We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day “I was just watching part of a Congressional presentation on C-Span honouring the slaves who built the u.s. capitol – not by making restitution to their heirs, of course, but by setting up some sort of plaque. What especially bugged me was the speakers’ continual references to expressing “thanks” and “gratitude” for the slaves’ “sacrifices” and “contributions.” If I take your wallet at gunpoint, it would be rather a euphemism to call your handing it over a sacrifice, and what I owe you is not gratitude. (Of course the language of sacrifice and gratitude is also used in connection with conscript soldiers shipped off to die in lands they’ve never heard of.)”
– Roderick Long, anarcho-capitalist blogger.
I do not agree with Mr Long on all his views – he is far too keen on that seriously wrong-headed Kevin Carson chap for my liking – but the quote above is an absolute zinger.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Very true. On the other hand, ‘reparations’ strike me as an opportunistic attempt to capitalise on past sins by extorting those whose ancestors were mostly blameless. In my own case, my Nineteenth Century forbears were, on the one side, Europeans and on the other, abolitionists.
Restitution? Good idea! I think as a descendent of people occupied by the Romans, I deserve restitution from the Italian taxpayer!
OK Perry and what about the bombing of Italian cities at the end of WW2 and the occupation and imposition of not only the mafia but also a load of brainless twats to form a “democratic” government in Italy of which Berlusconi is the latest sad defective by-product? On a more serious note – I think all talk of reparations, apologies or other similar initiatives to rewrite embarassing bits of any country’s history is always suspect and usually involves all sorts of interesting”projects” funded by ….yes the taxpayer.
A question asked out of pure ignorance: I understand Kevin Carson has some affiliation to the C4SS but haven’t had time to read him (or them much) – why is he wrong-headed?
Mike, the reason why I consider him to be wrong-headed is that, for example, he is so opposed to certain aspects of the corporate/capitalist world that he tips over into outright socialism, as far as I can see.
Here is what Paul Marks(Link) wrote about him over at the Libertarian Alliance.
Carson also supports things such as the Labour Theory of Value, which is a central building block of Marxian exploitation theory and as such, a bit hard to reconcile with market economics.
The best term for Carson is a sort of voluntarist socialist, with strong pro-freedom leanings. He’s just not consistent, in my view. He’s a bit like the Henry Georgist crowd with their obsession with land, a sort of socialist who gets some issues right but others hopelessly, tiresomely, wrong.
The slavery shtick is totally out of control. Haitian immigrants to Quebec protested the beatification of a num because she allegedly was a slave owner. Whaty’s absolutely laughable is that slaves in Quebec would be a lose lose situation money wise. And don’t even get started on the domestic slavery aspects. There was no slavery in northern climes period. However, the orphaned children sent out from the UK to both Canada and Australia experienced, in many instances, ghastly conditions and one hears nary a reparations peep from their descendants.
Any time slavery is mentioned outside of historical or philosophical context, it is sure to turn out to be pure political posturing. Newsflash: slavery has been abolished, move on. And no, I am not saying that we should forget it, but that’s precisely what history and philosophy are for.
I have never owned a slave or slaves.
No one I know has ever owned a slave or slaves.
I wasn’t there and neither were the people calling for reparations.
I had NOTHING to do with it and neither did the people calling for reparations.
The people calling for ‘reparations’ have never been slaves and I don’t owe them a damn thing.
Thank you Jonathan.
“Newsflash: slavery has been abolished, move on.”
Alisa – of how much coercion and how much voluntary capitulation is slavery constituted?
Discussing slavery causes discomfort because political party positions make for awkward reminders of acquiescence here and there. In spite of that, I am strongly opposed to beatification of a nun who may have owned slaves. There’s no such thing as a historical or political context that would make slavery anywhere justifiable for a libertarian anymore than socialism would be acceptable provided it stopped short of serfdom.
Mike: are you talking about that slavery, or this slavery? I was talking about the former, and I believe that I am of the same mind as you are regarding the latter.
I should point out, though, that the Democratic Party is the author of many of the ‘reforms’ which are harming current Black Americans. As such, and since it’s not a government entity (with attendant immunities), it might be a proper target for a suit for reparations.
People in the US started talking about reparations right about the time the Welfare Reform Bill was passed in the mid-nineties. It never really caught on strong here, but then again, neither did welfare reform.
It would be one thing to demand reparations from a man who stole my wallet at gun point. It would be quite another for me to demand not only the money and property back but with interest from people who stole a wallet from my great-great grandfather based upon the fact they look like the guy in the wanted poster.
blockquote>(Of course the language of sacrifice and gratitude is also used in connection with conscript soldiers shipped off to die in lands they’ve never heard of.)
Which is what makes the current demands for reparations so risible. Many of those conscript soldiers sent off to unfamiliar lands back in the 1860s died freeing the ancestors of those now insisting on reparations. From the descendents of those who died to free their ancestors; they could care less about anything except skin color. That’s what determines collective guilt to the reparations crowd here.
Well, gee. It’s a shame that what’s done is done, and there’s no pile of money big enough to erase a crime that’s already been committed. Hey, I know! Let’s spend the money on a stupid hunk-of-brass-and-stone monument that won’t magically make things all better!
Oh, sorry, that was their idea.
Whilst I have never owned a slave, nor enslaved anyone, I, as an Australian, live in a land taken from warring tribes, whose descendants are still with us. Do we Australians owe them reparations?
Or do we accept that their land was effectively resumed without compensation, and give them money as a one-time compensation package, and then treat them the same as everyone else?
What do you Americans do about your Amerindian ‘citizens’, and you Israelis about the former Palestinian occupants?
At this point, everybody lives on land that once belonged to someone else. Even Native American tribes, who have become the “immaculate victims” of current PC mythology, warred against each other constantly, pushing other groups off desireable lands and hunting grounds.
Slavery is ubiquitous in nearly all cultures throughout human history. It was finally abolished in capitalist England, and then, very soon thereafter, the capitalist Union abolished it in the aristocratic, agricultural Confederacy.
There are no people anywhere without their list of grievences, complaints of transgressions against their neighbors, sad stories of the edens they were driven from by the evil ones.
All this foufarah is based on the crudest racial collectivism and inherited guilt. The sins of the fathers passed down through the generations, each new baby born with his own peculiar stain of sin— his share, not of Adam’s fall, but the amorphous transgressions of some unknown ancestor of the same country, or religion, or race.
Why must the individual be treated as a singular, exceptional person in all things? Judged for his or her own actions, successes, failures, achievements, errors?
Because then, all of this tribal nonsense goes away.
And that, of course, is why the idea of the soveriegn person is hated so ferociously, opposed so relentlessly, and feared more than any other theory of human life by those who long for power over others.
There is only one reparation that is owed to every member of the human family, equally, and in every single case—the respect that is due to a person who is the owner of his life.
Of all the endless needs that are supposed to be supplied by the compassion of the collective, that is the one invariably left off the list.
If it is recognized, none of the rest are necessary.
If it is absent, none of the rest matter.
This reminds me of a similar act of worthless condescension that’s regularly carried out in Australia, of which Nuke Gray will no doubt be familiar.
One of the more laudable comments made by the current Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott, a man who makes politically ill-considered statements on a regular basis, took aim at the farcical ritual that the champagne socialist elite are so fond of performing when they gather in a public place or building. Before any event starts, a statement will be read out that the those gathered recognise that the traditional owners of this territory are the Whichever tribe. FWIW. Which, needless to say, isn’t very much at all. Talk is indeed cheap. Nevertheless, don’t all the luvvies feel good about themselves when that’s said? You can just feel the wounds of the past healing when those salving words are spoken, can’t you? Anyway, Abbott publicly wrote this nonsense off as an expedient and hollow gesture – a fact that is patently obvious to any sensible-minded person. This caused the chattering classes to chatter madly about how hurtful, inappropriate and – one of the most damning crimes imaginable for them – “out of touch” Abbott is.
Personally, I thought he played it quite well.
Nuke Gray, did the aborigines have a concept of land ownership? If not, how can land that did not belong to them have been taken from them?
And anyway, why does history come to a full stop whenever 18th-20th whtite males are concerned? I mean, even if the aborigines did have a concept of land ownership, I as an English descendant of the Normans (and therefore largely racially Danish) am as untroubled by demands by heirs to the Saxons for reparations as the Saxons are by the successors to the British Celts, etc. etc. and on and on…
Nuke, what that a real question?
‘was, not ‘what’…Bad keyboard, bad!
Kevin Carson does believe in a Labour Theory of Value – like Adam Smith, of course! Discussion of such occupies the first half of his “Studies in Mutualist Political Economy.” The second half, though, contains nothing more than what Rothbard and others were saying for years: We do not have free market economies; we do not have them largely thanks to the efforts of businessmen and women who lobbied and campaigned and propagandised for state intrusion, because they profit from doing so; therefore much of the wealth of those business people is not earned by legitimate means, and so is not wealth they are entitled to; and also, therefore, a description of why sweatshop conditions may make sense in a free market is not a defense of sweatshop conditions in the real world, and claims that accepting contracts that allow your employer to bar you from smoking in your own house is not necessarily some sort of a voluntary arrangement.
How we deal with that – whether we opt for a David Friedman/Benjamin Tuckeresque “free the markets and the monopolies will collapse” or a Rothbardian “free the market let the workers take them over” line in response is a different matter.
Incidentally, here is Walter Block on reparations to blacks for slavery.
Frankly, there was no point in reading past the part where he claimed the Nuremberg trials established the legitimacy of ex post facto laws. No, the Nuremberg trials were based upon nothing more than “victor’s justice.”
The Nuremberg trials were a travesty, as were the war crimes trials in Tokyo. As the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court commented at the time, he didn’t really mind that the allies were meeting out well earned vengeance against the Nazis, or that that was a form of rough justice. What disgusted him was that it was dressed up as if it were a legitimate court proceeding, which it was not.
All of you critics of our system of military justice and the detainee Tribunals at Guantanamo Bay that stem from it, take note: they follow procedures that are the pinnacle of justice compared to what were afforded defendents at Nuremberg.
They cast their nets so widely that commanders who acted no differently than allied commanders in their conduct of the war were convicted. Karl Doenitz, to pick one example, never should have been convicted of anything. He was merely a naval line officer who did nothing differently than naval line officers on the winning side. As a matter of fact, it was a deposition attesting to that fact by FADM Chester Nimitz, USN, attesting to that fact that saved Doenitz from death and forced the tribunal to sentence him to “only” 10 years.
To pick another example from the opposite side of the world, VADM Daigo of the IJN was shot as a war criminal for something he had no knowledge of until well after the fact. But he was convicted on the premise he had “allowed” it to happen. In reality, he was shot because he had embarrassed the allies by being a major architect of their quick defeat in the waters off Southeast Asia.
Using the same precedent of ex post facto legislating, defining some action as a crime after it has occurred so a defendant could not possibly be aware he was committing a crime until the victors constructed one, just about every single effective allied commander could have been hung under the color of authority after the war.
Really, the only thing the Nuremberg trials and the Tokyo Military Tribunals established precedent for are future “legal lynchings” (the words of two justices of the USSC) of the vanquished by victorious powers. Consequently I can’t accept these as examples of establishing the legitmacy of anything.
Yes, Alisa, that was a real question! Though I also think I was trying to point out that many of the issues are relevant to many writers here. We can advise folks, Ágnore the past”, but some individuals seem trapped by what their ancestors went through.
(This message was sent with the blessing of the local tribal elders- well, they didn’t object, which I take to be the same thing!)
I did not know that Prof Long was a Kevin Carson person.
I knew he was a Christian basher – but then so are a lot of people. And, to be fair, Roderick Long is quite witty in his attacks upon Christianity.
It is a pity that Murry Rothbard is not alive – because, whatever one thinks of historical and national security writings, he was first rate economist. He had a knack for refuting economic fallacies (and the philosophical mistakes behind them).
The first thing an economist has to understand is that wealth is not natural – on the contrary the natural condition of humanity is grinding poverty.
So if one sees a world where there is a lot of poverty one should not go to the position that it must being caused by (for example) the wrong people owning land (because of the Norman Conquest or whatever) or because there is not “enough” credit.
Reducing statism (reducing taxes and government spending, and regulations, and credit bubble expansion) is a good way of reducing long term poverty – but people who think in terms of a perfect society will still not be happy with the results.
Life will still be far from perfect, with lots of poverty. And many (perhaps the great majority) of people will still lead lives very different from the lives they would like to lead.
This is in no way “anti libertarian” and those who think that if most people are living lives very different from the lives they want to lead, they must be the victims of rich people (and so on) are filling their minds with illusions.
As for reperations:
The slave owenrs are dead (and there was hardly a white family in the South that did not lose someone in the Civil War – so they hardly went unpunished). The slaves are dead.
So people who are dead are supposed to pay money to people who are also dead.
“But Paul – inner city out of wedlock births and poverty is caused by the after effects of slavery”.
Then why were black out of wedlock births (and so on) so much LOWER in the 1950’s and late 1940?s
Why was inner city L.A. (to pick a city) so much BETTER 60 years ago than it is now?
Watts was better in the late 1940’s than it was in 1965 (after the blacks got lots of “help” from the government) and after the riot there was a lot more help – and the area got worse and worse.
Detroit had one of the most prosperious black communities in the United States back in the 1950’s – they owned nice houses and so on.
Then it was named a special city – a centre for local, State and Federal aid for blacks and others.
And the city (long before the auto industry collapsed) FELL APART.
That is government “help” in practice – government handouts to people on the basis that their forefathers were slaves (or whatever).
Roderick Long used to understand all this – it is a pity if he has forgotten.
Still, as someone who is part Jewish and part Irish, I should be due a lot of “restitution” so send your cheques to………
I think modernish (post 1500s) slavery has mainly come from the Middle East. In fact I hear it is still quite popular in that part of the world.
Could they please be approached for some reparations by someone?
Stephen- Yes, the aborigines did, and do, have concepts of property. They were all tenants in common on tribal property, with some portions being given to individuals to use, as a trustee.
Their concepts might even go back before the Ice Age! Many stories and borders concern the sea, and what was once dry land. When Cook invited some local warriors on to the Endeavour as it was being repaired, they became angry when they saw a turtle on the ship, which the sailors had for food. The Aborigines realised that the men must have been fishing, and they claimed all the waters nearby for their tribe, not Cook’s ‘tribe’. The turtle must have been hunted on their ‘land’. Cook, and his crew, believed in the sea as a common, but the local tribes didn’t!
So, yes they knew about property. They always migrated from one tribal ground to another, because Australia is naturally fire-prone, so if disaster strikes one ground, you have others to go to.
Paul,
Here is a scenario:
Grandpa Jim meant to leave his watch to his son Ben, who would also have given it to his daughter Gail.
Unfortunately Grandpa Jim was killed in a robbery by Henry, in which Henry took the watch. Henry left the watch to his daughter Kate. Kate, in turn, left it to her son Clive.
Time has passed. Grandpa Jim is dead. Henry is dead. Ben is dead. Kate is dead. Clive and Gail are alive, and Clive has the watch.
But who rightfully owns it? Who ought to own it? I’ll submit that, if we can prove that Jim would have given it to Ben, and Ben to Gail, then it is Gail that should be the owner of that watch, not Clive.
Rich
Richard, leaving aside the chain of explicit and assumed “ifs” in your scenario (which makes any claim of ownership by Gail tenuous at best), you’ve merely succeeded in showing why there is a statute of limitations on most crimes. Otherwise, at some point the uncertainties over title overwhelm whatever equities there might be in a specific instance.
And anyway, the issue of slavery “reparations” is nowhere as simple as your illustration.
Laird
Indeed, I acknowledged that this is not always possible or probable by including that conditional. I would regard anybody wanting to make a claim that they were entitled to an inheritance as being behoven to prove that claim.
Have I? How so? All I have said is if these requisit things can be shown, then Gail is entitled to the watch, not Clive. I can’t see any point in my post in which a “and therefore we should excuse the fact that Clive has property that should rightfully be Gail’s” would follow.
That sounds like a weak reason for excusing injustice. I think that, since people should be considered innocent until proved guilty, Gail would have to iron out and over come those uncertainties herself – or her agents would – , and drop the claim if she cannot, and Clive, or his agents, can demonstrate why and where she has failed to do so. This statuary limits idea, on the other hand, sounds like saying that because Clair must overcome difficulties in establishing that her property is in Clive’s possession, she shouldn’t even bother, and Clive can be protected against even successful attempts to do so.
Beyond that, these uncertainties can and have been dealth with in the market: Its called title insurance.
Oh, I agree. But that is not to say that the same principles do not apply.
I don’t really get the kneejerk Carson-bashing here. In my reading (and I do think Carson’s books show some of the most promising libertarian analysis of the 21st century), Carson only ever raises the Labor Theory of Value to point out that acceoting it or not doesn’t really affect the importance of a freed market, and it’s a rather irrelevant diversion that has historically split groups that would better be working together. Paul’s piece about Carson seems to be mostly that Paul thinks corporations are perfectly reasonable places to work, and would continue in that form absent the State, and Kevin thinks that they aren’t, and wouldn’t. I think we could have a perfectly reasonable discussion about that.
Unfortunately, most of the analysis of Carson’s actually ideas, rather than his background, seems saddled with the ongoing suspicion that Kevin Carson and others are just *goddamn socialists* in disguise, and are ready to jam on their lenin-caps and fire up the Stalags at the first opportunity.
Well, I understand the smell-of-the-language problem, but similarly, I’m pretty sure that many would-be-libertarians are rather off-put by the support here for state-led coercive attacks on the individuals who live in Iraq, as well as the general uncritical adoption of tax-cut-and-spend government employees like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. I find support for state militaries incoherent from libertarians; Paul and others clearly find support for certain mutualist principles incoherent. But we find them incoherent because we share a common set of core beliefs. Can’t we concentrate on those, rather than embark on all this People’s Front of Judea business?
Danny O’Brien – Kevin Carson is a jerk. To claim he is a “libertarian” is utterly absurd.
“Abuse is not argument Paul” – I know that, but I am not going to waste more of life (having wasted bits of already) dealing in detail with the “arguments” of Kevin Carson.
Let him go off and create a mutualist coop – end of story (but, of course, that is not what he really wants – he want the property of OTHER PEOPLE and he is prepared to use any excuse to get it).
Richard Garner.
Gail is dead.
There is no Gail.
Gail has ceased to be.
So your argument falls.
Yes – sadly that means any land belonging to the Powers in County Waterford (taken by naughty Normans) does NOT belong to me.
More on “Gail” – it is very likely that the lady never existed in the first place.
For example the various Indian tribes (locked in war with each other) often did not have very settled opinions over which individual owned what bit of land – and were not big on writing wills leaving X bit of land to a son (let alone to a daughter).
As for Ireland – Brehon law was well known for being unclear as to who owned what (hence the endless fighting in Ireland – long before 1170 and the arrival of the Normans).
Also the whole argument is based on a lie – the lie that people (Kevin or any of allies) is really sitting around going down genealogical tables trying to work out what person “really” owns what.
They are just not doing that – it is a lie.
I remember giving the example from Staffordshire of an estate that pre-dated the Norman conquest.
“So at least this person gets to keep his land?” I asked – but NO, there was yet more B.S. (and it is bullshit) to “justify” stealing this land also.
This is why I used the word “jerk” – because the man is a jerk.
I also remember asking Sean Gabb how he applied these wonderful ideas to his own county – Kent. Because in Kent there was no great “Norman yoke” indeed Ango-Saxon land law remained in force til the 1920 (yes the 20th century).
No reply – not even some stuff about the naughty Germanic invaders stealing the land from Romano British (nor a defence based on “Islamic law” – with the terrorist regime in the Sudan being asked for its noble opinion of the matter).
Sean at least has an excuse – as a determinist he believes that all his actions (including the de facto alliance with Kevin Carson – with the disclaimer about how “I am a man of the right, but…..”) are determined by a series of causes and effects (with no human CHOICES involved) going back to the Big Bang so NOTHING IS HIS FAULT (a useful belief).
But no libertarian (i.e. non-determinist) has any excuse for connections with Kevin Carson – it took me a few minutes of reading an essay of his (an essay I had not asked for – it had been placed in a Libertarian Alliance conference pack, one reason I do not go to these conferences any more) to understand what he was.
Later on my opinion of the man was confirmed by people who had met him – but I did not need to meet him to know what he was. And other people should not need to meet him either.
I do not have any special ESP powers – it was obvious what he was from reading his own stuff.
Lastly – I (of course) accept that a determinist might be against Kevin also.
“By a series of causes and effects going back to the Big Bang (or whatever) I was led to being opposed to Kevin Carson”.
Although the word “I” perhaps should not be in that sentence, as (correctly speaking) determinists do not hold with the existance of “I”.
A flesh robot that we falsely call a human “being” (i.e. an agent – accept there is no such thing as an agent) is no more an “I” (an agent) than a clockwork mouse is.
By the way the counter argument to the above is a “red pen” – i.e. the counter “argument” is POWER.
I hope now people understand why I resent having to waste any more of what little is left of my life on these people – I would rather not.
Lastly – I hope I have never said that “corporations are perfectly reasonable places to work” as that implies I think that most people who work for them have happy and content lives.
Most people (whether they work for corporations OR NOT) can not expect happy and content lives – most people will not have the sort of life they dream of. And most people have never had the sort of life they dream of.
Justice and freedom have nothing to do with people being happy all of the time, or even most of the time.
The human condition is (in many ways) a very grim one. And a moral philosophy (let alone a politcal philosophy) that promises otherwise (rather than the pursuit of one’s chance – of happenstance, for those few fleeting moment of satisfaction, every so often, about a job well done) is promising what it can not deliver. It can not deliver Heaven on Earth – and the effort to create one just expands the borders of Hell (the Pope may be an Augustine fan, not a person I like, but he is right about Heaven on Earth “collective salvation” doctrines being “demonic”).
As for a moral or political philosophy that confuses “good” as in “moral” (i.e. the moral choice to do what is right, I am not going to get into possible differences between “good” and “right” here, in spite of this moral choice leading to great pain and distress for the person who makes it) and “good” as in “nice” or “pleasant” this is just a mistake, a TERRIBLE mistake.
Hat tip to the late Harold Prichard for that one.
As a certain radio and television man is fond of saying “the truth will set you free – but it will also make you miserable first”.
And that, of course, is NOT a reason not to tell people the truth.
It’s possibly because, as you say, you are hurried and not really interested in spending any more time on this, but I have to say that your counter-argument confirms my own opinion (and the opinion I have read into Carson’s work), that absolutist answers to questions of non-determinism and determinism, and a priori ways of deducing the original provenance of property are really irrelevant distractions. If that (and the fact that you think he’s a jerk) are what you have against Carson’s works, I think you’ve been distracted from the common core of ideas.
For everyone else, I highly recommend Carson’s Organization Theory and Homebrew Industrial Revolution. Even if you agree with Paul’s critique, there’s plenty in there to mull on there.
Paul, those rants were so chaotic I could not discern any reasnable response to any of my argument. The closest seemed to lie with the “Gail is dead,” and the “Gail most likely did not exist.” In my example Gail was not dead, so it did not address the my example at all. Secondly, such a response seems bizarre. It amounts to saying that if you get X, by any means, whether unjust or not, from a person that is now dead, then you are entitled to X. That would grant robbers property rights in any loot they stole from people they also managed to murder!
I suppose you could say that X was not “got” by unjust means -its present owner may have bought if from a guy who inherited it from a guy who bought it off a guy that stole it. But the guy who stole it did not have a right to bequeath property that was not his; the guy he bequeathed it to did not have a right to sell property that was not his; that guy did not have a right to bequeath property that was not his; and the guy he left it to did not have a right to sell property that was not his. If I sell you property that is not mine, it does not become yours, and you are therefore entitled to your money back, but you ae notentitled to keep the property if the actual owner wants it back.
The “Gail most likely didn’t exist” is irrelevent, again. Here, as perhaps in the “Gail is dead” argument, Gail is used as a metaphor for actual people. That is irelevent – in my example, Gail is Gail, not a metaphor. I was establishing a principle. Your entire argument, like Perry’s argument in the second response to this post, seems to be that since we can’t justify payment of reparations in one particular practical example, reparations cannot be justified in principle. There seems to me to be plenty that is “unlibertarian” about forcing the payment of “reparations” in many, perhaps all practical examples, but reparations are not necessarily “unlibertarian” in principle.
If as you say… as a practical matter, the payment of collective reparations is unlibertarian, how is it a good thing even in principle? Seems to me that if in the real world the actions offend against libertarian moral theory, the principle behind the offence cannot itself have much to commend it.
It strikes me that the parties need to be closer and more directly linked to the loss and the crime for reparations to be more that redistributionist grandstanding rather than making good an injured party at the expense of someone criminally liable.
Perry,
I think I was unclear. I certainly did not mean to imply that all logically possible practical cases of enforcing reparations were unlibertarian, and agree, were that the case then that would be the same as demonstrating that they are wrong in principle. I meant to say that the likelihood of enforced reparations being unlibertarian does not prove that any enforced reparations are unlibertarian per se.
Oh I agree. But that seems to fit the conditions of the Rothbardian argument about when reparations are just. You need to show both that the present holder is not entitled to the property and that the claimant is. Or, rather, the claimant or their agent needs to show this. The lengthy gap and number of exchanges between makes this job harder, maybe impossible.
Then I suspect we are in a furious state of agreement, Richard.