Pretty sure there are more sides, but the system doesn’t allow it.
Also people can’t choose their ancestor’s, so why would they need to be punished? Taxation of the transfer of funds is not an issue in my book, but don’t blame somebody cause 5 generations before them or whatever, the ancestor was a dictator.
Victims and direct descendants should be compensated.
The money to compensate them should be taken from the aggressors.
If there is a case to be made to compensate later descendants of the victims (which sometimes there is), then it makes sense that the money to compensate them comes from whichever money inherited by later descendants of the aggressors. It’s about confiscating the proceedings of the crime if still possible, not about punishing the descendants - they had no responsability in the crime but if they are benefitting from it, those undeserved benefits should be taken away.
This last part is what threathens “old wealth”, whose money is almost entirely inherited from their ancestors’ victimizing of others, including things like Chattel Slavery and Indentured Servitude.
Those trying to difuse the responsability for compensation across some general groups (such as “national responsability” or even “racial responsability”) are de facto protecting the main present day beneficiaries of such crimes by making those who gained nothing from the crimes, directly or indirectly, pay for it instead of those who still today live a life of luxury from the proceedings of those crimes.
This is especially applicable in Britain were most of the wealth is Old Wealth and most of that comes from all kinds of crimes against Mankind committed during the Imperial days. Unsurprisingly, British politicians are big on claiming “communal responsibility” whenever there are calls to compensate victims of past actions under British rule.
PS: As for your first paragraph, I totally agreed - there are far subtler and realistic takes, but the shit being pushed by these puppets of the main political parties in Anglo-Saxon nations are (very purposefully, IMHO) very specific takes on “who to blame” which protect the billionaires and divide the oppressed setting them against each other.
The thing is that the wealth that you inherent doesn’t have to come from victimizing others. I live in NL, we had a lot of slavery and the VOC became very rich ofof it. But most Dutch people aren’t decended from anybody who profitted from the slavery that happend.
At the same time a lot of these massive companies from back in the day had a lot of funds go to the government or indirectly to the public in some other way.
If the money can be traced back to slavery or whatever victimizing then yes tax it a lot (without the descendants getting into actual financial trouble because of it)
I agree btw, the angelo-saxton way of thinking is why they got to wealthy over the back of others. That’s part of the reason the climate for workers is better in western Europe (NL, DE, DK, etc)
Ps. I always wonder what actually happend with the VOC money since if you calculate the value of the money to todays value it would have been one of the biggest companies in the world (top 3 or something). Like we are rich, but not THAT rich.
My point is exactly that you should only go after wealth inherited from people who made that wealth by victimizing others, not from people who just happenned to be living in the same country or sharing the same race as the oppressors, even with claims that “they did nothing to stop it” (as if one’s peasant ancestors during the age of absolute monarchy were even aware of Slavery much less had the means to stop it).
The whole point of the “it’s the fault of race/nationality” crowd is exactly to steer people away from following the “who still now gains from it” link, by in practice chosing an interpretation of the blame for what happenned that turns the descendants of some victims of the oppressors the ones supposed to pay compensation to the descendants of other victims of the oppressors (often the very same oppressors), whilst the descendants of the oppressors can often just keep on enjoying the loot inherited from their ancestors which was accumulated thanks to that oppression.
I would say that in Europe the Brits are the most extreme example of this (both because of the vast numbers of people there whose present day wealth come from ancestors who made that money through extreme exploitation of others, and because of just how relentlessly the “common blame” fables are deployed by the entire edifice of politics to disperse the responsability from the few to the many), though other nations with a colonialist past also have mainstream political factions following the same template to insulate Old Wealth from the consequences of inheriting blood money.
Pretty sure there are more sides, but the system doesn’t allow it.
Also people can’t choose their ancestor’s, so why would they need to be punished? Taxation of the transfer of funds is not an issue in my book, but don’t blame somebody cause 5 generations before them or whatever, the ancestor was a dictator.
Victims and direct descendants should be compensated.
The money to compensate them should be taken from the aggressors.
If there is a case to be made to compensate later descendants of the victims (which sometimes there is), then it makes sense that the money to compensate them comes from whichever money inherited by later descendants of the aggressors. It’s about confiscating the proceedings of the crime if still possible, not about punishing the descendants - they had no responsability in the crime but if they are benefitting from it, those undeserved benefits should be taken away.
This last part is what threathens “old wealth”, whose money is almost entirely inherited from their ancestors’ victimizing of others, including things like Chattel Slavery and Indentured Servitude.
Those trying to difuse the responsability for compensation across some general groups (such as “national responsability” or even “racial responsability”) are de facto protecting the main present day beneficiaries of such crimes by making those who gained nothing from the crimes, directly or indirectly, pay for it instead of those who still today live a life of luxury from the proceedings of those crimes.
This is especially applicable in Britain were most of the wealth is Old Wealth and most of that comes from all kinds of crimes against Mankind committed during the Imperial days. Unsurprisingly, British politicians are big on claiming “communal responsibility” whenever there are calls to compensate victims of past actions under British rule.
PS: As for your first paragraph, I totally agreed - there are far subtler and realistic takes, but the shit being pushed by these puppets of the main political parties in Anglo-Saxon nations are (very purposefully, IMHO) very specific takes on “who to blame” which protect the billionaires and divide the oppressed setting them against each other.
The thing is that the wealth that you inherent doesn’t have to come from victimizing others. I live in NL, we had a lot of slavery and the VOC became very rich ofof it. But most Dutch people aren’t decended from anybody who profitted from the slavery that happend. At the same time a lot of these massive companies from back in the day had a lot of funds go to the government or indirectly to the public in some other way. If the money can be traced back to slavery or whatever victimizing then yes tax it a lot (without the descendants getting into actual financial trouble because of it)
I agree btw, the angelo-saxton way of thinking is why they got to wealthy over the back of others. That’s part of the reason the climate for workers is better in western Europe (NL, DE, DK, etc)
Ps. I always wonder what actually happend with the VOC money since if you calculate the value of the money to todays value it would have been one of the biggest companies in the world (top 3 or something). Like we are rich, but not THAT rich.
My point is exactly that you should only go after wealth inherited from people who made that wealth by victimizing others, not from people who just happenned to be living in the same country or sharing the same race as the oppressors, even with claims that “they did nothing to stop it” (as if one’s peasant ancestors during the age of absolute monarchy were even aware of Slavery much less had the means to stop it).
The whole point of the “it’s the fault of race/nationality” crowd is exactly to steer people away from following the “who still now gains from it” link, by in practice chosing an interpretation of the blame for what happenned that turns the descendants of some victims of the oppressors the ones supposed to pay compensation to the descendants of other victims of the oppressors (often the very same oppressors), whilst the descendants of the oppressors can often just keep on enjoying the loot inherited from their ancestors which was accumulated thanks to that oppression.
I would say that in Europe the Brits are the most extreme example of this (both because of the vast numbers of people there whose present day wealth come from ancestors who made that money through extreme exploitation of others, and because of just how relentlessly the “common blame” fables are deployed by the entire edifice of politics to disperse the responsability from the few to the many), though other nations with a colonialist past also have mainstream political factions following the same template to insulate Old Wealth from the consequences of inheriting blood money.
I agree with you about that it should only punish those that directly benefit.
“The iniquities of the fathers are visited upon the sons and daughters—unto the third and fourth generation.”
Exodus 20:5