That is a great baseline to compare reality against. One of the many reasons reality deviates, is because of racism and discrimination.

Both need to be addressed at the same time. (Leaving one, allows the other to recover)

AI can make education almost zero cost in the future.

instead of fighting for limited number of seats at Harvard and blaming AA - we should create AI technology to give Harvard quality education to everyone in the world for (almost) free

> AI can make education almost zero cost in the future.

This is still an open question. LLMs will certainly help to improve teaching. But education is more than teaching. And LLMs have at best a mediocre track record of being correct. So if you are lucky you are taught something correct by an LLM.

Going to university to meet other people with which you can learn together by helping, criticizing, or correcting each other is extremely valuable. That cannot be replicated by an LLM at home. Even the experience of just moving to another city, leaving home is a part of education.

Education will always cost time and hard work. Because oneself has to change to become educated.

My point is that you dont have to pay $80k per year for 4 years, and move to Boston to get a top tier education.

Perhaps your local state college could create local learning environment good enough to teach your cutting edge research and subjects, with the assistance of AI. And mobilize your local community and find peers to accompany you on your student journey.

Top tier education wont be available only to ivy leagues students, but any state school student. And this policy is strictly better than any Admission hack hatvard coukd ever do

I hope that with generative AI and LLM everyone will have professor for any subject in their laptop and wont need expensive and useless college degree.

Why have thousands colleges and employ thousands of professors (and useless admin people) who teach the same textbook subject and gove same homework assignments? Not even mentioning completely useless and unrelated to higher education industry of “college athletics”.

Something decentralized and local, with focus on self-learning, group learning, peer tutoring, and AI will make Harvard quality education accessible and almost free for anyone. It will be a matter of personal effort and skills to learn and obsorb such knowledge

This will be possible in a few years 100%

A Harvard education is not the textbooks nor the lectures, but the name and connections afforded to an alumni.

Names and connections did matter before Internet. It is overrated these days for most people.

A knowledgeable specialist with experience will have strong local connections and can have his name popularized globally on Internet, just by getting good visibility online projects/blogs/research/etc.

You dont need harvard connections to create value for the society.

You're right, but people associated with Harvard will still have a leg up compared to most other people. If there weren't these small "cool kidz clubs" that amplify and bolster each others' reputations even when not deserved, experts would be more uniformly recognized regardless of background. That is more optimal than cronyism for pooling talent.

There are plenty of these cool kidz clubs for elites, like your local polo club, country club, golf club, sailing/yacht club, skiing & snowboarding club etc.

AA is such a silly band aid solution that only benefits rich, while the optimal solution should be to lift lives of all poor people across the board.

Institutions such as harvard will lose their relevance over time, for example nobody cares about harvard CompSci people.

If all this kind of problems are cause by a social club that has no other benefits than being a social club, then there is an obvious solution. Remove it from the education system and turn it into a fraternal order, like Freemasons and Odd Fellows. SCOTUS do not have any power over those.

Presently many colleges and universities have enough DEI commissars on payroll for their cost to match ~1000 students' tuition. You could easily sack the enforcers of political orthodoxy and extend scholarships to people.

Hah, I forgot about administrative bloat, and I wholeheartedly agree. People in upper management in various organizations seem to have disproportionate incomes to their value. It doesn't help that there's a power imbalance and, often, a lack of understanding.

> Black Americans were quite clearly discriminated against as a group.

Black Americans were not. American descendants of slaves were. Black immigrants do very well in American society. “Controlling for age, education, and disability, the wages of second-generation Nigerian Americans have reached parity with those of third- and higher generation whites.” (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23780231211001...). That’s a critical distinction. Obama did not suffer the generational effects of slavery and segregation any more than Trump or Biden.

Affirmative action at places like Harvard is mostly not being used to help the people—the descendants of Americans an slaves—who are invoked to justify the policy: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/2/17/michaela-harvar....

You’re talking about punishing people for the sins of their fathers.

Most of the fixes, the tilting of the scales in their favour, do have victims.

Innocent people who just happen to look wrong, who get discriminated against so the favoured people can be quotaed in. Many companies refuse to fulfill positions even if they have qualified candidates if none of the candidates checks the right identity boxes.

Microsoft, for example:

https://www.cspicenter.com/p/what-diversity-and-inclusion-me...

Harvard's admissions rates which are hilariously weighted against Asians: https://i.imgur.com/eB92to4.png

You're kidding yourself if you think people who have nothing to do with the bad conditions the policies ostensibly try to correct for aren't being hurt.

Of course, insistence on policies like that doesn't come from nowhere. The education system is absolutely rotten:

A couple samples of the blatant racist rhetoric the universities spew against white people daily. You can write fun shit like this and keep your job since the target is acceptable:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34039063/

Or Zeus Lombardo, who's a professor of education and has been spreading this shit for at least ten years. His recommended reading is "fun":

https://twitter.com/MythinformedMKE/status/14500834637265182...

"Whites learn to be white. That suggestion by Thandeka is that whites are not born white. They have to become white. And her suggestion is that white children who were not white originally - they were born human. Little by little, they have to be abused into becoming white humans. And this abuse is sometimes physical - of being physically disciplined into whiteness, such as being bullied into whiteness. That's a phrase I like to use, whiteness as bullying, but it's also psychological and cultural, and it becomes with caretakers and guardians. Not the least of which - the more important caretakers are of course the white family, parents etc. but it extends to the white nationhood as a caretaker, the white social system, the white social welfare, the white governance system. They also discipline and abuse white humans into whiteness."

I don't know about you all, but to my 90s brain that looks just a wee bit like blatant racism, but what do I know. I'm just an acceptable target.

This SCOTUS case had heavy emphasis on the fact Affirmative Action as it is practiced at elite institutions today, has a net slightly negative effect on whites, and an extremely large negative effect on Asians applicants. It is in practice, a large transfer of elite diplomas from Asian to Black students. Black people have indeed suffered greatly historically. Yet an awkward question remains: Why are Asians paying the price?

Surely black americans are hurt, and it's only fair to lift them up, but at what cost? In these cases the asian americans are getting hurt because of it. Why not help lift asian americans up as well? They are also discriminated over a century after all, and now they are paying the price for reparations? Why is that not a discrimination itself?

It's not about slavery; it's about what's going on in the U.S. right now. Study after study shows disadvantages to being black in America right now.

Those disadvantages include, as you point out, echoed effects from discrimination and disadvantage from 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago, and further.

But they also include immediate effects going on today -- like discrimination based on skin color or hairstyle or choice of name or an imbalanced school system or you name it.

Affirmative action is a broad brush, as you say. But to demand that only people whose ancestors actually owned slaves be disadvantaged by affirmative action, and only those whose ancestors actually were slaves benefit from it, ignores the rest of the black experience in America, and is, frankly, offensive.

As a bonus, I'll mention that every time I learn something about black history in America, I find a new way to be disappointed in my (our?) ancestors. The most recent thing I learned is that as recently as the '50s and '60s, since hospitals were segregated, blacks often had much worse access to healthcare. As a result, when they needed immediate treatment and no black doctor was available, they would go to a veterinarian for help.

That's terrible, but the cherry on the shit sundae is that, if the veterinarian happened to be white, the care had to be rendered surreptitiously, because white people wouldn't take their pets to a vet who had served a black person.

9/11 was not a systemic injustice, it was perpetrated by a small group of extremists in a single act. Racial discrimination was a systemic injustice perpetrated by lawmakers, enabled by an unjust society, with country-wide effects lasting multiple decades (if not centuries). It's not a logical fallacy to think that a systemic injustice requires a systemic solution.

But the solution is to remove the injustice. That's not what's contended here, I think.

It is what I'm discussing. Not sure what else there is.

it was perpetrated by a small group of extremists

A small group of extremists cheered on by a vast number of international Muslims worldwide and domestically.

I was 10 when it happened, and bullied because of my muslim name at school for years afterwards. I went to mosque, and out of the literally hundreds of muslims I knew everyone to the person condemned 9/11.

I don't know where you get the idea that there was broad support for those assholes in my community, but people who said the things that you say caused a lot of harm to me and my family. I thought you should know that.

Are we to stop bullying Nazis because of the actions of John Rabe? Should we allow our children to join Scientology because of the actions of Leah Remini?

I'm happy that you're a bright and honorable person but the Muslim community has a long and sustained history of violence and calling for violence against those who don't deserve it. Your choice to continue associating with it will naturally draw the ire of those wronged by the Muslim community.

And before you say that it's not just Muslims or that Muslims aren't the worst offenders - I agree. That's why I chose to leave the Christian faith years ago.

I have nothing but respect for the Christian faith and community. I think that throwing them or another community under the bus for the purpose of making a point would be irresponsible and only increases the amount of hate in the world.

I also have nothing but respect for people who conscientiously leave their faith, whether it's Christianity or Islam or anything else. It's not easy to leave a community and I find it courageous and admirable. Thank you for sharing your journey.

Your understanding of Muslims is a narrative that I don't agree with, but nevertheless I won't say that my understanding of world is better than yours, only that I come to different conclusions, and you must at least concede that Muslims do not feel that they subscribe to a violent and hateful ideology. But even understanding the world as you do, it is not inevitable to reach the conclusion that it is acceptable to collectively punish all of us.

I have the privilege of living a happy and fulfilling life, and the ire of strangers who are prejudiced against me is not likely to change that. I am mostly objecting to the idea of collective punishment which has caused, is causing, and will cause countless suffering to undeserving men, women, and children. Even people you hate are capable of feeling as much pain as you are.

> the ire of strangers who are prejudiced against me is not likely to change that. I am mostly objecting to the idea of collective punishment which has caused, is causing, and will cause countless suffering to undeserving men, women, and children. Even people you hate are capable of feeling as much pain as you are.

The notion that people shouldn't be judged by their voluntary membership of a bigoted organisation in 2023 is nonsense.

You're an adult whose continued support and membership enstrengthens a group which has subjugation and discrimination against large swathes of people based on medieval culture at their core.

Please stop feeling sorry for yourself.

Ok, but then the question is: how much?

How much in reparations should be paid for anyone to consider the problem solved?

What dollar amount should be paid out so that people feel they are satisfied and never ask for reparations again?

> Groups of people don't have guilt or automatic responsibility, only individuals do.

I think the question here is who is entitled to have the 'revenge' or the reparation or the 'affirmative action'

People who were persecuted or opressed? or their offspring?

For example German government agreed to pay reparation to Jews in (some?) Eastern European countries and Russia, that were alive at the time of WWII and lived on the territories that the Germany attacked.

The reparation from what I know were 2,000 or 4,000 USD one time payment.

So in that model a) the person receiving the reparation had to be alive at the time of the crime. b) had to be on the territory where the crime was committed c) I do not think the person needed to prove that they were directly affected by the crime

from what I know the reparation was selective. It did not cover Gypsys, did not cover non-Jews

I do not know what the right model is.

Can a nation be responsible for the crimes their government has committed? For how long?

If the answer to the above is 'yes' (that the nation is responsible) -- wouldn't that justify terrorism? wouldn't that justify blood-revenge practice?

But that revenge can go for generations, and at some point will be reversed -- that means, in turn, endless wars.

May be the correct answer is to limit the action of 'righting the wrongs' to the people who were the victims and alive at the time of the crime ?

But that does not seem to be fair to the victims either

Life isn't fair. Yay, argument over! Not.

Still, I think my as-of-yet unstated point stands. That is, the government should do everything in its power (reasonably speaking) to serve justice to the criminal and support the victim, but that just isn't possible for massive historical grievances. Where there are current issues affecting Jews or whoever else, they should be addressed. Of course, some issues can be resolved with money, while others are more insidious.

> Groups of people don't have guilt or automatic responsibility, only individuals do.

Humans are a eusocial species, and history is full of group guilt, plight, dominance. I do agree with the direction of your thought though. We should strive at the individual level.

As an analogy:

1. Life jackets are banned for anyone with brown hair.

2. A very large boat hits an iceberg and sinks. There are a lot of people in the water. None of the brown haired people are allowed life jackets.

3. There is a (for the sake of this silly analogy) rapid discussion, people realize this was probably not a good way to do things, and a new law is passed: people with brown hair are now allowed to wear life jackets!

4. No one gives life jackets to the brown haired people currently in the water.

Just because an unjust law is changed does not mean the people who were previously injured by the law are magically no longer injured.

True, though it's still difficult to just give the brown haired people life jackets (and maybe some drowned already). Affirmative action seems as if the few brown haired people who are easily accessible are given life jackets, and "everyone" is happy. My ideas for reform — better public school infra in poorer communities, blah blah (I expound a bit elsewhere) — certainly would be more difficult but give many more brown haired people access to life jackets. Also, don't forget the other drowning people, even if there aren't so many of them compared to brown haired people.

The obvious answer to that seems to be to give everyone in the water without a life jacket a life jacket, regardless of their hair color.

"you can't simply draw a boundary... Https if people don't have responsibility... Only individuals do"

I think this is specious reasoning. We accept this just fine in other tort circumstances e.g

1) lawsuits against a city after miscarriage of justice

2) lawsuits against corporations when X happens.

Often individual responsibility will be a portion of the trial but to my understanding it is

1) a secondary or even tertiary concern

2) used to deflect blame from the group

I think in general not allowing blame to be allocated to individuals will lead to poor results. We need methods to call systems bad and curtail them in addition to individuals

Those examples are legal entities with decision-making hierarchies and individuals with the power to exit the group and with limited liability.

Racial groupings are not even natural categories (there are tons of ways to divide people up by ethnicity).

I think the relevant grouping to take to task for these issues is federal, state, and local governments (and probably quite a few corporations). Not "white people".

> Racial groupings are not even natural categories (there are tons of ways to divide people up by ethnicity).

No but class action lawsuits do give us two categories.

> Groups of people don't have guilt or automatic responsibility, only individuals do.

This is not exactly correct. Governments are composed of groups of people and governments maintain continuity of responsibility even when all the people in that government are different. Black Americans were discriminated against as a matter of state and federal policy and thus both state and federal government is at fault for the treatment of Black American. There is clear precedent in American law that in such cases, harmed individuals and groups are due financial compensation. Precedent for financial compensation due to government abuse of power is an incredibly old precedent and the only reason Black Americans haven't been compensated for the discrimination they've suffered is because the continuation of racism, the tradition of discrimination and the sheer size of the problem have turned what should be a fairly straightforward legal case into a complicated political question.

When do we stop hold people responsible for the sins of their great great grandfathers?

I don't hold a grudge against the British for press-ganging my great^9 grandfather into involuntary navel service. He was taken because he was Irish and near the waterfront at the wrong time. How was his kidnapping, forced labor, and whipping with a cat'o nine materially any different from other forms of slavery? When he escaped by jumping ship and running as far inland as he could he was risking beating whipping and execution if he was ever caught. Is that any different than runaway slaves?

Should I get a pay off from the UK because they wronged my family taking my Great^9 grandfather away from his home family and job? They systematically oppressed the Irish for centuries too. His decedents have been mostly poor laborers only edging into middle class with my parents generation.

I don't think I deserve anything that would be ridiculous.

How about my sons they are 1/16 black on their mothers side even though they look to all appearances to be of blonde haired northern European stock. Do they get any special payments for their ancestors oppression? if not what percentage of your ancestors need to be of a single oppressed group to be owed restitution by the rest of taxpaying society.

oh but its was my government shitting on other racial groups. but I didn't vote for them. I usually vote third party and those candidates never win despite having better policy. Yet I am to be held responsible for crimes my ancestors didn't commit (mostly because they were to poor or not emigrated to America yet) and for government policy put in place either before my time or by representatives i voted against.

sure they suffered but why should i be penalized via taking more of my income I use to feed my family thus increasing their suffering for reparation to someone i haven't done anything to.

For historical injustices, it is untenable to discuss paying reparations. Hopefully more recent and/or future instances are resolved early among the actual perpetrators and victims. We should instead focus our efforts on actual problems (for African-Americans, there are many legitimate grievances; I've said my ideas of reform elsewhere). An issue money can't quite solve is mending peoples' perceptions of the government or of the victimized group by others, which is usually the case due to rampant stereotypes (e.g. Muslims and 9/11). Hopefully, the fact that the government would be funding genuine avenues for progress and enforcing policies for race-blind evaluations (why isn't this happening already?!) would slowly mend those wounds over time.

(I realize I'm focusing on the US; this can surely be applied to other countries too.)

Your last line is valid. Now (in the US, at least), where might massive and grossly unnecessary sums of wealth be found to be taxed? Oh yeah, billionaires. A progressive tax and elimination of loopholes such as charities are a start. If the US really is the land of opportunity, why not see if kids of rich people can work to the top themselves? They probably already have an advantage in schooling and whatnot, so inheritance should be capped heavily, or even cut entirely.

> Groups of people don't have guilt or automatic responsibility, only individuals do.

Then the words “accomplice”, “collaborator” and “facilitator” would not exist.

I believe countries, families and things in between can be guilty of stuff.

“accomplice”, “collaborator” and “facilitator” are all singular nouns rather than collective nouns.

Singular nouns can still refer to a group of people.

there’s only one United States of America but there country refers to the people that live in it.

“Italy was an accomplice to Nazi Germany during WW2”

> I believe countries, families and things in between can be guilty of stuff.

Sure. When those things have internal organization and hierarchy and structures that lead to them making a consensus decision and acting as a whole, then yes, they can be "guilty" for some values of guilty.

Where's the decision-making system for all white people?

Groups were advantaged over groups. Your line of reasoning itself draws a boundary--in history--and thereby quite conveniently sidesteps the issue.

And yes, a pair of Ethiopian immigrants, even in 2023, face structural racism over and above their Ukrainian friends, alas, arising from America's legacy of slavery -- hence affrimative action.

But perpetuating the logic of groups being advantaged over groups only keeps the identitarian mindset going. By openly favoring certain groups the discrimination never ends. All you need to do is look at India where the active discrimination in favor of scheduled castes goes on ad infinitum to see that the effect of any discrimination amplifies sectarianism. The line needs to be drawn somewhere. You don't fight fire with fire, you fight it with water. You don't solve discrimination with more discrimination, you fight it by having people not accept the logic of identitarianism.

The discrimination doesn't go away if you ignore it. The discrimination has continued. It still is. Not forced by the law any more, but still many times perpetrated by individuals based on other individuals' membership or a perceived group. That is the real identitarian mindset you should be worried about.

Discrimination goes away when you stop discriminating, perpetuating it doesn't stop it.

It's like you're saying you hit me, hitting is wrong, so I'm going to hit you back ... and you think that will end hitting for good. Er, if it's wrong, stop doing it.

> perpetuating the logic of groups being advantaged over groups only keeps the identitarian mindset going

maybe, maybe not - the goal, however, is not to "not keep the 'identitarian' mindset going", it is to right past wrongs, make those wronged people whole, and only then ignore identity, as long as everyone else can do it too.

> the goal, however, is not to "not keep the 'identitarian' mindset going"

I wonder about that. Unfortunately, neither of us has evidence and is just spouting opinions. I'm not being snarky; the space of "maybe this person has a different goal, and maybe they don't even realize it" is a quagmire. I agree with the rest of your statement, and I think that's the only part necessary to drive progress. Who cares what others hold in their psyches as long as actual problems are solved? (I care, but I don't believe in thoughtcrime, so I won't force the issue.)

> I wonder about that.

I don't: it's pretty clear if you look into the history and explanation of it.

> Unfortunately, neither of us has evidence and is just spouting opinions. I'm not being snarky; the space of "maybe this person has a different goal, and maybe they don't even realize it" is a quagmire

you are correct that different people have different goals, and the ones who are in favor of affirmative action have the goals I described in the post you responded to.

I have no doubt that people who oppose affirmative action may have different goals, ones which lead them to oppose it, but luckily, I do not require evidence to be convinced that wrongs should be righted before calling everything even.

> right past wrongs, make those wronged people whole, and only then ignore identity

Ok, so what’s the dollar amount? At what point can we say the past wrongs have been righted, and that everyone should stop talking about identity now?

that's an interesting question, but not one I feel we need to decide now. I'd be happy to hear your suggestions, but obviously "0" wouldn't be a workable one

e.g. it should be at least 1 dollar, so we can start with 1 dollar without needing to decide the upper limit

indeed, it seems like a question intended to stop the action entirely, rather than one intended to discover the right magnitude of action

as for when everyone can stop talking about racial identity: the racism ongoing today itself is an example of this, so when racists stop doing so first, anti-racists can, second

The question is designed to guide us towards a realistic course of action.

If you can't define a target upon which reaching it would allow us to consider the problem solved, then suggesting that anyone will move beyond identitarianism after the problem has been solved is totally disingenuous.

To suggest that there is no need to define an upper limit to reparations implies that you don't believe the problem ever can be solved, and that these kinds of multi-generational grievances should persist perpetually.

I don't agree that "0" is unworkable. I'm obviously not thrilled that my not at all distant relatives were slaughtered by Nazis, but holding my breath for reparations is only going to do me a disservice and isn't going to bring those people back or undo that suffering.

The suggestion to "start with 1 dollar" is frankly bizarre. Is that all my dead relatives are worth? A dollar?

> The question is designed to guide us towards a realistic course of action. If you can't define a target upon which reaching it would allow us to consider the problem solved, then suggesting that anyone will move beyond identitarianism after the problem has been solved is totally disingenuous.

the goal isn't to "move beyond identity" yet, it is to right past wrongs. Once we've done that, we can move onto another goal like the one you suggest there.

how will we know when we're at the finish line? It isn't actually necessary to figure that out upfront (that's what agile planning is about, for example). All that's necessary is to ask "are we there now?", and we aren't, so more effort is required before reassessing

when slavery was instituted, the people who supported it didn't ask "when will it be too much slavery?", so we don't now need to ask "when will we make up too much for it?"

> I don't agree that "0" is unworkable

I do, so maybe you can suggest another number, and we can compromise, try it out, and reassess afterwards: after all, it's not like giving 1 dollar would be worse than slavery!

> maybe you can suggest another number, and we can compromise, try it out, and reassess afterwards: after all, it's not like giving 1 dollar would be worse than slavery!

I’m sorry, but this line of reasoning is so utterly insane that I can no longer continue to engage.

> I’m sorry, but this line of reasoning is so utterly insane that I can no longer continue to engage

is it? I'm not so sure.

this response sounds like when advocates of the former president similarly thought themselves above engaging with what they similarly believed was the "insanity" of the american people, and said former guy lost as a result.

Well, that pair of Ethiopian immigrants might be doing OK [1]. Immigrants from Africa esp if they are blessed to come from places where English is taught and education levels are higher do particularly well (e.g. Nigeria) and appear to outperform people (incl whites) born in the US. I concede that this data might be wrong in all sorts of ways but wouldn't it be nice if it taught us ways to 'lift up all boats'?

[1] https://news.ku.edu/2020/06/18/study-shows-african-immigrant...

Ethiopian immigrants do not face “structural racism,” which is a term that refers to the structural effects of past discrimination. They may face ordinary racism, i.e. discrimination in the present, but so do other groups. Ordinary discrimination doesn’t necessarily have structural effects.

I haven’t seen studies looking at Ethiopians specifically. But Nigerian and Ghanaian immigrants achieve comparable or better economic outcomes compared to whites. https://paa.confex.com/paa/2017/mediafile/ExtendedAbstract/P... (“Among persons aged 25 to 54, Ghanaian men do not differ from white men while Ghanaian and Nigerian women do not differ from white women in terms of occupational status after controlling for education, age, marital status, and the presence of children, but Nigerian men achieve higher occupational status than comparable white men.”). Note that this is controlling for education, so can’t be explained by saying these immigrants have higher education levels. And of course, racists can’t tell a Ghanaian person apart from an Ethiopian person.

> Groups of people don't have guilt or automatic responsibility, only individuals do.

Companies and governments can be found guilty of wrong doing.

ChatGPT:

Yes, both companies and governments can be found guilty of wrongdoing. The extent and process of holding them accountable can vary depending on the jurisdiction and the specific circumstances involved. Companies can face legal consequences for actions such as fraud, environmental violations, or antitrust violations, among others. Similarly, governments can be held accountable through legal means, such as investigations, impeachment, or legal proceedings, for acts that are deemed illegal or in violation of their responsibilities. The nature of the wrongdoing and the applicable laws and regulations determine the process and consequences of holding them accountable.

Edit: Havard was ruled against as an organization. Of course organizations can be held responsible for what they do including the government.

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