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You say that like governments, like the British government (since you brought them up), didn't finish paying off its debt to slave owners in 2015 (https://www.g

You say that like governments, like the British government (since you brought them up), didn't finish paying off its debt to slave owners in 2015 (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/repayment-of-26-billion-historical-debt-to-be-completed-by-government https://www.gov.uk/government/news/repayment-of-26-billion-h...) for debt created decades before the American civil war over slavery. Are you okay with this? And if so, why is paying off this debt okay when slavery is so far removed, but the concept of reparations isn't?

typewithrhythm 1y ago
That is not a debt to slave owners, that is a debt taken on to pay for the costs of abolishing slavery. It's also talking about real agreements for an entity to exchange money in the future, for a bond tied to the value of the currency... Not some vibes based moral justification.
- ZeroGravitas 1y ago
  > That is not a debt to slave owners, that is a debt taken on to pay for the costs of abolishing slavery. The debt was taken on to pay reparations to slave owners. About £6 Billion in modern terms, 4.5 billion of which was borrowed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833
  - philipallstar 1y ago
    No, it wasn't "reparations". It was a commercial transaction to legally buy slaves and set them free.
- Defletter 1y ago
  Correct, the slave owners were already "compensated" for their crimes against humanity 200 years ago, so the debt being completed was the loan the UK took out to do so. But you are missing the point: the argument being made here (and in other comments) is that slavery was soooo loooonng aggoooo that considering reparations is at best virtue signalling, and at worst moronic. And yet you and others do not bat an eye at debt lasting that long. And let's be clear, I am fully supportive of OP's advocacy for funding black neighbourhoods and other such programmes. I am specifically aiming at this whining sophistry (which I'm not claiming OP made, but just in general) about slavery being ancient history so reparations are ridiculous, but debt lasting that long is totally fine and normal.
  - typewithrhythm 1y ago
    Because a debt like that is essentially a chunk of currency, that is passed between entitys; it doesn't matter when a debt a government was issued, the current holder is another contemporary entity or person. Why a debt was created is irrelevant to the current holder, can't you understand why a government default is bad?
    - Defletter 1y ago
      Can't you understand why attempting to resolve past wrongs is good? Why are finance obligations so important that they MUST persist throughout the centuries, but attempting to fix the legacies of human suffering is just "vibes based moral justification"? Why are numbers more important than people?
      - typewithrhythm 1y ago
        You dont seem to understand; the debt is owned and exchanged by contemporary people, why or when that debt was created is irrelevant, because the body (government) that owes it has many other debts created over time. You can not pick and choose which ones to repay without causing everyone who you currently owe money to be alarmed. Deciding to default on an old debt like that would be the equivalent of deciding any coin minted in 1993 is no longer valid, suck it up whoever currently has one in their pocket. To be clear, you are the one trying to draw this parallel without any solid foundation to make it. When you look the moral problem, there is a discontinuity that doesn't exist for abstract financial instruments. People make moral choices; you are trying to saddle people who didn't make those choices with some sort of culpability. This is a different case and needs to be made without trying to use financial instruments as a starting point.
        Defletter 1y ago
        And the institution of slavery and its legacies were and are experienced by contemporary people. In fact, penal chattel slavery was an ongoing thing well into the 20th century in the US. And I honestly fail to see the distinction you're making: you insist that financial obligations are different because, to paraphrase: "there's a paper trail and defaulting is bad". But slavery and its legacies also has a paper trail, likewise with human life and misery, and not resolving this is also bad. You have yet to provide an argument that fundamentally CANNOT also be applied to reparations: you've only given arguments over how we merely don't apply them to reparations. This kind of definition game, that 'reparations aren't considered that way because we don't consider them that way', reminds me of when there's outrage over police murdering someone and people insisting it's not murder because murder is an unlawful killing. So, I ask you, without resorting to mere definition, what is the difference between "People make moral choices; you are trying to saddle people who didn't make those choices with some sort of culpability" (reparations) and "People make financial choices; you are trying to saddle people who didn't make those choices with some sort of culpability" (debt)?
- Teever 1y ago
  > That is not a debt to slave owners, that is a debt taken on to pay for the costs of abolishing slavery. This seems like a distinction without a difference. Can you elaborate?
  - suzakus 1y ago
    The slave owners were paid lifetimes ago. The repayments are to the inheritors of the debt that was taken on to pay said slave owners.
  - typewithrhythm 1y ago
    If you say we are not paying a debt to slave owners, then slave owners do not receive money. If you say we are not paying the current holder of a bond we created to pay slave owners in the past, then you damage your current credit rating. (In the worst case, potentially hurting organisations that let you have good terms for socially beneficial causes, refusing to pay back a charity that helps end slavery for example).
b112 1y ago
Read up on the 'home children'. Hundreds of thousands of orphaned children were contracted(sold), indentured, to the colonies. Some faced harrowing, near starvation conditions and were beaten, tortured, and so on. On top of that, to reduce resistance, families were broken up. One brother would be sent to Canada, another Australia, never to meet again. This is, of course, not as severe as slavery. Once adults, after a decade or more of hard labour, their contract was often satisfied. Yet my point is that the past was a more brutal time. This is how white, British children were treated by the British. And not one descendant of home children (such as my grandfather was) has ever been compensated. There is no effort to help track down families broken apart. And look at what happened to orphans in Catholic care? Priest raping children, and it being kept quiet for decades by the police and Catholic church. If reparations aren't being given to cases like these, then why would they be given to other cases a centuries old? NOTE, I'm not saying "fair or not". I'm saying that is that the past is a different world. And expecting today's people to pay for what their great-great grandfather's did, isn't a thing that's often entertained. If we start getting into reparations, I feel I should also have my property returned from when the British took it from my Scottish ancestors. Or maybe Italy should be paying, for the time the Romans invaded and they took some land back then? When does it end? Where does it end? This comment may not be liked by many, but what I'm trying to point out is that the past was not today, mores were different, and it wasn't just one race that was treated poorly. Everyone treated everyone poorly compared to today.
- ZeroGravitas 1y ago
  FYI various Catholic organisations are paying reparations to their victims (some for slavery, some for abuse of children). Probably too little and too late but still a strange example to give if your point is that reparations are unthinkable.
- Defletter 1y ago
  > And expecting today's people to pay for what their great-great grandfather's did, isn't a thing that's often entertained. From what I can tell, the argument is that: if your great-great grandfather became extremely wealthy off of slavery, and was then paid by the government to free their slaves, and then eventually you inherit that wealth... well... if the wealth from crimes against humanity can be inherited, why isn't the responsibility to undo the harm not also inherited?
fakedang 1y ago
a.) My family weren't slaves, they were British colonial second-class subjects. b.) They were killed in the 1920s, way after Britain decided to compensate its slavers. c.) The whole payment to slaves till 2015 is not real, it's just a quirk of how the payments were structured via annuities - in fact the payments were done by the 1840s. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2022/the-collection-of-slavery-compensation-1835-43 https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2022/the-colle... d.) The slaves themselves never received any compensation.

typewithrhythm 1y ago

That is not a debt to slave owners, that is a debt taken on to pay for the costs of abolishing slavery. It's also talking about real agreements for an entity to exchange money in the future, for a bond tied to the value of the currency... Not some vibes based moral justification.

ZeroGravitas 1y ago
> That is not a debt to slave owners, that is a debt taken on to pay for the costs of abolishing slavery. The debt was taken on to pay reparations to slave owners. About £6 Billion in modern terms, 4.5 billion of which was borrowed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833
- philipallstar 1y ago
  No, it wasn't "reparations". It was a commercial transaction to legally buy slaves and set them free.
Defletter 1y ago
Correct, the slave owners were already "compensated" for their crimes against humanity 200 years ago, so the debt being completed was the loan the UK took out to do so. But you are missing the point: the argument being made here (and in other comments) is that slavery was soooo loooonng aggoooo that considering reparations is at best virtue signalling, and at worst moronic. And yet you and others do not bat an eye at debt lasting that long. And let's be clear, I am fully supportive of OP's advocacy for funding black neighbourhoods and other such programmes. I am specifically aiming at this whining sophistry (which I'm not claiming OP made, but just in general) about slavery being ancient history so reparations are ridiculous, but debt lasting that long is totally fine and normal.
- typewithrhythm 1y ago
  Because a debt like that is essentially a chunk of currency, that is passed between entitys; it doesn't matter when a debt a government was issued, the current holder is another contemporary entity or person. Why a debt was created is irrelevant to the current holder, can't you understand why a government default is bad?
  - Defletter 1y ago
    Can't you understand why attempting to resolve past wrongs is good? Why are finance obligations so important that they MUST persist throughout the centuries, but attempting to fix the legacies of human suffering is just "vibes based moral justification"? Why are numbers more important than people?
    - typewithrhythm 1y ago
      You dont seem to understand; the debt is owned and exchanged by contemporary people, why or when that debt was created is irrelevant, because the body (government) that owes it has many other debts created over time. You can not pick and choose which ones to repay without causing everyone who you currently owe money to be alarmed. Deciding to default on an old debt like that would be the equivalent of deciding any coin minted in 1993 is no longer valid, suck it up whoever currently has one in their pocket. To be clear, you are the one trying to draw this parallel without any solid foundation to make it. When you look the moral problem, there is a discontinuity that doesn't exist for abstract financial instruments. People make moral choices; you are trying to saddle people who didn't make those choices with some sort of culpability. This is a different case and needs to be made without trying to use financial instruments as a starting point.
      - Defletter 1y ago
        And the institution of slavery and its legacies were and are experienced by contemporary people. In fact, penal chattel slavery was an ongoing thing well into the 20th century in the US. And I honestly fail to see the distinction you're making: you insist that financial obligations are different because, to paraphrase: "there's a paper trail and defaulting is bad". But slavery and its legacies also has a paper trail, likewise with human life and misery, and not resolving this is also bad. You have yet to provide an argument that fundamentally CANNOT also be applied to reparations: you've only given arguments over how we merely don't apply them to reparations. This kind of definition game, that 'reparations aren't considered that way because we don't consider them that way', reminds me of when there's outrage over police murdering someone and people insisting it's not murder because murder is an unlawful killing. So, I ask you, without resorting to mere definition, what is the difference between "People make moral choices; you are trying to saddle people who didn't make those choices with some sort of culpability" (reparations) and "People make financial choices; you are trying to saddle people who didn't make those choices with some sort of culpability" (debt)?
Teever 1y ago
> That is not a debt to slave owners, that is a debt taken on to pay for the costs of abolishing slavery. This seems like a distinction without a difference. Can you elaborate?
- suzakus 1y ago
  The slave owners were paid lifetimes ago. The repayments are to the inheritors of the debt that was taken on to pay said slave owners.
- typewithrhythm 1y ago
  If you say we are not paying a debt to slave owners, then slave owners do not receive money. If you say we are not paying the current holder of a bond we created to pay slave owners in the past, then you damage your current credit rating. (In the worst case, potentially hurting organisations that let you have good terms for socially beneficial causes, refusing to pay back a charity that helps end slavery for example).

b112 1y ago

Read up on the 'home children'. Hundreds of thousands of orphaned children were contracted(sold), indentured, to the colonies. Some faced harrowing, near starvation conditions and were beaten, tortured, and so on. On top of that, to reduce resistance, families were broken up. One brother would be sent to Canada, another Australia, never to meet again. This is, of course, not as severe as slavery. Once adults, after a decade or more of hard labour, their contract was often satisfied. Yet my point is that the past was a more brutal time. This is how white, British children were treated by the British. And not one descendant of home children (such as my grandfather was) has ever been compensated. There is no effort to help track down families broken apart. And look at what happened to orphans in Catholic care? Priest raping children, and it being kept quiet for decades by the police and Catholic church. If reparations aren't being given to cases like these, then why would they be given to other cases a centuries old? NOTE, I'm not saying "fair or not". I'm saying that is that the past is a different world. And expecting today's people to pay for what their great-great grandfather's did, isn't a thing that's often entertained. If we start getting into reparations, I feel I should also have my property returned from when the British took it from my Scottish ancestors. Or maybe Italy should be paying, for the time the Romans invaded and they took some land back then? When does it end? Where does it end? This comment may not be liked by many, but what I'm trying to point out is that the past was not today, mores were different, and it wasn't just one race that was treated poorly. Everyone treated everyone poorly compared to today.

ZeroGravitas 1y ago
FYI various Catholic organisations are paying reparations to their victims (some for slavery, some for abuse of children). Probably too little and too late but still a strange example to give if your point is that reparations are unthinkable.
Defletter 1y ago
> And expecting today's people to pay for what their great-great grandfather's did, isn't a thing that's often entertained. From what I can tell, the argument is that: if your great-great grandfather became extremely wealthy off of slavery, and was then paid by the government to free their slaves, and then eventually you inherit that wealth... well... if the wealth from crimes against humanity can be inherited, why isn't the responsibility to undo the harm not also inherited?

fakedang 1y ago

a.) My family weren't slaves, they were British colonial second-class subjects. b.) They were killed in the 1920s, way after Britain decided to compensate its slavers. c.) The whole payment to slaves till 2015 is not real, it's just a quirk of how the payments were structured via annuities - in fact the payments were done by the 1840s. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2022/the-collection-of-slavery-compensation-1835-43 https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/working-paper/2022/the-colle... d.) The slaves themselves never received any compensation.