I just got back from a month in the UK, working for the John Locke Institute‘s two summer schools. The morning before I left, I delivered my talk on “The Economics of Antipathy and Stereotyping.” In the subsequent Q&A, one of the students asked (roughly), “But shouldn’t we try to rectify past injustices that caused present-day differences in worker productivity?” Since I wasn’t satisfied with my answer at the time, here are the three key points I wish I’d made. Hopefully my John Locke students can read this before the summer school ends tomorrow.
1. Against collective guilt. Consider the following thought experiment. Group B holds Group A in bondage for centuries. Then Group B finally emancipates Group A. Group A leaves the area, and a plague wipes out all of the members of Group B. Eventually, Group A encounters a totally new people, Group C. The members of Group A then say, “For centuries, the members of Group Non-A oppressed members of Group A. As a result, members of Group Non-A have a moral obligation to rectify the past injustices that continue to impede our economic success. You are therefore morally obliged to both (a) give us preferential treatment in the labor market to ensure equal outcomes, and (b) create social programs to help us until A’s attain equal outcomes without preferential treatment.”
The obvious objection, of course, is that the injustices were committed by Group B, not Group C. As a result, Group C has no moral obligation to rectify anything. Indeed, Group A is unjust to lump them in with Group B.
Extending the thought experiment, imagine that many members of Group B escape the plague, then integrate so thoroughly into Group C that there is no practical way to distinguish the B’s from C’s. Would that change anything? Not much. The obvious objection then becomes, “Many members of Group C are entirely innocent, yet you are demanding ‘rectification’ from innocent and guilty alike.”
What is the connection between these thought experiments and the student’s original question? To take the most egregious case, American blacks were once enslaved. Perhaps this explains much of their continuing performance gap. Unfortunately, to rectify this past injustice, we have to punish all non-blacks. None now alive ever owned slaves. Many are not even descended from former slave owners. Even if they were, simply being a child of a slave-owner is not an injustice” So the demand for rectification is tantamount to Group A making demands on Group C for the injustices of Group B. And once again, not only is Group C not morally obliged to comply; Group A is morally wrong to make such demands.
2. Against moral distraction. Popular demands for the rectification of past injustices are a grave distraction in a world where extreme injustices are ongoing. And as I told my students repeatedly, there is an ongoing extreme injustice in even the most morally self-satisfied countries: The denial of people’s right to live and work where they please on account of their nation of birth. “Social justice” advocates who have time to worry about affirmative action in a world with draconian immigration restrictions really are straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. Just think how much freer immigration would be today if all the First World’s “anti-racist” and “anti-sexist” moral energy had been redirected towards the protection of every human’s right to live and work where he likes.
3. What about private organizations? If I recall correctly, the student specifically asked about Harvard admissions. My view: As a private organization, Harvard has the right to spend its own resources on behalf of mistaken moral theories. Still, Harvard ought to (a) refrain from making false accusations of collective guilt, and (b) focus their resources on the most severe injustices, instead of the most fashionable. Furthermore, it is reasonable to deny government subsidies to organizations like Harvard that habitually spend taxpayer money for unjust causes.
Followup question: Is it really true that modern “anti-racists” and “anti-sexists” believe in collective guilt? For the most part, yes. At minimum, they’re engaged in a provocative equivocation, and hence have only themselves to blame if they’re misunderstood.
READER COMMENTS
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Aug 20 2021 at 11:29am
Strawman! OF COURSE rectifying previous injustices is not the ONLY criterion for making policy, but should it not have some weight?
Would Good Samaritan have stopped if the man he found by the wayside had gotten drunk and fallen off his donkey? No, he was (presumably) moved by the man having been the victim of an injustice, even though he was in no way responsible for the injustice or benefitted from it.
Jon Murphy
Aug 21 2021 at 1:02pm
Is anyone claiming that it is?
Steve
Aug 23 2021 at 10:33am
I think when he said “Strawman” he was warning us that he was about to attack one
Monte
Aug 21 2021 at 2:57pm
Would Good Samaritan have stopped if the man he found by the wayside had gotten drunk and fallen off his donkey?
If he were compelled to do so by the government, as Simon of Cyrene was to help carry the cross of Jesus. In the same way, our government compels us to rectify past injustices through things like affirmative action.
Tyler Wells
Aug 20 2021 at 11:52am
“But shouldn’t we try to rectify past injustices that caused present-day differences in worker productivity?”
I totally agree with you on the morality, but my own objection is that no own knows how to “rectify past injustices.” What we have done so far here in America, and I am not aware of a counterfactual from overseas, indicates that government attempts to do so have actually increased the disparity.
Jose Pablo
Aug 20 2021 at 12:39pm
Yes indeed, but who care about “actual” results? Virtue signaling is the name of the game.
Bryan got this right in “The Myth of the Rational Voter”: policies that allow voters to get a “feel good” feeling and signal virtue to others at very little “perceived” cost to them are, and always will be, a political winner.
Corollary: attempts to rectify past injustices that allow their proponents and supporters to signal virtue for free, will be part of the democratic political landscape forever irrespective of their actual results on disparity or justice (if we would have any meaningful way of measuring the “level of justice”)
Jon von Ahnen
Aug 20 2021 at 1:57pm
With point one, I could not agree more. There seems to be profound confusion between “shame” and “guilt” in our society. To build off Bryan’s example, Group C may feel ashamed over Group B’s past behavior, assuming there is something that links Group C to Group B (like ancestry). However, there would be no reason for the members of Group C to feel guilt, and therefore, no perceived moral obligation to right a past wrong, if they didn’t contribute to the past wrong.
My grandfather passed when I was 8. If I found out today that he had robbed a bank, I may feel shame with what he’d done, but I wouldn’t feel guilt or an obligation to settle a debt I didn’t directly incur. Further, I certainly wouldn’t entertain the argument that I “likely benefitted” from his act.
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Aug 20 2021 at 7:58pm
Not a good analogy, but you certainly COULD have benefitted from your grandfather’s (successful) bank robbery if the money got you into Harvard.
Walter Boggs
Aug 21 2021 at 12:58pm
Or Jon could have gone to Harvard on grandfather’s money but felt he got little benefit from it, or could have gone to another school or no school and done better or worse than he otherwise would have. The answers to these questions are unknowable, and thus the state will eagerly provide answers if we insist on having them.
Jon von Ahnen
Aug 24 2021 at 6:45pm
It was a fine analogy until you introduced the element of my grandfather leaving me Harvard-money when I was eight (which didn’t happen, by the way). Neither Bryan nor I introduced the concept of being a direct, undisputed net beneficiary of the wrongdoings of Group B. It does raise an interesting question: if it could be proven unequivocally that Group C directly, measurably benefitted from the past transgressions of Group B against Group A, yet none of Group C’s actions could have possibly altered those past transgressions, does Group C have a moral obligation to Group A?
Frank
Aug 20 2021 at 3:57pm
And who is to pay for past justices, acts of goodness? Slavery was common throughout human history. Slaves were freed first in the West, in the US at great cost. Thus, property was taken away from owners. Shouldn’t they be compensated? By whom?
MP
Aug 20 2021 at 4:59pm
Taxpayers already did that, Frank.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensated_emancipation
Frank
Aug 20 2021 at 6:39pm
Alas, only in DC.
Mark Brady
Aug 22 2021 at 7:14pm
Not to mention the British Empire and elsewhere. Check out the link that MP provides.
Frank
Aug 22 2021 at 8:21pm
In the United States.
David D. Boaz
Aug 28 2021 at 9:54am
What property are you saying was taken from what owners?
Stephen
Aug 20 2021 at 4:16pm
I agree that collective guilt is bad. But I think that you should have mentioned collective victimhood, which is even more harmful.
Richard W Fulmer
Aug 23 2021 at 7:23pm
How far back do we go in history to rectify all the wrongs that were done? As far as I know, my ancestors were German, French, Dutch, and English. As a German, am I owed reparations from the Italian descendants of the Romans who may have killed some of my relatives? The Mongols burned the German city of Meissen to the ground in the year 1241. Do they owe me reparations? Am I owed reparations from the French descendants of Napoleon?
As a Frenchman, am I owed reparations from Norse, Italian (Rome), English, and German descendants? Do Muslims owe me reparations because their ancestors conquered bits of southern France?
As a Dutchman, do people from France, Spain, and Germany owe me reparations?
As an Englishman, do people from Italy (Rome), Denmark, and France owe me reparations?
We are all likely descended from conquerors and conquered, from oppressors and oppressed. Who do we owe and what do we owe them? Who owes us and what do they owe us?
Stephen
Aug 24 2021 at 4:29pm
I think those are rhetorical questions, but I will give my answers: In all of those examples, nobody owes anyone anything.
If you are directly harmed by someone, you are owed restitution from the perpetrator. If your parents were directly harmed by someone and are now dead, I can get on board with you being owed some restitution from the perpetrator. If your grandparents or more distant ancestors were harmed, I say you are out of luck; you are owed nothing.
vanadios
Aug 20 2021 at 6:38pm
I think point (1) is meaningless without some discussions about succession.
Let’s consider an example that is very similar to your thought experiment: During the war, South Vietnam borrowed lots of money from the US. The US then left, and the North Vietnam annexed the South. (Officially, North Vietnam “helped” the communists of the South overthrown the South’s government, and then the two countries signed an agreement to make a union). Question: Does the newly created country need to pay the debts to the US?
You can argue that the answer is no: North Vietnamese has nothing to do with the money. In fact, the people who borrowed money, and those who benefit the most from it, had already escaped to the US. In reality, as the successor state of South Vietnam, Vietnam still owed and needed to pay the money back.
Of course, the two examples are not the same. But it is not hard to imagine that if the new community of descendents of Group B and Group C consider Group B as an important and irreplaceable part of their heritage and call prominent people of Group B as their “ancestor” and “Founding Father”, then is it that wrong to say that they need to inherit not only the good but also the bad of what group B did?
Kurt Schuler
Aug 20 2021 at 9:32pm
I will believe that “The denial of people’s right to live and work where they please on account of their nation of birth” is “an ongoing extreme injustice” when you let any foreigner who pleases live in your house.
robc
Aug 21 2021 at 6:34pm
I will rent my rental house to anyone from anywhere who can afford the rent.
Niko Davor
Aug 26 2021 at 11:56am
This is a terrible argument. The argument that nations shouldn’t have collective rights to exclude foreigners, while individuals should have rights to private property that excludes others is consistent.
The better argument is that modern universities are built on “The denial of people’s right to live and work where they please”. Universities are built as exclusive social groups with collective rights to exclude whomever they like. Worse: those excluded from universities and the social circles and career opportunities are expected to pay for the universities excluding them. At least nationalists don’t expect foreigners to be obligated to pay their bills.
A second argument is that the expectation for some national/ethnic/linguistic identities to be stigmatized + undermined, while other identities are celebrated and promoted.
I’d like to hear the counter arguments to these if they are public. I’ve bought + read Caplan’s open borders books, and he makes the arguments I’m well versed in.
ee
Aug 20 2021 at 11:20pm
Not a fan of the distraction argument. Arguments like that are often a bad faith attempt to muddy the water or an unintelligent increase in scope. Even if you bought it, all it yields is that the lesser option should get less resources than the greater option. It doesn’t shut down the lesser option. It could be parried with: “sure spend more money on the greater option! Anyway…”
I don’t understand what Brian is saying about Harvard subsidies at the end. Which money on which unjust causes?
Phil H
Aug 21 2021 at 10:28am
I’m not sure about rectifying the injustices – they probably can’t be rectified. But the present-day inequalities could be addressed. Probably BC and antiracists would have very different ideas about how that would happen, but they could at least agree that eliminating negative discrimination would be helpful.
Mark Z
Aug 21 2021 at 6:24pm
I think the insurmountable point of disagreement though is that “anti-racists” believe getting rid of discrimination against group A and actively discriminating against group non-A are one and the same; one can’t do the former without doing the latter.
Moreover, I honestly don’t see why remedying inequalities resulting from membership to one group is more morally pressing or justified than another group. Why doesn’t someone who’s poor because his parents were lazy, drunken gamblers deserve to be helped just as much as someone who’s poor because his parents were victims of racism? Both are equally blameless for the circumstances that rendered them poor. Even if racial inequalities today were 100% the result of past racism, it still wouldn’t justify targeting race as a variable in policy.
Brandon Berg
Aug 21 2021 at 10:39am
The claim that present-day differences in productivity are due to past injustices seems to me to be based mostly on just-so stories. The existence of past injustices is simply assumed to be the cause of present disparities, despite the fact that oppression-induced disparities were not at all sticky in the case of, say, Jews and East Asians, whose SES rapidly converged with gentile whites’ within a generation of whites easing up on discrimination.
SK
Aug 21 2021 at 12:05pm
My grandfather “served” in the Korean War, and by that I mean he went to basic training, and on the first day after basic training, got injured and then honorably discharged.
Because of that, he was eligible for the GI bill, which paid for college and graduate school.
It boosted his earnings significantly above what his friends and any of his brothers made, and allowed my mother to grow up in a community with great schools, so she went on to a top university as well and became even wealthier (relative to median of her generation) than her father
She raised me and her other children in an even wealthier area, and we have now gone on to be even higher income (relative to median for our age) than she was
I have a black friend who’s grandfather served overseas, in combat, in the Korean war. When he returned, he did not get to go to college like my grandfather – either the government wouldn’t pay for it, or good colleges in his state wouldn’t take him. He worked hard, but did not earn as my as my grandfather. His kids did not earn as much as my mother and her siblings.
My friend was the highest ranked student in his school, and is an all-around incredible person. He earns about the same that I do, which is far above his siblings, but not far above mine. In other words, the average result for someone of his background is lower. I’m probably around average for someone of my background.
Last note: even if my friend and I earn the same now, when our parents die, I will become significantly wealthier than him because of the difference in inheritance
I didn’t do any racial discrimination, and neither did my mother or grandfather. But we certainly benefitted, and I don’t think it’s unfair to try to right the set-back the historically disadvantaged people faced.
Mark Z
Aug 21 2021 at 6:27pm
In this particular example, black people today almost certainly have higher productivity and more wealth because of slavery, not less. Absent slavery (and pretending the non-identity problem isn’t an issue), they would mostly live in west Africa, where they would be poorer. If one owes or is owed to/by someone the difference between what one has, and what one would have if that someone hadn’t done what they did, wouldn’t the descendants of slaves owe the descendants of slaveowners money? I expect, in explaining why not, one inevitably makes the very same arguments sufficient to refute the case for reparations in the other direction as well.
Frank
Aug 21 2021 at 7:14pm
Ah, but the death rate of captured slaves to be — on the Atlantic crossing alone — was horrific. The argument that Black Americans are richer than they would otherwise be suffers from survivorship bias.
Put oneself behind a veil of ignorance where one doesn’t know whether one will be born Black or White [in America or the World]. Would we be willing to pay a premium for “Black insurance”? That is to say that if indeed one is born Black one gets the proceeds of that insurance policy.
There’s reparations!
Of course, behind the veil we might or might not know whether slavery was legal. Thus, we might want to pay “slave owner insurance” premiums to be collected if slavery became illegal.
There’s reparations, too!
The veil of ignorance gives different answers depending on how much information is allowed in, of course.
The point is that ex post outcomes tempt us to make value judgements that we might not want tomake ex ante.
Mark Z
Aug 23 2021 at 4:31pm
The descendants of slaves who are alive today, however, are not victims of that. The victims, as you note, died. They can’t be compensated, and their victimhood doesn’t transfer to those who are descended from the survivors.
I don’t think your insurance analogy works. Suppose a black person were to day, “I could have been born in 1830, and even though I wasn’t, it was still a ‘risk’ which I should be compensated for.” But why assume his race is ‘assigned’ prior to all other circumstances of his existence? Any one of us, before being ‘assigned’ a time and place behind the veil of ignorance, was at ‘risk’ of being born a Jew in 1930s Poland or a Ukrainian in 1920s Russian, etc. The idea of a racial premium that includes the ‘risk’ of being born in bad circumstances across time and geography, even if one is ultimately lucky enough to be born in good circumstances, seems to assume one’s race is somehow assigned to one prior to one’s very existence.
X
Aug 28 2021 at 7:07pm
Off-topic, but if one accepts the premise of the non-identity problem (existence > non-existence), one really should wonder why exactly unwilling parents should ever actually be forced to pay child support, especially when no taxpayer money is actually on the line. After all, didn’t these parents do these children *a favor* by bringing them into existence? It’s not like their children were ever actually deprived of any opportunities as a result of them being brought into existence, after all!
Thomas Lee Hutcheson
Aug 22 2021 at 6:51am
Another problem with putting too much emphasis on rectifying injustices is that the past injustices may have been negative sum. So whatever weight we give to wanting to compensate those who still suffer from the injustices, there is less available from those who benefited from it.
Richard W Fulmer
Aug 23 2021 at 6:49pm
African Americans who were slaves were definitely harmed by slavery, but were their descendants harmed or benefitted? Had their ancestors not been transported to the United States, they likely would have been born in Sub-Saharan Africa. Which is better:
A. To be born in the U.S. as a minority who may experience bigotry?
B. To be born in Sub-Saharan Africa as a member of a majority, or minority, tribe?
It could be either; a lot depends on which Sub-Saharan nation (Mauritius good, Zimbabwe bad).
X
Aug 28 2021 at 7:13pm
All you need to do is to look at the migration flows from Sub-Saharan Africa to the US as well as from the US to Sub-Saharan Africa. There are a lot of migrants in the former flow but very few migrants in the latter flow. Very few Americans, even black ones, actually want to live in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Also, off-topic, but this is why I am skeptical of Bryan Caplan’s argument in regards to open borders: As in, let’s have open borders but deny immigrants and their descendants voting rights and access to the social safety net for an indefinite number of generations. Sure, it’s better than being stuck in the Third World, but at the same time, even Jim Crow was better for US blacks than being deported en masse back to Sub-Saharan Africa. However, this didn’t actually make Jim Crow *good*, and neither would this actually make Bryan Caplan’s open borders proposal *good*.
For that matter, for so long as the US (and Canada) will continue to have birthright citizenship, the US (and Canada) could have a scheme that would have open borders (plus zero voting rights and zero social safety net access for immigrants) while at the same time making entry into the US (and Canada) contingent on getting permanently and irreversibly sterilized so that immigrants are never actually going to be able to breed over here. This wouldn’t be very fair to immigrants, but it would allow them to escape the Third World while also preventing the West from either having its body politic (voter pool) significantly altered or having an apartheid-like system develop in the West, with superior and inferior hereditary castes.
Monte
Aug 22 2021 at 2:07pm
The scrupulosity being exhibited by too many guilt-ridden whites today is getting tiresome. The reparations movement needs to fail. Lets bind up our nations wounds, not reopen them.
Michael Sandifer
Aug 23 2021 at 11:10am
I don’t find the arguments against reparations presented here compelling. I don’t favor reparations out of a sense of guilt, and the responsibility is not at the level of random groups of people, but at the level of the state as an entity. Just as companies with total management and even ownership turnover after losing a lawsuit and going bankrupt are still responsible for paying debts deemed possible to pay, countries are responsible for paying debts owed to descendents who’ve have suffered or continue to suffer due to crimes committed by the state.
How to pay reparations constructively is a much more difficult question. But, as a non-guilty descendant of ancestors who fought on both sides of the Civil War, I am happy to pay my share of the state’s debts.
zeke5123
Aug 23 2021 at 2:56pm
Your analogy fails. Let’s consider a company that engaged in something we consider wrong 150 years later, but wasn’t clear cut at the time. Do we impose liability on that company 150 years later? No — otherwise present day morality always requires re litigating the past which is no one to build a prosperous society.
Likewise, there are almost always statute of limitations. Such statutes are designed to (i) make clear title today to allow a functional society, (ii) prevent unending historic litigation, and (iii) better match up restitution with those that harmed / benefited.
Finally, there is the issue of whether a tort claim can survive through death to descendants. I’ve yet to see a claim by a great-great-grandkid. This is because the great-great-grandkid cannot really claim he was wronged. Sure, if his great-great grandfather received the relevant cash and all that changed was the great-great-grandfather put it into an investment account accessible only by the great-great-grandkid, then sure the great-great-grandkid would be better off. But you and I know that by giving the great-great-grandfather a large sum of money the world is different and great-great-grandkid doesn’t exist. So, bit of a tough argument for great-great-grandkid to argue that the uncompensated wrong done to his great-great-grandfather harms the claimant when but-for that uncompensated wrong the claimant would not exist.
These claims are all — to a certain extent — lessened if compensating the actual victim (e,g. we don’t need to relitigate the whole past; just our lifetime, the claimant would still exist if the wrong was compensated). So, if you wanted to give cash monies to actual suffers of redlining okay. But their kids? No.
Mark Z
Aug 23 2021 at 4:17pm
Company’s are voluntary associations, nationalities are not. I see no reason the same principle shouldn’t apply to races, religions, people with certain eye colors, etc.
On the matter of government debt, I would argue that hardcore Rothbardian libertarians are actually 100% correct that people today have no moral obligation to pay back debt borrowed by earlier generations. It is sufficient to reject the idea of hereditary guilt or national collectivism to reach that conclusion. To me, at least, the one good reason for not disavowing the national debt is that it would be disastrous in practice, as the US government would lose access to global credit markets (or have to pay enormous interest rates when it inevitably needed to borrow again). That’s the reason why we should keep paying our great grandparents’ debts on that front. We certainly have no moral obligation to do so though.
Monte
Aug 23 2021 at 9:40pm
Sorry to pile on here, but if reparations were to become law, it would soon morph into what computer programmers refer to in their field as an infinite loop with no terminating condition. We would start with descendants of African slaves, then we would have to move on to Native Americans, then Hispanics, Japanese Americans, ad nauseam for any social class that could show cause. Discussions of slavery are typically associated with blacks from Africa, but as an enterprise, it actually began with the shipping of several hundred-thousand Britons to the colonies. What of white slaves and their descendants?
Even if a moral case is to be made for reparations, remuneration would become a logistical nightmare and most likely thrust our economy into an abyss of insurmountable debt (I’ve seen some estimates upwards of $50 trillion just to compensate African and Native Americans alone). I suspect this would result in a great deal of consternation for those obligated to pay. Now…who might that be?
IMO, the concept of reparations as currently defined is a Gordian Knot for which there is no viable solution.
X
Aug 28 2021 at 7:15pm
How about just give extra money to everybody can be done with it?
X
Aug 28 2021 at 7:15pm
How about just give money to everybody *and* be done with it?
(Corrected typo.)
Richard W Fulmer
Aug 23 2021 at 6:37pm
There was a plague that wiped out the members of slave-owning Group B: It’s called mortality. Mortality killed every last member of Group B.
Knut P. Heen
Aug 24 2021 at 4:25am
Should the children of communists in western countries pay reparations to the children of the victims of the Soviet Union? Sounds crazy to me, but take away national borders and it is essentially the same argument.
X
Aug 28 2021 at 7:02pm
Well, the German government is responsible for sending over Lenin to Russia, so if one believes that present-day Germans should be held responsible for the actions of past German governments, then maybe?
X
Aug 28 2021 at 7:04pm
Of course, maybe Latvians should also pay reparations to Russia since they actually voted for the Bolsheviks in 1917 whereas Russians didn’t. That, and the Red Latvian Riflemen helped militarily prop up the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War.
This is why the Russian nationalist blogger doesn’t feel too sad by the Soviet conquest of Latvia in 1940. He argues that if Latvians forced Communism on unwilling Russians in 1917, then it’s only fair for “Russians” to return the favor in 1940.
Niko Davor
Aug 26 2021 at 11:58am
Every living human has ancestors that owned slaves and ancestors that were slaves.
I’m disappointed Caplan wouldn’t know this.
X
Aug 28 2021 at 7:05pm
American Renaissance man Jared Taylor points out how even some free blacks in the antebellum Southern US were themselves slave owners. Should the descendants of these blacks be excluded from reparations due to the past sins of their ancestors?
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