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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 stab
by 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 agoRead 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 agoAre you equally intent on seeking redress for Turkish colonialism, Arab colonialism, and Chinese colonialism?
- ijpsud 7y agoIf 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 agoWhat 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 agoYou 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 agoI'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 agoPlease 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