This relates to the BBC article [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66596790] which states “the UK should pay $24tn (£18.8tn) for its slavery involvement in 14 countries”.
The UK abolished slavery in 1833. That’s 190 years ago. So nobody alive today has a slave, and nobody alive today was a slave.
Dividing £18tn by the number of UK taxpayers (31.6m) gives £569 each. Why do I, who have never owned a slave, have to give £569 to someone who similarly is not a slave?
When I’ve paid my £569 is that the end of the matter forever or will it just open the floodgates of other similar claims?
Isn’t this just a country that isn’t doing too well, looking at the UK doing reasonably well (cost of living crisis excluded of course), and saying “oh there’s this historical thing that affects nobody alive today but you still have to give us trillions of Sterling”?
Shouldn’t payment of reparations be limited to those who still benefit from the slave trade today, and paid to those who still suffer from it?
(Please don’t flame me. This is NSQ. I genuinely don’t know why this is something I should have to pay. I agree slavery is terrible and condemn it in all its forms, and we were right to abolish it.)
Because of supply and demand. The transatlantic slave trade created demand for slaves much higher than what existed before that point. That creates an environment where being a slaver is rewarded, and therefore not being a slaver was punished. If, for example, a republican billionaire says “I’ll give 10000$ to anyone who kills a democrat” they can’t just claim they’re innocent when democrat death rates go through the roof.
Idk about this line of reasoning. One thing being rewarded doesn’t necessarily mean the absence of the thing is punished. An olympic race has a winner and the winner is rewarded with a medal, but the losers aren’t typically punished, they simply “aren’t rewarded.” It isn’t like you get put in the boo box for coming in 4th, and I wasn’t there but I doubt they put anyone in the boo box (or any “punishment”) for being “a doctor not a slaver.” (Dammit Jim. Couldn’t resist.) At best some slaver dad got mad his kid wanted to be a composer instead of take up the family slaving business, but what else is new?
They have a warped view of supply and demand.
That’s true in general, but we’re talking geopolitics here. States that participated in the slave trade would conquer their neighbors and sell them as slaves. That’s the punishment I was talking about.
Yes, a lucrative market for a hideous crime was created, and the guys who hunted other groups in order to get paid in that market wronged the enslaved too. (I’m not sure it was all like this all over Africa too, but e.g. in the Congo, it seemed to be the case)
PS: and about the 10000£ bounty analogy: if there is proof that some dude killed because of an illegal bounty, they certainly are not going to be compensated for being “tricked” into killing, wtf?
Yes, but the thing is: The states that actually sold slaves basically don’t exist anymore thanks to colonialism, and even those that still do lost any wealth they had to colonialism. Can’t really accumulate generational wealth when you’re busy farming rubbers or whatever for your colonial overlords.
Yea, colonialism is yet another compensation for yet another historic crime (invasion, to start with) But, I think all this is going to be peanuts compared to compensation for global warming, this one is going to break every bank and nobody can agree on anything…it’s like these debates times 1000.
I have no idea why you made that idiotic comment about Republicans considering the involvement if Democrats in slavery.