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Forcing colonialist countries to return their ill-gotten wealth is nothing but justice. If you live in those countries your affluence is built on a history of a

Forcing colonialist countries to return their ill-gotten wealth is nothing but justice. If you live in those countries your affluence is built on a history of appalling human suffering. Saying it's all water under the bridge is just tremendously self-serving and shouldn't be an option. To quote our friend Malcolm X: "If you stick a knife in my back 9 inches and pull it out 6 inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out, that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that the blow made. They won’t even admit the knife is there"

LanceH 7y ago
Person A stabbed person B possibly hundreds of years ago. Now because C lives where A did, he owes D money. Oh, and B originally acquired his possessions stabbing someone else, but he's somehow virtuous because of C has to feel guilty about everything A did.
- ahelwer 7y ago
  Read a book. People stabbing each other is utterly unlike enormous systems deliberately set up to extract, impoverish, and exploit entire regions of the globe. Oh, and colonialism hasn't ended in case that wasn't clear. Any time a nation tried to nationalize their resources and was toppled in a US-backed coup? Colonialism. Nearly anywhere a multinational corporation works to extract resources and profits from a developing nation directly continues the legacy of colonialism.
  - Veen 7y ago
    Are you equally intent on seeking redress for Turkish colonialism, Arab colonialism, and Chinese colonialism?
- ijpsud 7y ago
  If A's stabbing of B causally led to B's descendants being poor and B's descendants being rich, then we should obviously transfer some wealth from A's descendants to B's descendants. That's just good economic/political incentive design. EDIT: To be clear, I'm not claiming anything about this Dutch case, I'm just playing along with your contrived example.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    What happens if B got their money by being so effective at stabbing that after stabbing Z, they got Z's money and Z had no descendants? You can't give B's money back to Z's descendents, but you can't give A's money back to B without treating B's genocide more kindly than A's oppression.
  - Veen 7y ago
    You would struggle to establish that "A's stabbing of B causally led to B's descendants being poor". It's not enough to argue that A stabbed B and B is now poor therefore A caused B's poverty, which would be a post hoc fallacy.
    - ijpsud 7y ago
      I'm pretty sure you posted this after my edit, but in case you didn't, please read that. I'm not the one that came up with this contrived "A stabs B" example, and I never claimed that "for any A that stabs B, then B is causally at a financial disadvantage in the future" (though I would claim this effect in the real world, on average, but that's off topic).
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. It just makes this place worse. At least the Malcolm X quote (for those of us who'd not heard it before) is interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
jacobriis 7y ago
Many countries without an extensive history of colonialism have achieved similar prosperity to the great European colonial powers: Spain (29k per capita gdp), Portugal (23k), Netherlands (52k), United Kingdom (40k), and France (41k). Consider Korea (31k), Taiwan (24k), Finland (48k), Austria (50k), Switzerland (80k), Czechia (23k), Hungary (17k), Slovenia (26k), Estonia (23k), Greece (19k), Lithuania (23k), Latvia (18k), and Cyprus (27k). Hard to make the case that colonialism is the sole or principal factor that produced the prosperity of any of these countries. But if it is true that Portugal (23k) is an evil white supremacist economy and Lithuania/Estonia/Czechia/Taiwan (~23k) are virtuous economies, we should study Lithuania, Estonia, Taiwan and Czechia! Great job lads! Does the Republic of Ireland (#4 per capita GDP) need to pay for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland colonies or does the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (#21 per capita GDP) need to pay Republic of Ireland? Is the Ottoman Empire also very bad? Do the Turks need to pay up? The colonialism people seem to pass over them for some reason.
- mettamage 7y ago
  Amsterdam has a museum on how Dutch activities in their colonies financed the expansion of the city and the construction of the canals.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ijpsud 7y ago
  It's also hard to make a strong case for it not being a significant factor, even with cherry picking. In any case, even if killing someone's family members just so happened to help increase their country's GDP in the long run, that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be compensated the killing of their family. When thinking about what we "should" do here, we're really just thinking about what policies would create the most ideal incentives in service of creating a better world in the long run.
- konradha 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide
jsjddbbwj 7y ago
This is fair if those colonies stop speaking English, using sewage systems and modern agriculture practices and basically return to living in yurts. Ah, you mean that other definition of fairness...
- ijpsud 7y ago
  You're implicitly claiming that it's fair for me to enslave you so long as I end up giving you a better education than you otherwise would have had, for example. So I could go to a poor country and enslave a bunch of people and train them up and get them to write code for my companies for several generations (all completely against their will - through physical force), and that would be fine with you? We're trying to construct good incentives for the world here. Your system of incentives doesn't sound great to me.
  - aww_dang 7y ago
    I understand where you are coming from, but I feel you are comparing apples and oranges here. Do you think that life was purely cake and candy for the western underclasses during the colonial period? Debtors prisons, work farms, indentured servitude, the list of _historical_ abuses goes on. Yes, there were brutal practices in the past. This is true of both east and west. But the comparison you make implies (at least in my eyes) that you assume this brutality would have continued if colonialism had. The truth is that the west has been a driver and proponent of human rights reform. The will to be introspective and self-critical has allowed the west to evolve. This same trait can be taken to an extreme of illogic which unduely dismisses the progress it has set the stage for. The comparison is not between slavery (which we can all easily condemn) and freedom. A better comparison would be between the current western standards of sanitation and jurisprudence vs. the relatively undeveloped current conditions of many former colonies. That said, there are still plenty of reasons to oppose colonialism. At the end of it all we are left with a choice between optimism and pessimism. Descendants of slaves can choose to count their blessings and appreciate the opportunities they have in their life while still being proud of their heritage. Alternatively we can pessimistically and regressively seek to relitigate the past and blame others for our situation. Which choice empowers the individual and recognizes his agency? Which choice makes him a victim who must be granted redress by institutions? Frankly, some of this guilt tripping smacks of condescending nobelesse oblige, although I appreciate that not everyone feels that way.
brnt 7y ago
I have a big problemen when people identify a country with the people living in it. The nation state is a construct created to manipulate the masses into doing what rulers and elites want. Fight for your country, work for the motherland, that kind of stuff. It's a tool, not a truth. Even though capitalists and their inheritors convinced many, 'countries' didn't have colonies, companies and individuals often did, and 'countries' sometimes were instructed by them to participate in their commercial endeavors. Most citizens ancestors in former colonial countries were often no less oppressed by their ruling classes and factory owners as natives in the colonies. Current ancestors of those working classes are not responsible for their ancestors oppressors. To the contrary. Both people in now former colonies and former colonists are by and large co-victims. While capitalists wealth was largely spent in their native lands and so workers there profited through trickle down economics, we should be very careful validating that slowest of the slow of economic models. It is a malicious model, like colonialism was malicious. It is in workers interest around the globe to correctly identify their oppressors, and not be played against each other and let true inheritors of much of that ill-gained wealth 'socialize' their losses upon their states. I'll not go into detail into how colonialism actually was differently implemented across Europe (e.g. you may say the State was far more core to colonialism in France, whereas in Belgium it was the king personally owning the colony, and in the Netherlands it was company property). The core of my argument is that the since there isn't a European alive who's ever profited off a slave in the colonies back, the only way to make former colonialists return all their wealth would mean turning this into a sort of blood feud that would never end. Let's not take Israeli-Palestine as a model. Let's rather think of ways to engrain the idea equality between people worldwide is both fair and the most effective method in preventing conflict, and think of ways of how to implement such a global wealth sharing in ways other than accounting for past rulers/capitalists of fences over which very few had any day, let alone influence, certainly noone alive right now. Let's begin by cracking down hard on current day slavery, and all forms of labour related abuse. Average humans in former colonist countries are not enemies with average humans in former colonies. The opposite.
- ijpsud 7y ago
  > Most citizens ancestors in former colonial countries were often no less oppressed by their ruling classes and factory owners as natives in the colonies. You have no idea what you're talking about. You ought to read about this before making such sweeping claims. The Dutch invaded islands, killed and tortured the locals into submission, razed the island and enslaved the women and children to work on spice plantations. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/11/26/165657050/no-innocent-spice-the-secret-story-of-nutmeg-life-and-death https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/11/26/165657050/no... > Current ancestors of those working classes are not responsible for their ancestors oppressors. No one is arguing that. They're making the very reasonable claim that one group of people oppressed another and that this put the oppressed people at a significant disadvantage relative to those who benefited from the oppression, and thus that resources should be redistributed to balance that - a policy that makes perfect sense in terms of economic incentives.
mudsnail 7y ago
But you didn't answer the parents questions. How far back do you go? Humans and the societies they create have been doing horrible things to each other since they existed. Personally, I have ancestors on both sides of colonial history. So am I holding the knife that is impaled in my back? In the particular context of the article. These events happened during the victims life so justice seems much more clear cut in this case.
- ahelwer 7y ago
  They edited their comment after I wrote mine. It would have been much more polite for them to reply. Let's dispense with the requirement that I provide you with a comprehensive legal framework that would nicely sort all countries into whether they are responsible for colonial reparations or not. I live in America, so I'll just say that America's (and basically all of Europe's) direct connection to colonialism is so obvious (and continuing) that their responsibility need barely be justified.
  - hopia 7y ago
    Not all European nations were colonizers, some were instead victims of colonization. Are these European states eligible for colonial reparations as well?

LanceH 7y ago

Person A stabbed person B possibly hundreds of years ago. Now because C lives where A did, he owes D money. Oh, and B originally acquired his possessions stabbing someone else, but he's somehow virtuous because of C has to feel guilty about everything A did.

ahelwer 7y ago
Read a book. People stabbing each other is utterly unlike enormous systems deliberately set up to extract, impoverish, and exploit entire regions of the globe. Oh, and colonialism hasn't ended in case that wasn't clear. Any time a nation tried to nationalize their resources and was toppled in a US-backed coup? Colonialism. Nearly anywhere a multinational corporation works to extract resources and profits from a developing nation directly continues the legacy of colonialism.
- Veen 7y ago
  Are you equally intent on seeking redress for Turkish colonialism, Arab colonialism, and Chinese colonialism?
ijpsud 7y ago
If A's stabbing of B causally led to B's descendants being poor and B's descendants being rich, then we should obviously transfer some wealth from A's descendants to B's descendants. That's just good economic/political incentive design. EDIT: To be clear, I'm not claiming anything about this Dutch case, I'm just playing along with your contrived example.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  What happens if B got their money by being so effective at stabbing that after stabbing Z, they got Z's money and Z had no descendants? You can't give B's money back to Z's descendents, but you can't give A's money back to B without treating B's genocide more kindly than A's oppression.
- Veen 7y ago
  You would struggle to establish that "A's stabbing of B causally led to B's descendants being poor". It's not enough to argue that A stabbed B and B is now poor therefore A caused B's poverty, which would be a post hoc fallacy.
  - ijpsud 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure you posted this after my edit, but in case you didn't, please read that. I'm not the one that came up with this contrived "A stabs B" example, and I never claimed that "for any A that stabs B, then B is causally at a financial disadvantage in the future" (though I would claim this effect in the real world, on average, but that's off topic).
dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. It just makes this place worse. At least the Malcolm X quote (for those of us who'd not heard it before) is interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jacobriis 7y ago

Many countries without an extensive history of colonialism have achieved similar prosperity to the great European colonial powers: Spain (29k per capita gdp), Portugal (23k), Netherlands (52k), United Kingdom (40k), and France (41k). Consider Korea (31k), Taiwan (24k), Finland (48k), Austria (50k), Switzerland (80k), Czechia (23k), Hungary (17k), Slovenia (26k), Estonia (23k), Greece (19k), Lithuania (23k), Latvia (18k), and Cyprus (27k). Hard to make the case that colonialism is the sole or principal factor that produced the prosperity of any of these countries. But if it is true that Portugal (23k) is an evil white supremacist economy and Lithuania/Estonia/Czechia/Taiwan (~23k) are virtuous economies, we should study Lithuania, Estonia, Taiwan and Czechia! Great job lads! Does the Republic of Ireland (#4 per capita GDP) need to pay for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland colonies or does the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (#21 per capita GDP) need to pay Republic of Ireland? Is the Ottoman Empire also very bad? Do the Turks need to pay up? The colonialism people seem to pass over them for some reason.

mettamage 7y ago
Amsterdam has a museum on how Dutch activities in their colonies financed the expansion of the city and the construction of the canals.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ijpsud 7y ago
It's also hard to make a strong case for it not being a significant factor, even with cherry picking. In any case, even if killing someone's family members just so happened to help increase their country's GDP in the long run, that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be compensated the killing of their family. When thinking about what we "should" do here, we're really just thinking about what policies would create the most ideal incentives in service of creating a better world in the long run.
konradha 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

jsjddbbwj 7y ago

This is fair if those colonies stop speaking English, using sewage systems and modern agriculture practices and basically return to living in yurts. Ah, you mean that other definition of fairness...

ijpsud 7y ago
You're implicitly claiming that it's fair for me to enslave you so long as I end up giving you a better education than you otherwise would have had, for example. So I could go to a poor country and enslave a bunch of people and train them up and get them to write code for my companies for several generations (all completely against their will - through physical force), and that would be fine with you? We're trying to construct good incentives for the world here. Your system of incentives doesn't sound great to me.
- aww_dang 7y ago
  I understand where you are coming from, but I feel you are comparing apples and oranges here. Do you think that life was purely cake and candy for the western underclasses during the colonial period? Debtors prisons, work farms, indentured servitude, the list of _historical_ abuses goes on. Yes, there were brutal practices in the past. This is true of both east and west. But the comparison you make implies (at least in my eyes) that you assume this brutality would have continued if colonialism had. The truth is that the west has been a driver and proponent of human rights reform. The will to be introspective and self-critical has allowed the west to evolve. This same trait can be taken to an extreme of illogic which unduely dismisses the progress it has set the stage for. The comparison is not between slavery (which we can all easily condemn) and freedom. A better comparison would be between the current western standards of sanitation and jurisprudence vs. the relatively undeveloped current conditions of many former colonies. That said, there are still plenty of reasons to oppose colonialism. At the end of it all we are left with a choice between optimism and pessimism. Descendants of slaves can choose to count their blessings and appreciate the opportunities they have in their life while still being proud of their heritage. Alternatively we can pessimistically and regressively seek to relitigate the past and blame others for our situation. Which choice empowers the individual and recognizes his agency? Which choice makes him a victim who must be granted redress by institutions? Frankly, some of this guilt tripping smacks of condescending nobelesse oblige, although I appreciate that not everyone feels that way.

brnt 7y ago

I have a big problemen when people identify a country with the people living in it. The nation state is a construct created to manipulate the masses into doing what rulers and elites want. Fight for your country, work for the motherland, that kind of stuff. It's a tool, not a truth. Even though capitalists and their inheritors convinced many, 'countries' didn't have colonies, companies and individuals often did, and 'countries' sometimes were instructed by them to participate in their commercial endeavors. Most citizens ancestors in former colonial countries were often no less oppressed by their ruling classes and factory owners as natives in the colonies. Current ancestors of those working classes are not responsible for their ancestors oppressors. To the contrary. Both people in now former colonies and former colonists are by and large co-victims. While capitalists wealth was largely spent in their native lands and so workers there profited through trickle down economics, we should be very careful validating that slowest of the slow of economic models. It is a malicious model, like colonialism was malicious. It is in workers interest around the globe to correctly identify their oppressors, and not be played against each other and let true inheritors of much of that ill-gained wealth 'socialize' their losses upon their states. I'll not go into detail into how colonialism actually was differently implemented across Europe (e.g. you may say the State was far more core to colonialism in France, whereas in Belgium it was the king personally owning the colony, and in the Netherlands it was company property). The core of my argument is that the since there isn't a European alive who's ever profited off a slave in the colonies back, the only way to make former colonialists return all their wealth would mean turning this into a sort of blood feud that would never end. Let's not take Israeli-Palestine as a model. Let's rather think of ways to engrain the idea equality between people worldwide is both fair and the most effective method in preventing conflict, and think of ways of how to implement such a global wealth sharing in ways other than accounting for past rulers/capitalists of fences over which very few had any day, let alone influence, certainly noone alive right now. Let's begin by cracking down hard on current day slavery, and all forms of labour related abuse. Average humans in former colonist countries are not enemies with average humans in former colonies. The opposite.

ijpsud 7y ago
> Most citizens ancestors in former colonial countries were often no less oppressed by their ruling classes and factory owners as natives in the colonies. You have no idea what you're talking about. You ought to read about this before making such sweeping claims. The Dutch invaded islands, killed and tortured the locals into submission, razed the island and enslaved the women and children to work on spice plantations. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/11/26/165657050/no-innocent-spice-the-secret-story-of-nutmeg-life-and-death https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/11/26/165657050/no... > Current ancestors of those working classes are not responsible for their ancestors oppressors. No one is arguing that. They're making the very reasonable claim that one group of people oppressed another and that this put the oppressed people at a significant disadvantage relative to those who benefited from the oppression, and thus that resources should be redistributed to balance that - a policy that makes perfect sense in terms of economic incentives.

mudsnail 7y ago

But you didn't answer the parents questions. How far back do you go? Humans and the societies they create have been doing horrible things to each other since they existed. Personally, I have ancestors on both sides of colonial history. So am I holding the knife that is impaled in my back? In the particular context of the article. These events happened during the victims life so justice seems much more clear cut in this case.

ahelwer 7y ago
They edited their comment after I wrote mine. It would have been much more polite for them to reply. Let's dispense with the requirement that I provide you with a comprehensive legal framework that would nicely sort all countries into whether they are responsible for colonial reparations or not. I live in America, so I'll just say that America's (and basically all of Europe's) direct connection to colonialism is so obvious (and continuing) that their responsibility need barely be justified.
- hopia 7y ago
  Not all European nations were colonizers, some were instead victims of colonization. Are these European states eligible for colonial reparations as well?