lol. Like many of Scott Alexander's essays, this is bad argumentation in nice window dressing, as well as a slight apologia for racism. There are so many probl

lol. Like many of Scott Alexander's essays, this is bad argumentation in nice window dressing, as well as a slight apologia for racism. There are so many problems with this essay that it's hard to know where to begin, but two major ones are that (1) his reading comprehension sucks, (2) the major flaw in his line of argument is merely hand waved away—it relies on a fundamental premise that mobility of people in the south was zero after the civil war and that the civil war destroying an entire industry would have had zero effect (this is the part he hand waves away at the end of the article after making his idiotic apology for continued racism based on one solitary citation) As usual, it's an article making people unschooled in the actual practice of rigorous academic research to buy into bad ideas . Anyway, that's all beside the point. A specific article countering a single claim against reparations has basically very little to do with the topic at hand unless you can prove the very specific set of dynamics that is analyzed in that case (a) applies globally, and (b) still applies today. This style of argument is equivalent to saying "look i found one rock that was purple so all rocks must be purple". It has basically no relevance as far as I'm concerned.