Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 So welcome to morals and markets, the last morals and markets of 2021, where the, uh, starting off fresh in 2022. So we're very excited about everything that we have coming about the promotion about the morals and markets podcast. So for those of you who are listening on the podcast, remember that you will be hearing Dr. Salzmann's remarks on the right and wrong of reparations, please like, and subscribe and follow the podcast, share it with your friends. And if you want to join us live, we are usually the fourth Thursday of every month. And if you join this live, you get to take part in the Q and a. So with that, I'm handing it over to Dr. Salzman.
Speaker 1 00:00:39 Thank you, Abby. And, uh, welcome back to morals and markets. We do this every month on the fourth, Thursday of every month for about 90 minutes, I speak for about 20 or 30 minutes just to get the ball rolling. And then I love to hear your comments and criticisms and other thoughts. I think I want to make a pitch for what moles and markets does generally and apply it here. What is morals and markets? Moral sounds like ethics market sounds like economics. Uh, what's not mentioned in this as politics, but that's really the idea pick topics that are interdisciplinary it topics that are not easily handled, unless you know, a little bit about morality, a little bit about it. And then by rep morality, usually issues of justice. And then you've got to know something about the economics of it. And then the politics. Is there going to be any reform, any law that relates to this?
Speaker 1 00:01:32 I can't think of a better interdisciplinary topic and then a more topical one then reparation. So I thought I would bring it up now. Why is it coming up now? It's not a new phenomenon. 20 years ago, Randall Robinson wrote a famous book called the debt subtitled what America owes black American. And it was really the full, the first full fledged argument for reparations paid to current living blacks in America for past slavery in America. And more recently, um, from here to equality to take off on the phrase from here to eternity, by my colleague at duke, Sandy Darity has come up with a plan. In fact, not only a book about reparations, but he's met the challenge or has tried to meet the challenge of people who say it may be moral, but it's impractical. It may be the right thing to do, but it's logistically a nightmare or it's too costly or something like that.
Speaker 1 00:02:38 So as an economist at duke and the public policies, a group at duke he's tried to in this book make a case for reparations economic, somewhat moral, but mostly economics. So those are the source materials. You can certainly search by Google and find a whole bunch of things on this topically, HR 40. And he talked about actual legislation, HR 40 meaning house of representatives. Law 40 has been proposed probably for four or five years now. Uh, Sheila Jackson, I think is the main sponsor. Now Conyers John Kahn, Senator John the, of the late Conyers was advocating it for many years. This calls for not reparations directly, but a commission to study it that we can make fun of Washington creating commissions to kick cans down the road. But actually I'm not against the idea of a commission that spends, and they recommend 18 months studying this.
Speaker 1 00:03:37 If it was studied from the standpoint of what I'm going to convey tonight, I think that would be good to have on the record. So I actually am going to come out for HR 40, which is not again, not a bill to implement reparations, but a bill to have a commission study it. And of course the commission can't be biased. Um, that's not going to be easy to do. I said the right and wrong of reparations. So let me focus first on the right, as I said in the descriptor, this is, uh, a long-term proper thing to do in the field of justice. If you know, justice, there's three types of Dutch justice that usually discussed in theory, distributive justice, retributive justice, and restorative justice. So distributed justice is who gets paid. What and why? Meaning do people actually deserve what they get if they do, by the way, notice this could mean that inequality of income and wealth is justified if it's earned.
Speaker 1 00:04:50 So that's moral desert theory. And if you know, there's a big attack on this over the years, starting with John rolls in 1970 in his book theory of justice roles was very suspicious of the idea that people really earned anything because they were born into circumstances, no part of their control. You know, they came in, they, they, they won or lost the lottery of life as it was put, you don't pick your own parents. So, um, there's a debate even within distributive justice about whether wealth and income is earned or not. And that's a big issue because if it's honored, if it's a matter of luck or worse exploitation, you could see the underlying argument for fixing that by, uh, uh, redistributing the wealth retributive justice is just crime and punishment. So I'm not going to talk about that today, cause that's not really the issue, but I just want to lay out the field here.
Speaker 1 00:05:43 Retributive justice is what do people deserve in terms of punishment for crimes committed. And you know that if free will is out and dessert is out in that field, you'll see a lesser and a tenuous connection between what people do and whether they get any punishment for it. That's a big issue. Now, basically the idea that the prisons should be emptied out, why because the occupants couldn't help themselves or society made them do it. So, so in that in retributive justice, there's also a big debate about the right and wrong way to do it. Now, tonight, we really were focusing on the third element of justice called restorative justice. Now restorative justice is the idea that someone or some group has been wronged and then it could be materially measured. And that restitution is justified. Now there are civil courts that do this, and this has been true for centuries actually.
Speaker 1 00:06:45 So it's not new. I mean the British common law system and the U S civil court, the tort system tort meaning a wrong. The whole system is based on bringing into court evidentiary, uh, uh, support for, I was harmed. Here's how much I was harmed. Here's the dollar amount here's who did it pay me? Isn't the state paying. This is the perpetrator Pang as that's been going on for years. And, and interestingly, especially due to especially apropos the issue of reparations for slavery and a whole class called blacks, which is very amorphous. There are class action suits, which are legitimate as well. What does this mean? It means the courts have recognized that sometimes individually, so a group of people have been wrong, but individually their claim is small and unless they're grouped together, uh, and, and, and do what's called a class action suit against the perp.
Speaker 1 00:07:45 They're not likely to get anywhere. I don't even have a problem with that. That is not an issue of collectivizing guilt to people who weren't actually harmed. These people were actually harmed. And this is one of the more practical logistical remedies for getting them paid again, as long as it can be proved that they've been harmed. So I just wanted to lay the groundwork there for a claim that reparations and the idea of restorative justice should be a part of our argument of justice. But when I say our argument, I mean, the argument for capitalism capitalism definitely entails not only distributive justice and retributive justice, but restorative justice. It recognizes that in the past, people and groups have mistreated each other and possibly something should be done about it. If it can be proved by the way, reparations themselves includes the root repair. So repairing things to their original state or that kind of thing that that in and of itself is not, or should not be a problem.
Speaker 1 00:08:51 Okay. Now here's the issue. The two standards, I think are crucial to making sure this is done correctly is you have to identify the actual perpetrators 0.1 and 0.2. You have to show some causality and materiality. What do I mean by that? Not just that there are perpetrators, uh, that can be identified, uh, by the way in victims as well. That goes without saying, uh, but the causality of it, namely that perp caused victim to be harmed. Uh, I don't want to get overly semantic about this, but if it, the, the, the more vague and ambiguous that is the less justice is served and the more collectivized it is, the less justice is served. So that's one issue, uh, that, so that's one issue that, that you identify the perpetrators and the victims and the causal link between the two, not just Joe hurt Mary, but you can show how Jo hurt Mary and hurt Mary to the extent of X.
Speaker 1 00:09:59 And again, we can substitute even groups for that. So that's the groups themselves are not a problem. Now, the other issue is as well-known in criminal justice, and even in civil matters, which are handled by monetary payments, the more time that goes by, there's a real problem. The reason we have a speedy justice, the reason a speedy trial is part of the U S constitution is right to a speedy trial. The longer, the time goes by the evidence gets tenuous. The evidence get lost. The witnesses die. The memories fade, the lineages are, are corrode and erode, and this makes it harder to pinpoint perp and victim and pinpoint, even if you had perpend victim actual material, the actual material in my I'm out, which of course is crucial to restoration and reparations. At the end of the day, you want to be able to say, we're going to pay X. And if that number's wrong, some injustice is going to be done.
Speaker 1 00:11:06 All right, now, let me just transition here to famous cases, just to not be too abstract about this and give some concrete examples. And then I'll come back to the specific issue of what's being proposed with reparations, for slavery in America, perhaps one of the more recent, well recent I'm talking the last hundred years, there were a reparations demanded of Germany after world war one, Germany caused well, both world war one and world war II. One of the great disasters of the 20th century, Germany causing two world wars. But if you know your history, you know that after world war one, there was an attempt by the winners, by the allied forces to impose on Germany and the axis powers reparations. You started this war you cause mass destruction pay us. And they were indeed imposed on Germany. And this was criticized by the British, believe it or not.
Speaker 1 00:12:07 And it made famous John Maynard Keynes, John Maynard Keynes, the famous British economist was not famous in 1919 at the Versailles conference, but he was there on the part of Britain. And he was opposing the idea that Britain America and France would make Germany pay reparations. He said the reparations were too burdensome, that it would keep a Germany's economy, a flat on its back. For many years later, when Germany had the hyperinflation in 1923, canes blamed it on this desire to print their way out of, uh, the reparations. Eventually in the twenties, the reparation demands on Germany were whittled down to almost nothing, but that was a famous case because it was argued that it led to Hitler. Now imagine saying, we don't really want reparations because it leads to such animosity and such resentment and such revenge that it will deliver up someone like Hitler. Uh, almost no one mentions this in regards to reparations today, the idea of a backlash by those who are forced to pay now, if justice is the criteria who cares, whether Germany is upset or not about paying reparations, if it's owed the reparations that you pay, the reputations would be, would be the art.
Speaker 1 00:13:29 And that's actually my argument. Um, here's another case, but it's not actually a case it's supposed to go all the way back to the Egyptian pyramids. Now this goes way back, right? This is 5,000 years ago, 5,000 years, BC, the pyramids were built by slaves. So we're talking about slavery here. Has anyone ever gone back and said, oh my God, slaves built the pyramids Egypt owes money to these descendants of these slaves. I suppose you could try to trace not, not easy to do trace it. Nobody in Egypt is demanding that the Egyptian government, uh, uh, recompense the heirs of the slaves who built the pyramids, what's even more amazing is the pyramids are filled with wealth. The whole point of the pyramids was these were tombs for these pharaohs and the pharaohs would put all their wealth in the king, Todd and others, right?
Speaker 1 00:14:25 So it's not it's, this is not a difficult case. The wealth is in there. You can easily go in, but no they're treated as majestic relics and European Westerners go and tramp tramp around the pyramids and genuflect before the, the, the, the thing. And, and it's considered a cultural icon, uh, not a sign of, uh, not a sign of past injustice and evils to be rectified. So that's kind of interesting, um, uh, the internment of Japanese citizens by FDR under world war two, if you know that case, you know that during world war two, when Pearl Harbor happened, after you are rounded up thousands of Japanese families and business people on the west coast, mostly on the west coast and put them in interment camps on the grounds that they were a national security risk. And, uh, you could argue that that was really terrible.
Speaker 1 00:15:29 And there had been arguments for reparations after the war ended. And nothing happened until the Reagan years. How interesting, not until Reagan was president in the 1980s, did Congress come up with a plan to pay reparations to the heirs? Now this is 1980. So this is 40 years after it happened, right? Uh, to those interns. Now, how does that relate to my criteria? You do have some time there to identify who's who, I mean, the lists and the documentation is quite clear. It's not vague. It's not like, uh, Dachau and the Holocaust, uh, prisons. Uh, everyone knew who was exactly was incarcerated, who was harmed. And, uh, they came up with a figure to their great credit. This is something I endorsed, uh, in the mid eighties. And they paid these EHRs reparations. Very interesting, by the way, after world war II. I don't know if you know this Germany pay reparations to Jews starting in 1952 west Germany, by the way, not east Germany, not communist Germany, west Germany started paying people in Israel, uh, an amount of over time to, as reparations for the Holocaust now that when you even think of reparations for the Holocaust, you think no amount of money is going to do anything, but that, that is not widely known that.
Speaker 1 00:16:56 And by the way, to this day, Germany pays heirs of Holocaust victims, money every year. And sometimes it ups the amount it pays. Um, that's quite interesting. And to me perfectly, just again, it's in this case, not much time has gone by, you know, 1952 is only seven years after the warning and seven years after the slave labor camps and, and the Holocaust camps were emptied. So the idea of identifying who's who now in the case of Israel, by the way, only like 20% of it goes specifically to families, 80% of it goes to the Israeli government, whether the Israeli government waste that money or not. Um, uh, I'm not sure. Right? So let me go now to the actual case of us slavery, the 16, 19 project, if you know, is the argument that slaves were first brought to north America, uh, in 16, 19, but that's really quite unfair if you're going to hold the United States accountable for slavery and reparations, why the United States itself, it wasn't formed until 1790.
Speaker 1 00:18:08 All right. So I don't want to quibble here, but that's a long time. I mean, that's 155 years. So even if you did this calculus, it's simply improper the whole New York times 16, 19 project. The idea of starting a clock ticking from 16, 19, the colonies in America from 16, 19 to 17, 76 were basically a combination of British French and Spanish colonies. So anything that was done during that time, if you argued from this standpoint would be owed by the British Spanish and French governments, not by the United States, the United States to its great credit when it was formed in 1790, largely at the behest of the Federalists, Hamilton, Washington, and others who, by the way, were antislavery built into the constitution, the end of slavery. They said there could be no more importation of slaves by 1808. So were there various things put into the U S constitution that put an end, like a time fuse, put an end to slavery.
Speaker 1 00:19:18 Um, but here's the real issue today claims for reparations of slavery, even if you dated from 1790 are so distant and so tenuous. And so incalculable that it entails an injustice to do it. Let me repeat that. It's so far back and so tenuous in connection to the actual perpetrators, that it would be an injustice to actually have reparations in my view, to have reparations for slavery, not that this wrong shouldn't have recompensed it's that you cannot make those who didn't do the crime, do the fine. And likewise, I go the other way, you cannot have those who were not victimized, get money. That's just unjust. It's unjust to pay someone for crimes committed against other people. So the whole idea of reparations to me is in the context of applying it to American slavery is unjust. It's actually unjust, not just impractical. There, there are various views of this, by the way, some people think it's just an impractical in another hard to calculate others.
Speaker 1 00:20:35 Think it's practical. They come up with calculations and they think it's just, my view is it's incalculable and unjust. So that's a third category that almost no one talks about, but the main problem I have with it is it's unjust. You cannot collectivize guilt. I'm not one to often quote the Bible. And I think somewhere in the Bible that says you cannot visit the sins of the father upon the son. Why does the Bible say that it basically says the sun is not responsible for what the father did now, the best argument for reparations is that okay, maybe your ancestors, uh, are too far distant from you, but to the extent they did benefit you're in a position today that with a trailing influence, you're benefited by the fact that you are the descendant of slave owners or something like that. If that can be shown, I have no problem with that, but you understand the, the principle the longer, the time goes by the harder it is to make those connections.
Speaker 1 00:21:43 All right. One other point on American, the Americans, uh, particularly the American case I've heard Obama and others say incredulous it's incredulous to me that the us economy was built on the backs of slaves. Not understand the numbers here. When the S uh, was formed in 1792, there were about 3 million slaves, mostly in the south. By the time they were emancipated in 1865, there were about 4 million slaves. So the number had increased by 4 million, but they were a lesser share of the entire us population, because obviously in 70 years, the population had grown enormously. Um, but, um, the, the issue of the U S economy having been built on the backs of slaves is so wrong and so easily refutable that I'll just mention a couple things. One, the end of civil war saw the complete decimation of the Southern economy. I mean, the complete decimation Sherman burned Atlanta to the ground.
Speaker 1 00:22:54 The economy was decimated. There was no economy down there. Okay. So now what it amounts to is, and this will sound weird. I know it's like a clean slate in 1865, there was no Southern economy. It was a complete basket case, which amounts to saying anything that slaves built up to then is gone. So, especially in the 50 year period, after 1865, what I call the golden age of capitalism would mark Twain marked as the gilded age, 1865 to world war one, you had a free labor market. You had the abolition of slavery. You did have the south still trying to cling to Jim Crow laws, which is why we needed reconstruction, but all the wealth created after the civil war was basically created in a free economy. So what was not built on the backs of slaves, it was built on free labor, free capital free trade, the gold standard, no income tax, just a glorious period.
Speaker 1 00:24:06 So don't let anyone tell you that American wealth, even, even circa 1915, I mean, with the banks and the bridges and the steel and the cars and all the things that existed in world war II, none of that was built by slavery cause, uh, that stuff was wiped out in 1865. So it, what we have today is totally based on the more north capitalist model. And in that regard too, you cannot say, and look at today's, uh, economy and say, see how wealthy we are today that was built on the backs of blacks. So give them, you know, half the national income, which is by the way, the estimates, the estimates from these reparations people is that $12 trillion be spent on groups. Uh, that's half the GDP today. So it's not a small amount. These estimates are done in various ways. We can talk about it in the Q and a, but that's basically the, the dollar amount involved.
Speaker 1 00:25:11 So the fundamental a by the way, another example of this, which is very you'll remember this from your childhood days, did you ever hear the, hear the argument? Oh my gosh. The Dutch bought Manhattan for $24. That's terrible. They, they gave, uh, the Indians trinkets and, and baubles, uh, for $24. And of course what's the implication, well, Manhattan today is, uh, or it used to be one of the wealthiest five miles on the planet. Yeah. So in retrospect, in hindsight, you can look and say, you can look and say, look how wealthy this place is. What I rip off, what a theft. Yeah. But if the Indians had run Manhattan without selling it for $24, if they had run Manhattan for the last 200 years, it would not be the wealthy place. It is. So don't be fooled by that one, either. This is very common today, by the way, people are running around saying you don't have the right to the land you're sitting on because you stole it from the Indians.
Speaker 1 00:26:11 I mean, this is a separate issue, right? That the issue of reparations to quote unquote native Americans, by the way, they're not native Americans, because America is a, is a European phrase. America Vespucci is an Italian who came here in America is named after him. So, so it doesn't even make sense to speak of Americans here before the Europeans got here, but more important. This is really crucial. When did Columbus arrive in the Western hemisphere? 1492. When was that? 200 years before the great John Locke discovered an explicated a theory of property, a theory of how can you come to own private property? It's a very famous theory. It's in his second treatise of government. It's chapter five on property and his in short, his S his argument was you mix your labor with natural resources and produce something. And since you own yourself, you own your labor.
Speaker 1 00:27:15 And since you own your labor, you own the products of your labor. He was the first one to come up with a plausible, and I think still legitimate argument for private property. And notice when it's based on, it's not based on some Explorer showing up on some shore, putting his foot down and saying, I own everything from coast to coast, no locks. You was, that's not what makes you own things. You own things because you produce things and it isn't enough to just claim land. Well, what's so interesting about the native Americans as they call them is they were nomads. They were nomadic, meaning they moved around. They didn't actually believe in private property. They opposed private property. They were communalist and nomads. And so there was going to be this clash between the w the, uh, European view of private property and the, uh, Indian view of property and a view that says you don't own it until you make it is going to clash with one that says, no, we're just roaming over this. We're hunter gatherers, and we're just roaming over areas. And we claim to own it. Well, you don't really own it. Not actually, if you don't own something, it can't be stolen from you. So this is a very interesting, subtle thing, but, and somewhat off our topic, but I want it to show you that it's related to issues. They are even, there are reparations to native Americans.
Speaker 1 00:28:46 Uh, let me end with just a couple of thoughts about where I think this is going, and then I'd love to hear your, your comments I'm for a study of this by Congress, if it's fair, and the people on the commission really study it from all different angles, because I think it would really highlight the role played by the U S government, sadly, over the years in institutionalizing slavery. I mean, it was really a very unfortunate, ugly episode, but the us was not the first one to have slavery. Slavery was fountains of years old, and the British and Americans generally should be credited with the, uh, uh, abolition of slavery. They had abolitionists arguments, they had abolitionists institutions and this current trashing of America, Britain, and all sorts of Western cultures on the grounds that they're institutionally racist is really to me, immoral and improper and an historic.
Speaker 1 00:29:45 So that's another reason I wanted to talk about this tonight. I think you need, uh, ammunition and some clarity on this issue, um, because I know those of you, most of those of you listening cared about justice and you, you're not for slavery or not for racism. And so you might be uncertain about, well, what is our, what should be our position on this? Um, last thing I'll say there are some people who say, not just that the U S government should make this payment. Of course, that means everybody who pays taxes, which means actually by the way, only 20 or 30% of the people in the country pay taxes. So it's not even, it's not even as if, if this were done, all Americans would be contributing to reparations. It's really a small sliver of people, many have, who had nothing to do with slavery.
Speaker 1 00:30:34 So that's a massive injustice, but I just want to provocatively suggest that if you really want to dig deep and find perpetrators, they're all over the place in the democratic party, it's the democratic party that for the last hundred and 50 years has advocated slavery has tried to claim the slavery. When the civil war was won, they tried to prevent reconstruction in the south. They even prevented a reparations plan at the end of the war called 40 acres and a mule. Do you ever hear that from your high school days? What was 40 acres and a mule Sherman, and, and Lincoln, the Republicans offered the freed black slaves, 40 acres and a mule after the war. And it was being implemented until they killed Lincoln. And then his successor, the Democrat, Andrew Johnson, uh, reneged on the promise. So there is an entire history of, you know, this there's an entire history from the democratic party being really terrible racists and slavers and Jim Crow advocates.
Speaker 1 00:31:49 And so that's worth bringing up when we hear about reparations arguments, if you really want to identify perpetrators, let's not forget that there's a, there's a particular political party in America with a long lineage of opposing slavery and racism. It's called the Republican party. And there's a long history of a party in the United States, pushing, uh, racism and slavery. And it's the Democrat party. So now imagine saying someone to someone today, okay, I'm for reparations, the democratic party needs to come up with trillions of dollars and give it to all those blacks and their heirs that they've harmed over the centuries. I mean, almost nobody says that, but that's actually the truth of the matter. Okay. I'm going to stop there. Questions and comments. I'd love to hear.
