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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 t

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)?

typewithrhythm 1y ago
Debt is a mechanic we use to settle long term concrete transactions, particularly between complicated abstract entitys like nations. To be able to enter into new long term agreements, we must respect existing agreements. Morality pertains to how individuals should behave. There is no need for me to consider the actions of others I had no control over in order to act morally. You are trying to compare abstract concepts in a way that weakens your point. Nations are not individuals. Similarly, individuals do not inherit debt.
- Defletter 1y ago
  > To be able to enter into new long term agreements, we must respect existing agreements. That is a matter of trust, it's not an obligation for the state. We are a society of people, and for us to perpetuate civil society, wrongs must be corrected, yes? Why is the respect for debt more important than the respect for humanity? > There is no need for me to consider the actions of others I had no control over in order to act morally. What does this have to do with anything? Slavery is not a matter of "if you don't like it, don't do it", it was a positive right protected and enforced through the state's monopoly on violence. That's what law is. Likewise with the legacies of slavery. It's not mere morality, it's existential to civil society. If the state passes legislation to fund reparations based on past harm, that is no different to any other appropriations spending. And yes, the choice to pass such legislation is largely based on morality since there was no prior legal obligation to do so... but so was not absolving themselves of that slave-owner debt. The UK Parliament is sovereign, it could have willed away that debt with a simple majority, but it chose not to for 200 years. That too is a decision based on morality, and a telling one: that humanity is less important than debts being paid. > Nations are not individuals. Nations are not literally individuals, but state personhood is a thing, akin to corporate personhood. I'm not entirely sure what your point is here. > Similarly, individuals do not inherit debt. You're doing the whole "don't therefore can't" thing again. I have a vague recollection of debt inheritance in history's past. 'We don't do that because we don't do that' is not an argument.
  - typewithrhythm 1y ago
    You cannot will away an old debt without consequence because a current entity owns it, now, in the present. This is not a morality based decision. You are again trying to conflate abstractions that pertain to individuals and ones that pertain to nations. There is not a real concept of trust like between individuals, only a financial cost for not honouring debts. I also don't understand why you think there is a direct relationship between the debts and what they were originally created for... You clearly do not understand the concept of state or corporate personhood if you are trying to extend individual morality to apply. Civil society is also a strange direction to go in, from trying to make the relationship to debts. To engage, the term only makes sense as a way for current people to interact, a "wrong" in context requires both a specific victim and an offender... It cannot be applied to historical actions as it gives no information to how current people should interact. I would go as far as saying reparations for one arbitrarily chosen historic injustice undermines civil society; as it's impossible to claim one point in history is more valid than another, making any attempt a deeply unfair exercise.
    - Defletter 1y ago
      > You cannot will away an old debt without consequence because a current entity owns it, now, in the present. You cannot do ANYTHING without consequence, why would that be a criterion for anything? And ownership is a legal fiction, hence why Russia was able to seize all those passenger planes, likewise with Western nations seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs. Ownership, particularly of intangible things like debt, is not some universal truth or force of nature like gravity: it's an emergent property of the system we have set up. One of the reasons why the UK is (or was) the centre of finance was because of its robust legal system that puts an extreme emphasis on property rights. And that's a deliberate decision. The idea that such a decision is amoral is ridiculous. > There is not a real concept of trust like between individuals Yes, there absolutely is? In fact, it is the currency of international relations. International law isn't even really a thing: international law is domestic law; it only exists to the extent that a country respects the Rule of Law. It's why certain countries that blatantly violate international law face no legal consequence. It's why the response to the violation of international law are sanctions, not a higher courts overruling them: there is no higher court. And even when there are hypothetical higher courts, like the ECJ, again it only works so far as the member state is willing to play along, which is partly why Hungary is in such hot water with the EU. I'd even go so far as to say that nations rely on trust more than people do. The fact that you don't think trust even a concept with nations is wild and makes me doubt whether you understand the concept of international relations at all. And all this is also true within a nation: if you cannot trust your state institutions, those institutions are worthless. --- I do not think it is worth conversing further since this is clearly unproductive.

typewithrhythm 1y ago

Debt is a mechanic we use to settle long term concrete transactions, particularly between complicated abstract entitys like nations. To be able to enter into new long term agreements, we must respect existing agreements. Morality pertains to how individuals should behave. There is no need for me to consider the actions of others I had no control over in order to act morally. You are trying to compare abstract concepts in a way that weakens your point. Nations are not individuals. Similarly, individuals do not inherit debt.

Defletter 1y ago
> To be able to enter into new long term agreements, we must respect existing agreements. That is a matter of trust, it's not an obligation for the state. We are a society of people, and for us to perpetuate civil society, wrongs must be corrected, yes? Why is the respect for debt more important than the respect for humanity? > There is no need for me to consider the actions of others I had no control over in order to act morally. What does this have to do with anything? Slavery is not a matter of "if you don't like it, don't do it", it was a positive right protected and enforced through the state's monopoly on violence. That's what law is. Likewise with the legacies of slavery. It's not mere morality, it's existential to civil society. If the state passes legislation to fund reparations based on past harm, that is no different to any other appropriations spending. And yes, the choice to pass such legislation is largely based on morality since there was no prior legal obligation to do so... but so was not absolving themselves of that slave-owner debt. The UK Parliament is sovereign, it could have willed away that debt with a simple majority, but it chose not to for 200 years. That too is a decision based on morality, and a telling one: that humanity is less important than debts being paid. > Nations are not individuals. Nations are not literally individuals, but state personhood is a thing, akin to corporate personhood. I'm not entirely sure what your point is here. > Similarly, individuals do not inherit debt. You're doing the whole "don't therefore can't" thing again. I have a vague recollection of debt inheritance in history's past. 'We don't do that because we don't do that' is not an argument.
- typewithrhythm 1y ago
  You cannot will away an old debt without consequence because a current entity owns it, now, in the present. This is not a morality based decision. You are again trying to conflate abstractions that pertain to individuals and ones that pertain to nations. There is not a real concept of trust like between individuals, only a financial cost for not honouring debts. I also don't understand why you think there is a direct relationship between the debts and what they were originally created for... You clearly do not understand the concept of state or corporate personhood if you are trying to extend individual morality to apply. Civil society is also a strange direction to go in, from trying to make the relationship to debts. To engage, the term only makes sense as a way for current people to interact, a "wrong" in context requires both a specific victim and an offender... It cannot be applied to historical actions as it gives no information to how current people should interact. I would go as far as saying reparations for one arbitrarily chosen historic injustice undermines civil society; as it's impossible to claim one point in history is more valid than another, making any attempt a deeply unfair exercise.
  - Defletter 1y ago
    > You cannot will away an old debt without consequence because a current entity owns it, now, in the present. You cannot do ANYTHING without consequence, why would that be a criterion for anything? And ownership is a legal fiction, hence why Russia was able to seize all those passenger planes, likewise with Western nations seizing the assets of Russian oligarchs. Ownership, particularly of intangible things like debt, is not some universal truth or force of nature like gravity: it's an emergent property of the system we have set up. One of the reasons why the UK is (or was) the centre of finance was because of its robust legal system that puts an extreme emphasis on property rights. And that's a deliberate decision. The idea that such a decision is amoral is ridiculous. > There is not a real concept of trust like between individuals Yes, there absolutely is? In fact, it is the currency of international relations. International law isn't even really a thing: international law is domestic law; it only exists to the extent that a country respects the Rule of Law. It's why certain countries that blatantly violate international law face no legal consequence. It's why the response to the violation of international law are sanctions, not a higher courts overruling them: there is no higher court. And even when there are hypothetical higher courts, like the ECJ, again it only works so far as the member state is willing to play along, which is partly why Hungary is in such hot water with the EU. I'd even go so far as to say that nations rely on trust more than people do. The fact that you don't think trust even a concept with nations is wild and makes me doubt whether you understand the concept of international relations at all. And all this is also true within a nation: if you cannot trust your state institutions, those institutions are worthless. --- I do not think it is worth conversing further since this is clearly unproductive.