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.)
by your logic, if someone stole something, have it to his brother and then got caught, having the brother give back the stolen goods is something Nazis would have done.
But this isn’t Sippenhaftung, also known as gilt by association in English, this is a societal thing, you, even if your great great gandpappy didn’t himself own slaves, the society is still at fault and needs to right the wrongs done to a whole ethnic group
According to Sippenhaftung the Nazis would probably have shot the thieve, his brother, their parents, other family members and burned down their houses.
In case of societies you mean collective liability then?
The society in question (which exactly?) of today is not the same compared to the society of the past. How can it be at fault?
look, YOU are the person framing this as some form of individually targeted thing.
as for the idea that the society is different, how can it be at fault? because the foundations of the society we have now are built on these injustices, to go back to the earlier example, “look, you can’t take the stolen stuff back from the thief, he’s a different person 10 years later”