Utopia Talk - Politics - On the notion of reperations

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Utopia Talk / Politics / On the notion of reperations

Habebe
Member Tue Dec 07 14:19:40
Someone was talking about how we romanticize ancient Egypt.

Well if it's wrong to romanticize the old south because of slavery than everything from Egypt/Rome/China pretty much any old civilisation would have that problem.

But Egypt may be the most overlooked/romanticized.

Even the modern slavery issue, Europeans only bought black slaves because they were in an abundance and located convieniently for sale and pre enslaved by West Africans.

Do you blame the drug user or the dealer more? Wouldnt that lead to the west Africans taking more blame?

But the reality is that place is still a shithole, well, so is the South (US) just less so.

Should we not blame the South or west Africans because they are poor?

There are a lot of lines that could be drawn. But they should be applied fairly.

Or we could just hols individuals responsible which is probably the route I would prefer.

I don't blame Rome for enslaving people of my ethnicities, they are better off because of it.

Rugian
Member Tue Dec 07 14:26:25
By the standards of the woke left, pretty much any society or individual that existed before circa 1990 is problematic on some level and should be memoryholed from the annals of history.

What we are experiencing right now in this country is nothing short of a new Cultural Revolution, complete with a desire to erase history of oldthink and relics of the past.

Democrats have literally turned into Chinese Communists. It's scary shit.

Habebe
Member Tue Dec 07 14:26:32
Pretty sure it was Portugal (EU) who started purchasing slaves from the Africans.

Habebe
Member Tue Dec 07 14:31:56
Rugian, I know, my point is it seems to me to be blamed on the Confederacy when there is plenty of blame to go around.

It just seems very cherry picked.If were casting vlame on society's or governments then we should have a list of reasons why that makes sense and apply it to everyone.

Habebe
Member Tue Dec 07 14:39:47
http://www...ry-today-2/slavery-in-history/

This page has a quick reference timeline for slavery dating back to 6800 BC.

murder
Member Tue Dec 07 16:26:44

This is America. I don't give a fuck about the rest of the world. This is the piece of dirt we're responsible for, and ours are the people we're responsible for. The rest of the world can sort out its own history.

"Reparations" as is often discussed is not practical in the US. At this point I don't think we have enough territory to offer every black person 40 acres and a mule. We also probably don't have enough mules.

The best policy is to eliminate poverty, but that's socialism. Republicans and most Democrats would never go for that because relieving the poor of the struggle to survive only makes them lazy.

We don't seem to have any problem with the wealthy being robbed of that same motivation though.

nhill
Member Tue Dec 07 16:36:13
Speak for yourself, I'm very lazy. So lazy that I write code to perform many of my rote duties. :P

Habebe
Member Tue Dec 07 16:45:41
Murder, Reperations in the form of investing in poor communities I think is more palatable.

Look at Chicago schools.SALT taxes would be more palatable if they didnt have schools being held together with duct tape.

http://youtu.be/hNDgcjVGHIw

Habebe
Member Tue Dec 07 16:49:08
I also agree reps and dems in general are not in the business of helping eliminate poverty.

We don't need another war in the ME we need a renewed war on poverty and diabetes.

patom
Member Wed Dec 08 05:24:57
Reparations? Who is going to pay for them? What exactly will they be?

Seb
Member Wed Dec 08 07:06:16
Habebe:

"Even the modern slavery issue, Europeans only bought black slaves because they were in an abundance and located convieniently for sale and pre enslaved by West Africans."

Well actually it is more complicated still.

The African tribes that Europeans brought slaves from did not have slaves as an institutionalised commodity. Generally, they were enemy warriors captured in war - and the custom was they would be kept for a fixed period.

However, when Europeans turned up and started offering money for them, customs changed. The coastal kingdoms economies switched very quickly into ones focused on the capture and enslavement of whole communities, and the taking of slaves become the motivation for conflict, not a limited by product. That crashed the economies of their neighbours, and of course when the British blocked the slave change, prices crashed and the slaver kingdoms, which had become highly militarised and reliant on imports using currency from slave trade, also crashed.

Meanwhile, the West created an entire framework of racial inferiority of blacks to justify the moral acceptance of slavery - a concept which was considered highly immoral after the end of feudalism.

Rugian
Member Wed Dec 08 07:19:33
"Meanwhile, the West created an entire framework of racial inferiority of blacks to justify the moral acceptance of slavery - a concept which was considered highly immoral after the end of feudalism."

In other words, the British Empire had realized that they could exploit free workers by subjecting them to absolutely abominable conditions in Industrial Revolution factories, and that said labor was cheaper than slavery.

Easy for you to cry immorality when your economy is totally unreliant on the practice you are decrying.

Meanwhile, Britain was pretty much genociding native populations in Ireland and India around this time...we don't talk about that though.

Rugian
Member Wed Dec 08 07:26:45
There is nothing more insufferable than a morality-preaching hypocrite. True in 2021, true in 1821.

Seb
Member Wed Dec 08 07:45:48
Rugian:

I'm not sure what you point is here - we were discussing the argument "Europeans were not doing anything unusual by enslaving Africans, it was a common African practice".

It is simply not true as a proposition:

The initial slavery customs in Africa were nothing like the industrialised slave trade as practiced by the Europeans slave trade and within the US.

The slave economy in west Africa was a consequence and creation of the Europeans demand for slaves, not an existing economy that the Europeans globalised.

Europeans believed by and large that enslaving your fellow man was acknowledged as a moral wrong - so we dehumanised black people - a mode of thought that continues to day long after the purpose of this school of thought has passed.

It was wrong then - the economy built off of it were wrong - and to the extent losing the economic dependency made it easier to abolish the custom, that's a good thing.

What sort of a monster thinks it is better to enslave people and ship them across a continent, rather than rely on free people trading their labour for a wage.

Yes, capitalism is often exploitative. But you reject statist intervention anyway.

It is vastly less so than outright enslaving people.

Seb
Member Wed Dec 08 07:47:35
"There is nothing more insufferable than a morality-preaching hypocrite"

Oh, I see, you are triggered because I said "when the British ended the slave trade" - that's just a historical fact. The UK's intervention effectively killed the atlantic slave trade. And at that point west africa's economy, which had become dependent on imports funded by slave exports, also imploded.

It's not supposed to be a moral statement.

Sorry if it triggers you.

Rugian
Member Wed Dec 08 07:52:57
Seb

The topic of this thread is proposed reparations for historic wrongs, and why American slavery is unfairly singled out as a historic wrong while far more significant wrongs are ignored.

You retorted that American slavery was worse than Old World slavery because it contained an explicit racial component that any forms of slavery did not.

But if we're talking raw numbers in terms of the number of people whose lives were ruined by past institutions, then the British Empire is far, far worse than American slavery. Its not even a contest.

Forget tearing down Confederate statues, its British statues that should be destroyed.

Rugian
Member Wed Dec 08 07:59:49
Seb

You do realize that if Great Britain was located 20 degrees closer south to the equator, you guys would have spent the entirety of the 19th century being slavery's greatest champions, right?

As it stands, your brittanic isles had too moderate a climate for slavery to be a viable institution, so it cost you nothing to come out against the practice. Good for you.

You didn't oppose slavery on moral grounds, you did it because your economy didn't rely on it and the economies of your rivals did.

Habebe
Member Wed Dec 08 08:30:54
"
The African tribes that Europeans brought slaves from did not have slaves as an institutionalised commodity. "

So they were pre enslaved and willing to trade. I'm not really seeing a noteworthy difference.

The Euros played a role. Just like a drug user and drug dealer.

Now to be fair at some point although I gather rarely that Euros would go enslave Individuals, thats a noteworthy difference IMHO.

I mean people fetch a good price today, I have no desire to round them up into slaves.Not even people I dont like.

West African groups played a vital role in it.

Patom, Thats exactly the point of the thread. Personally I'm in favor of government investment into poor communities.

patom
Member Wed Dec 08 10:28:38
If I'm not mistaken 'slavery' dates back to pre biblical times. Egypt, Roman, Greek, etc. etc. practiced slavery.
Slavery is practiced today by human trafficers, kidnapping young girls for sex slaves all over the world.

But if the subject is strictly narrowed to African slaves that were brought to the Americas, that would be a very narrow time period.

murder
Member Wed Dec 08 12:48:04

"The topic of this thread is proposed reparations for historic wrongs, and why American slavery is unfairly singled out as a historic wrong while far more significant wrongs are ignored."

Unfairly singled out? lol @ slavers crying about the unfairness of it all.

And there are no far more significant wrongs.

Rugian
Member Wed Dec 08 19:15:07
"And there are no far more significant wrongs."

Seriously? None? You can't even think of one?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust

Habebe
Member Wed Dec 08 19:18:28
Take your pick

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism

murder
Member Wed Dec 08 20:48:26

"Seriously? None? You can't even think of one?"

No. Not a single one.

Habebe
Member Wed Dec 08 21:08:55
Well, I won't nitpick which great evil is worse. We can all agree many mass injustices have occurred.

Sam Adams
Member Wed Dec 08 21:30:17
Should not black people owe all the white victims of their constant crime?

jergul
large member Thu Dec 09 06:00:07
They sure should! They could like be arrested, charged, put on trial, sentenced, then go to jail.

Once that is settled, any victim is free to file a civic suit to collect damages.

It if turns out guberment was somehow responsible, then sue them too and hope for a nice out of court settlement.

Its the American way.

The last part is the basis for reparations. Can it somehow be proven that government facilitated and profited from slavery?

show deleted posts

Habebe Member	Tue Dec 07 14:19:40 Someone was talking about how we romanticize ancient Egypt. Well if it's wrong to romanticize the old south because of slavery than everything from Egypt/Rome/China pretty much any old civilisation would have that problem. But Egypt may be the most overlooked/romanticized. Even the modern slavery issue, Europeans only bought black slaves because they were in an abundance and located convieniently for sale and pre enslaved by West Africans. Do you blame the drug user or the dealer more? Wouldnt that lead to the west Africans taking more blame? But the reality is that place is still a shithole, well, so is the South (US) just less so. Should we not blame the South or west Africans because they are poor? There are a lot of lines that could be drawn. But they should be applied fairly. Or we could just hols individuals responsible which is probably the route I would prefer. I don't blame Rome for enslaving people of my ethnicities, they are better off because of it.
Rugian Member	Tue Dec 07 14:26:25 By the standards of the woke left, pretty much any society or individual that existed before circa 1990 is problematic on some level and should be memoryholed from the annals of history. What we are experiencing right now in this country is nothing short of a new Cultural Revolution, complete with a desire to erase history of oldthink and relics of the past. Democrats have literally turned into Chinese Communists. It's scary shit.
Habebe Member	Tue Dec 07 14:26:32 Pretty sure it was Portugal (EU) who started purchasing slaves from the Africans.
Habebe Member	Tue Dec 07 14:31:56 Rugian, I know, my point is it seems to me to be blamed on the Confederacy when there is plenty of blame to go around. It just seems very cherry picked.If were casting vlame on society's or governments then we should have a list of reasons why that makes sense and apply it to everyone.
Habebe Member	Tue Dec 07 14:39:47 http://www...ry-today-2/slavery-in-history/ This page has a quick reference timeline for slavery dating back to 6800 BC.
murder Member	Tue Dec 07 16:26:44 This is America. I don't give a fuck about the rest of the world. This is the piece of dirt we're responsible for, and ours are the people we're responsible for. The rest of the world can sort out its own history. "Reparations" as is often discussed is not practical in the US. At this point I don't think we have enough territory to offer every black person 40 acres and a mule. We also probably don't have enough mules. The best policy is to eliminate poverty, but that's socialism. Republicans and most Democrats would never go for that because relieving the poor of the struggle to survive only makes them lazy. We don't seem to have any problem with the wealthy being robbed of that same motivation though.
nhill Member	Tue Dec 07 16:36:13 Speak for yourself, I'm very lazy. So lazy that I write code to perform many of my rote duties. :P
Habebe Member	Tue Dec 07 16:45:41 Murder, Reperations in the form of investing in poor communities I think is more palatable. Look at Chicago schools.SALT taxes would be more palatable if they didnt have schools being held together with duct tape. http://youtu.be/hNDgcjVGHIw
Habebe Member	Tue Dec 07 16:49:08 I also agree reps and dems in general are not in the business of helping eliminate poverty. We don't need another war in the ME we need a renewed war on poverty and diabetes.
patom Member	Wed Dec 08 05:24:57 Reparations? Who is going to pay for them? What exactly will they be?
Seb Member	Wed Dec 08 07:06:16 Habebe: "Even the modern slavery issue, Europeans only bought black slaves because they were in an abundance and located convieniently for sale and pre enslaved by West Africans." Well actually it is more complicated still. The African tribes that Europeans brought slaves from did not have slaves as an institutionalised commodity. Generally, they were enemy warriors captured in war - and the custom was they would be kept for a fixed period. However, when Europeans turned up and started offering money for them, customs changed. The coastal kingdoms economies switched very quickly into ones focused on the capture and enslavement of whole communities, and the taking of slaves become the motivation for conflict, not a limited by product. That crashed the economies of their neighbours, and of course when the British blocked the slave change, prices crashed and the slaver kingdoms, which had become highly militarised and reliant on imports using currency from slave trade, also crashed. Meanwhile, the West created an entire framework of racial inferiority of blacks to justify the moral acceptance of slavery - a concept which was considered highly immoral after the end of feudalism.
Rugian Member	Wed Dec 08 07:19:33 "Meanwhile, the West created an entire framework of racial inferiority of blacks to justify the moral acceptance of slavery - a concept which was considered highly immoral after the end of feudalism." In other words, the British Empire had realized that they could exploit free workers by subjecting them to absolutely abominable conditions in Industrial Revolution factories, and that said labor was cheaper than slavery. Easy for you to cry immorality when your economy is totally unreliant on the practice you are decrying. Meanwhile, Britain was pretty much genociding native populations in Ireland and India around this time...we don't talk about that though.
Rugian Member	Wed Dec 08 07:26:45 There is nothing more insufferable than a morality-preaching hypocrite. True in 2021, true in 1821.
Seb Member	Wed Dec 08 07:45:48 Rugian: I'm not sure what you point is here - we were discussing the argument "Europeans were not doing anything unusual by enslaving Africans, it was a common African practice". It is simply not true as a proposition: The initial slavery customs in Africa were nothing like the industrialised slave trade as practiced by the Europeans slave trade and within the US. The slave economy in west Africa was a consequence and creation of the Europeans demand for slaves, not an existing economy that the Europeans globalised. Europeans believed by and large that enslaving your fellow man was acknowledged as a moral wrong - so we dehumanised black people - a mode of thought that continues to day long after the purpose of this school of thought has passed. It was wrong then - the economy built off of it were wrong - and to the extent losing the economic dependency made it easier to abolish the custom, that's a good thing. What sort of a monster thinks it is better to enslave people and ship them across a continent, rather than rely on free people trading their labour for a wage. Yes, capitalism is often exploitative. But you reject statist intervention anyway. It is vastly less so than outright enslaving people.
Seb Member	Wed Dec 08 07:47:35 "There is nothing more insufferable than a morality-preaching hypocrite" Oh, I see, you are triggered because I said "when the British ended the slave trade" - that's just a historical fact. The UK's intervention effectively killed the atlantic slave trade. And at that point west africa's economy, which had become dependent on imports funded by slave exports, also imploded. It's not supposed to be a moral statement. Sorry if it triggers you.
Rugian Member	Wed Dec 08 07:52:57 Seb The topic of this thread is proposed reparations for historic wrongs, and why American slavery is unfairly singled out as a historic wrong while far more significant wrongs are ignored. You retorted that American slavery was worse than Old World slavery because it contained an explicit racial component that any forms of slavery did not. But if we're talking raw numbers in terms of the number of people whose lives were ruined by past institutions, then the British Empire is far, far worse than American slavery. Its not even a contest. Forget tearing down Confederate statues, its British statues that should be destroyed.
Rugian Member	Wed Dec 08 07:59:49 Seb You do realize that if Great Britain was located 20 degrees closer south to the equator, you guys would have spent the entirety of the 19th century being slavery's greatest champions, right? As it stands, your brittanic isles had too moderate a climate for slavery to be a viable institution, so it cost you nothing to come out against the practice. Good for you. You didn't oppose slavery on moral grounds, you did it because your economy didn't rely on it and the economies of your rivals did.
Habebe Member	Wed Dec 08 08:30:54 " The African tribes that Europeans brought slaves from did not have slaves as an institutionalised commodity. " So they were pre enslaved and willing to trade. I'm not really seeing a noteworthy difference. The Euros played a role. Just like a drug user and drug dealer. Now to be fair at some point although I gather rarely that Euros would go enslave Individuals, thats a noteworthy difference IMHO. I mean people fetch a good price today, I have no desire to round them up into slaves.Not even people I dont like. West African groups played a vital role in it. Patom, Thats exactly the point of the thread. Personally I'm in favor of government investment into poor communities.
patom Member	Wed Dec 08 10:28:38 If I'm not mistaken 'slavery' dates back to pre biblical times. Egypt, Roman, Greek, etc. etc. practiced slavery. Slavery is practiced today by human trafficers, kidnapping young girls for sex slaves all over the world. But if the subject is strictly narrowed to African slaves that were brought to the Americas, that would be a very narrow time period.
murder Member	Wed Dec 08 12:48:04 "The topic of this thread is proposed reparations for historic wrongs, and why American slavery is unfairly singled out as a historic wrong while far more significant wrongs are ignored." Unfairly singled out? lol @ slavers crying about the unfairness of it all. And there are no far more significant wrongs.
Rugian Member	Wed Dec 08 19:15:07 "And there are no far more significant wrongs." Seriously? None? You can't even think of one? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust
Habebe Member	Wed Dec 08 19:18:28 Take your pick http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism
murder Member	Wed Dec 08 20:48:26 "Seriously? None? You can't even think of one?" No. Not a single one.
Habebe Member	Wed Dec 08 21:08:55 Well, I won't nitpick which great evil is worse. We can all agree many mass injustices have occurred.
Sam Adams Member	Wed Dec 08 21:30:17 Should not black people owe all the white victims of their constant crime?
jergul large member	Thu Dec 09 06:00:07 They sure should! They could like be arrested, charged, put on trial, sentenced, then go to jail. Once that is settled, any victim is free to file a civic suit to collect damages. It if turns out guberment was somehow responsible, then sue them too and hope for a nice out of court settlement. Its the American way. The last part is the basis for reparations. Can it somehow be proven that government facilitated and profited from slavery?
	show deleted posts

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