As US reparations is the first example let's use that.
it's less "screw those white people because they don't deserve it after what their ancestors did" and more "this group of people are actively struggling because some assholes decided they weren't going to treat them as people for 300 years, we as a society are somewhat responsible for that so let's try and give them a hand up to where they would have been"
Also, in case the "yes but white people struggle also" argument is in the forefront of your mind, yes they deserve help too. Helping the lees fortunate isn't a zero-sum game.
Original sin is indeed bullshit, but that's not what this is.
Yes, it is, and it's fine to be honest about that.
I'm not less fortunate.
I support helping the less fortunate more.
And I realize doing so is going to require sacrifice on my part -- I'm going to have to pay more in taxes/redress to fund that help.
The difference is that morally, I find it hard to have a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in at night, security provided, and food every day... and quibble over my marginal tax rate, versus someone who doesn't have those things.
But then, I've always looked at income as society's money rather than fundamentally mine. I am able to earn what I earn because I exist in a broader organization and society.
Many paths more commonly taken by the less fortunate are themselves net negative to society as a whole. Like crime or drug addiction/disease that socialized programs end up paying for.
So if we could be effective in redirecting people from those paths to healthily contributing ones instead, we could get to positive-sum. I'm already paying a lot of money for "today's result" things like property insurance, incarceration, and first responders for people, in the long run is taking action to fight the root problem more expensive?
(One of today's problem is that we mostly try to intervene at adolescence or later, at which point a ton of damage has already been done.
Look how often even SNAP gets shade, and that's literally about feeding people.
But democracy worst form of government, except for all the other ones, etc. etc.
No it isn't , it's usually framed that way for politically derived reasons.
Helping one less fortunate person doesn't have to take directly take from another less fortunate person, there are more than just the less fortunate in the game.
it's an often parroted point right now, but if the ultra rich were taxed at the same rate as everyone else ( in whatever region was appropriate ) there would be a large influx of money that could be used to improve public services, support networks, education etc.
I personally don't think it would be used for that in any meaningful way, the system as a whole is broken, but it could in theory.
> I'm not less fortunate.
> I support helping the less fortunate more.
Agreed, same
> And I realize doing so is going to require sacrifice on my part -- I'm going to have to pay more in taxes/redress to fund that help.
Also agreed, in principle, but what you can personally provide pales in insignificance when compared to the sheer grinding machine that modern capitalism has become.
It's similar to "no plastic straws to stop climate change", yes, but also how about the 80+ % of actual climate change caused by the fossil fuel industries. less of a "whataboutism" and more of a yes, but also fix the bigger fucking problem.
It's a zero sum game, and it's the morally right thing to do.
Part of the annoying thing about the modern progressive movement is how they'll twist themselves in knots to market something, when they could just say "Yes, this sucks for some people. But it's better for everyone."
(Which, don't get me wrong, what passes for the modern conservative movement is even loonier about their marketing)
But christ, just call a thing what it is.
That two things can be true makes sense.
> It's a zero sum game, and it's the morally right thing to do.
These two things can be true, they aren't in this case, but they can be.
In case it's a misunderstanding i'm going to state clearly, with emphasis:
> Helping the ~ [less] fortunate ~ isn't a zero-sum game.
Helping all people everywhere might be ( i haven't really considered that enough to have a solid opinion ) but helping a subset of people without impacting another subset of people isn't zero sum when the sum of those subsets isn't the whole.
In numbers:
The whole = 10
-----
Less fortunate group a = 2
Less fortunate group b = 2
Others = 8
-----
It's possible to get group a to 3 without bringing group b down to 1, because helping the less fortunate groups isn't zero sum.
I'm simplifying here because the whole being a fixed 10 isn't accurate either, but it does illustrate my point.
> But christ, just call a thing what it is.
I will, thanks ?
Continuing with the US slavery example... if systemic oppression and inherent handicaps exist, is a direct transfer of funds really a solution? It's a one-hit-wonder that might appease some voters in the short term but doesn't get at the root of any current problem.
Blacks in US are largely less able to obtain health care (for myriad reasons - less money, worse insurance, mistrust of the medical profession, etc). A lump sum of $15k to every Black person in the US doesn't fix the problem. $15k buys them one major medical treatment, if that.
Same for education. A lump some might put a single generation through college. But, if there are systemic impediments to Blacks attending college (money, quality of primary and secondary education, etc), a lump sum transfer doesn't fix it. At best, it creates a generation of better educated Blacks who might push their kids into college, but all the other structural problems still exist.
Basically, we should address those problems head-on and with solutions that solve the problem permanently (or as close as possible).
Systematic oppression and/or long term ramifications of period of oppression is provably true.
ignoring the politics of it i don't think a straight up cash injection would be an efficient means of solving any of the mid to long term problems, but it is certainly an effective measure in helping short term survival.
The difference between "better access to education and employment for my kids so they can live better lives" vs "food and medicine so my children don't die this month"
> A lump sum of $15k to every Black person in the US doesn't fix the problem. $15k buys them one major medical treatment, if that.
Though i think i know what you mean, "15k to every black person" is fairly broad and i think a bit reductive in this case, it would probably need to be something weighted against need and how much the person was affected by the situation being addressed by the funds.
Problem is it's really difficult if not impossible to do that effectively, think of it like a whole society version of a class action lawsuit, except the payout amount is directly tied to the level of effect the original issue has had on each person, individually.
To be clear, this doesn't mean "non-black person X" doesn't get support and help. Ideally this would need to be something on top of an already working support system for everybody.
Everyone gets equitable support up to a certain level, certain groups get additional support where needed because to get them to an equitable level they need additional support as they've started at a lower starting point due to whatever fuckery occurred way back when
This is some utopia-level idealism though and I'm not expecting it to happen in the real world, but a good faith attempt would be nice.
> Same for education. A lump some might put a single generation through college. But, if there are systemic impediments to Blacks attending college (money, quality of primary and secondary education, etc), a lump sum transfer doesn't fix it.
It doesn't fix all of it, but it might fix some of it in an incidental way, though as i said, lump sum probably isn't a good strategy for long term fixes.
> At best, it creates a generation of better educated Blacks who might push their kids into college, but all the other structural problems still exist.
Yes, but the overall bump in education (assuming education is a reliable means of measuring future quality of life) would go some way to beginning to fix the structural problems.
> Basically, we should address those problems head-on and with solutions that solve the problem permanently (or as close as possible).
Agreed, but that should also be part of a plan to alleviate the short and mid term problems as well.
If reparations are direct transfer to hand-picked individuals (or groups thereof) and granted in a vacuum, that's bad policy.
If reparations are means-tested transfers to the neediest individuals (or groups thereof) and accompanied by meaningful changes to the rest of our social programs (including not just "welfare" but a whole host of other programs and systems), then that might be good policy.
Sort of a "5 Why's" for "why do certain minorities struggle with [system/policy]?" If the answer to the 5th Why was "slavery", that's solved. What's the 4th Why? Then the 3rd. And on. The generic discussion of reparations that we sometimes see in the news appears to be stuck on "slavery". Not always, but often.
But what about the givers? Do you think there's universal ethical problems that apply to any particular group that chooses to give a benefit to others that were harmed in the past? Is there no possibility for legitimate benefit - even if only symbolic - to the givers?
If I knew my ancestors were active or complicit in a certain atrocity, do I need to worry about Genghis Khan in order to try to offset that?
There are plenty of children who have (great-)(great-)grandparents on both sides of major conflicts. In our specific example, my children's great-grandfather $foo fought for the Allies in WW2, their great grandfather $bar "fought on the other side" [trying hard not to fall foul of Godwin's law here].
However I typically advise my kids to look forwards, not backwards.
> This is gross. My mother was arrested for going into a whites-only Pizza Hut as a child.
Are you talking here about reparations for slavery or reparations for much more recent events (segregation, Jim Crow, etc)?
I think it is easier to make the case that people deserve some compensation for wrongs done in living memory, than for wrongs done over 150 years ago.
It's bad policy, but the motive might be fake. I have neither read the law nor I intend to read it, but I suspect that it's just literature. The real reason must be culture, mostly the language.
Most immigrants here are from Hispanic America. They already speak Spanish so it's easier for them to adapt, also there's a common history and blood, we're family.
Also lots of Romanians, they learn the language really fast.
You don't have to take anything from anyone to give citizenship to people that should have had citizenship.
This is the fallacy of gray.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallac...
“Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view . . .”
"Original sin is the Christian doctrine that holds that humans, through the fact of birth, inherit a tainted nature in need of regeneration and a proclivity to sinful conduct"[1]
Religious specifics aside, that seems like a fairly accurate assessment of the burden of being born human: mortality and both a capacity for and tendency toward evil.
I see a lot of ethical problems with this sort of thing [1].
It's basically original sin [2] in reverse.
If you go back far enough, just about everyone's a descendant of someone who's been wronged by a government, and just about everyone's [3] a descendant of someone who has blood on their hands as a participant in those wrongs.
Why are some groups more deserving than others?
Why does anyone deserve anyone else giving them anything today for stuff that happened hundreds of years ago?
If you say that today we should give back stuff that someone unfairly took from someone else, doesn't that mean the government of Spain should turn in its keys and put somebody else in charge? Depending on which historical period you pick, Spain might rightfully belong to France (Napoleon), Algeria (Muslims), Italy (Roman empire) or the Basques (as the descendants of Spain's pre-Roman tribes).
[1] Reparations for slavery in the US is another example.
[2] Original sin is a doctrine in some religions that says it is okay for you to be punished for stuff your ancestors did long before you were born.
[3] Genghis Khan is an ancestor of ~0.5% of humanity: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16767