"Matt Whiting" wrote in message
...
Gary Drescher wrote:

"Matt Whiting" wrote in message
news
wrote:
Frederick Douglass had most of his wages taken aeway from him
when he was a slave. His descendants could probably establish
a sound estimate of just how much money that was.

But how do you give it back to Frederick? His descendants didn't work
for it and don't deserve it.

Do you believe categorically that people do not deserve inheritances? If
that's not your belief, then why don't you believe that Douglass's
descendants deserve to inherit the wealth that Douglass was morally
entitled to have and to bequeath?

I'm not at all against inheritances. The problem here is that you simply
have no way to know what his estate would have been.

That's quite different from the statement you made above: the only reason
you gave for his descendents not to deserve the inheritance is that they
didn't work for it. *That* rationale, if valid, would apply to *all*
inheritances.

But now you're saying that that *doesn't* disqualify them from being
entitled to the stolen inheritance wealth--instead, you're now saying the
problem is that the amount is hard to calculate. Do you agree that *if* the
amount could be readily calculated, his descendents would be morally
entitled to it? (If not, why not?)

I agree that there are practical difficulties in estimating the amount of
stolen wealth, and in identifying those who would have stood to inherit it.
Possibly, those difficulties make the whole idea unfeasible. That's not
clear to me (in part because I think we can, at the very least, come up with
a much better estimate than $0, which is effectively the estimate that's
being used now).

So my point is not necessarily to advocate reparations, but rather just to
point out that the issue is more complex than is acknowledged by those who
pretend that it's about punishment or who say that "they didn't work for
their inheritance" is a decisive consideration.

He may well have spent his kids inheritance while he was still alive

Legally and morally, that's *completely* irrelevant to his descendants'
deservedness of the inheritance. Since he did not in fact spend the wealth
otherwise (because it was wrongfully withheld from him), the wealth belongs
to his estate and thus to his descendants, *regardless* of what he might
have done with it if given the opportunity.

Analogously, if your parents were deceased and you were suing to recover
some money that someone stiffed them for or stole from them, the
(all-but-unanswerable) hypothetical question of whether they'd have spent it
(instead of having it to bequeath) would have *no bearing whatsoever* on the
case. If your parents had been entitled to recover the money, then *you* are
now entitled to recover it after their death (unless perhaps they explicitly
disinherited you or something; but whether they might have spent it makes no
difference at all).

--Gary