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You're giving people alive today a benefit (free citizenship) in compensation for a wrong that was done long before anyone living today was born. I see a lot o

by csense 3y ago

You're giving people alive today a benefit (free citizenship) in compensation for a wrong that was done long before anyone living today was born. 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 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16767

Dylan16807 3y ago
There's tons of positive stuff you can inherit from your parents. All of that is similarly "original sin in reverse". I don't see any problem with that as an overall concept. You don't have to take anything from anyone to give citizenship to people that should have had citizenship.
majormajor 3y ago
You spend a lot of time focusing on recipients of something here and whether or not they "deserve" it. And you're framing it as if there should be some universal principle that applies to every situation. 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?
narag 3y ago
I see a lot of ethical problems with this sort of thing 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.
NilMostChill 3y ago
Reparations (in general) aren't really about punishing descendants for their ancestors transgressions, it's about balancing out the systemic oppression and inherent handicap that is/was affecting a given population. Granted, it's not always like that but it's incorrect to claim it's specifically about punishing later generations. 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.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  > Helping the [less] fortunate isn't a zero-sum game. 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.
  - majormajor 3y ago
    People can add value to the system through their actions. This goes back to one of the reasons for the private property, market-based economic systems - the idea of improvements, of non-zero-sum benefits. The cliche of making the pie bigger instead of just fighting over the size of our individual slices. 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.
pessimizer 3y ago
100% estate tax, then. edit: > [1] Reparations for slavery in the US is another example. This is gross. My mother was arrested for going into a whites-only Pizza Hut as a child. My grandmother and the rest of that side of the family were kicked off of their family farms because the US wouldn't give out farm loans. Black people didn't get the GI Bill, and The Greatest Generation went to fight Nazis with a segregated military. Jim Crow lasted until my grandparents were in their thirties. I went to a defacto segregated grammar school where we had to share textbooks. Black people have slightly more than the amount of wealth they had when they were kicked out onto the highway after 300 years of work from birth to death. I think you're choosing the window that's most convenient for you. You don't want anybody to be able to make claims on what you yourself have, so you want any claims made before you were born dismissed. There's no reasoning about why you should have all the benefits and none of the liabilities from your parents, other than spurious associations with other things you don't like.
- logifail 3y ago
  > There's no reasoning about why you should have all the benefits and none of the liabilities from your parents, other than spurious associations with other things you don't like 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.
- skissane 3y ago
  > > [1] Reparations for slavery in the US is another example. > 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.
thebooktocome 3y ago
> 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. This is the fallacy of gray. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/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 . . .”
musicale 3y ago
> [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. "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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin

by csense 3y ago

Dylan16807 3y ago

There's tons of positive stuff you can inherit from your parents. All of that is similarly "original sin in reverse". I don't see any problem with that as an overall concept. You don't have to take anything from anyone to give citizenship to people that should have had citizenship.

majormajor 3y ago

You spend a lot of time focusing on recipients of something here and whether or not they "deserve" it. And you're framing it as if there should be some universal principle that applies to every situation. 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?

narag 3y ago

I see a lot of ethical problems with this sort of thing 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.

NilMostChill 3y ago

Reparations (in general) aren't really about punishing descendants for their ancestors transgressions, it's about balancing out the systemic oppression and inherent handicap that is/was affecting a given population. Granted, it's not always like that but it's incorrect to claim it's specifically about punishing later generations. 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.

ethbr0 3y ago
> Helping the [less] fortunate isn't a zero-sum game. 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.
- majormajor 3y ago
  People can add value to the system through their actions. This goes back to one of the reasons for the private property, market-based economic systems - the idea of improvements, of non-zero-sum benefits. The cliche of making the pie bigger instead of just fighting over the size of our individual slices. 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.

pessimizer 3y ago

100% estate tax, then. edit: > [1] Reparations for slavery in the US is another example. This is gross. My mother was arrested for going into a whites-only Pizza Hut as a child. My grandmother and the rest of that side of the family were kicked off of their family farms because the US wouldn't give out farm loans. Black people didn't get the GI Bill, and The Greatest Generation went to fight Nazis with a segregated military. Jim Crow lasted until my grandparents were in their thirties. I went to a defacto segregated grammar school where we had to share textbooks. Black people have slightly more than the amount of wealth they had when they were kicked out onto the highway after 300 years of work from birth to death. I think you're choosing the window that's most convenient for you. You don't want anybody to be able to make claims on what you yourself have, so you want any claims made before you were born dismissed. There's no reasoning about why you should have all the benefits and none of the liabilities from your parents, other than spurious associations with other things you don't like.

logifail 3y ago
> There's no reasoning about why you should have all the benefits and none of the liabilities from your parents, other than spurious associations with other things you don't like 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.
skissane 3y ago
> > [1] Reparations for slavery in the US is another example. > 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.

thebooktocome 3y ago

> 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. This is the fallacy of gray. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/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 . . .”

musicale 3y ago

> [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. "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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin