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Comment by philipallstar | Hacker News Reader

> And yet you and others do not bat an eye at debt lasting that long

People don't have debts or credits they didn't sign up for. You're failing to tell the difference between something the British government hundreds of years ago signed the British Empire up in perpetuity to pay to enforce on the world a totally new value system, and someone born today suddenly being assigned a credit or debit based on things from hundreds of years ago.

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That is a distinction without a difference: my tax money went to paying off that loan. Whether it was a debt established 200 years ago that we we're still paying off, or assigned a new debt based on something that happened 200 years ago makes no difference: I still had to pay for it. It's a legal fiction, all of it. Quibbling over whether it's this category or that makes no difference to me having to pay for it.

From that perspective (thing be paid off), yes, they're the same. But that's not the point I'm making. I'm saying debts signed up to voluntarily, even 200 years ago, are not the same as debts created involuntarily today, retroactive 200 years. A noble act (helping to end slavery) freely given and in normal debt-creation circumstances doesn't justify totally different circumstances.

Correct, the difference is that one gave money to slave owners, and the other is compensating the descendants of slavery (and its ongoing legacies) for the crimes against humanity committed against them.

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