2 ms·

Well I personally don't think it's bad to benefit from harms. I think it's bad to cause harms and good to mitigate them; benefiting from them or not is irreleva

Well I personally don't think it's bad to benefit from harms. I think it's bad to cause harms and good to mitigate them; benefiting from them or not is irrelevant. A surgeon who reattaches limbs is a pretty ok guy, even if he's benefiting from horrible accidental amputations. So is an Uber driver who drives into a surging area. I've even personally benefited from the holocaust, the Kosovo wars and the Rwandan genocide; I've met interesting people who would probably never have crossed my path under better circumstances. Is it really reasonable for me to feel guilt over that?

tptacek 11y ago
I personally think you should weigh the magnitude and the determinism of the benefit against its cost. Meeting a new person is nice, but it is a tiny benefit compared to the holocaust. And there is virtually no way anyone could predict you'd make a serendipitous connection as a result of the holocaust. The connection is trifling. At a certain threshold, you stop giving a shit about those kinds of connections. None of that is true of well-off white people taking advantage of a market inefficiency caused by decades of segregation. In fact: providing opportunities for well-off white people to profit in the real estate market is an incentive for segregation, and an incentive along the same vector as one of the most important incentive systems supporting 19th and 20th century segregation: internal economic protectionism for favored ethnicities. At this point in the discussion I think reasonable people can start disagreeing. That wasn't true given your earlier examples, which simply didn't connect logically to the conundrum Rayiner proposed.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  But this is still a pretty trifling connection. People voted for segregation so that 52 years into the future, lower income upper class people could live in cheap mixed race neighborhoods? That's really also not something that was very predictable. None of that is true of well-off white people taking advantage of a market inefficiency caused by decades of segregation....and an incentive along the same vector Segregation was a "you must discriminate" law to prevent greedy folks like the author of this article from exploiting the market inefficiencies. It seems like I've got 3 choices here. (+1) Violate the spirit of that law, reduce the market inefficiency, and make money. 0) Live in Asia. (-1) Make the inefficiency worse by moving into a nice white suburb, pay more money, and obey the spirit of that now absent law. To me it seems like "guilt follows benefit" implies I need to do (-1).
  - tptacek 11y ago
    I think you're the only one in this thread suggesting that well-off white people simply shouldn't move into these neighborhoods, man.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      People should choose the best of all available options and still feel guilty about it? Not really sure what you are advocating for here.
      - tptacek 11y ago
        None of this is responsive to what I just wrote.

tptacek 11y ago

I personally think you should weigh the magnitude and the determinism of the benefit against its cost. Meeting a new person is nice, but it is a tiny benefit compared to the holocaust. And there is virtually no way anyone could predict you'd make a serendipitous connection as a result of the holocaust. The connection is trifling. At a certain threshold, you stop giving a shit about those kinds of connections. None of that is true of well-off white people taking advantage of a market inefficiency caused by decades of segregation. In fact: providing opportunities for well-off white people to profit in the real estate market is an incentive for segregation, and an incentive along the same vector as one of the most important incentive systems supporting 19th and 20th century segregation: internal economic protectionism for favored ethnicities. At this point in the discussion I think reasonable people can start disagreeing. That wasn't true given your earlier examples, which simply didn't connect logically to the conundrum Rayiner proposed.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
But this is still a pretty trifling connection. People voted for segregation so that 52 years into the future, lower income upper class people could live in cheap mixed race neighborhoods? That's really also not something that was very predictable. None of that is true of well-off white people taking advantage of a market inefficiency caused by decades of segregation....and an incentive along the same vector Segregation was a "you must discriminate" law to prevent greedy folks like the author of this article from exploiting the market inefficiencies. It seems like I've got 3 choices here. (+1) Violate the spirit of that law, reduce the market inefficiency, and make money. 0) Live in Asia. (-1) Make the inefficiency worse by moving into a nice white suburb, pay more money, and obey the spirit of that now absent law. To me it seems like "guilt follows benefit" implies I need to do (-1).
- tptacek 11y ago
  I think you're the only one in this thread suggesting that well-off white people simply shouldn't move into these neighborhoods, man.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    People should choose the best of all available options and still feel guilty about it? Not really sure what you are advocating for here.
    - tptacek 11y ago
      None of this is responsive to what I just wrote.