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From: cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Affirmative Action/Discrimination
Message-ID: <229@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Jun-85 19:21:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.229
Posted: Tue Jun 11 19:21:52 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 12-Jun-85 10:28:17 EDT
References: <346@philabs.UUCP>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Irvine, CA
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> Simply, figure out the dollar amount owed the
> survivors/decendants of forced labor (slavery), and make
> payment.  Let's call it compensation for wages deferred.
> That along with the Civil Rights Amendment making it illegal
> to discriminate in the future (actually, from '64 on) will
> even the score.  The affect?  Complete elimination of the
> Affirmative Action debate.  No more wimpering from the
> liberals about inequities, no more bitching and moaning from
> privileged classes about reverse discrimination (which I
> don't really believe can exist).
> 
> 
> 					Brian Day

What a fascinating solution.  There are a few problems, though.
What is the value of the slave's labor?  Should we deduct the room
& board?  If we did, there might not be much left.  You may recall
Adam Smith's remarks in _The_ _Wealth_ _Of_ _Nations_:

        Whatever labor the slave provides above and beyond his
        subsistence must be beaten out of him.
        
Adam Smith was observing that slave labor was an economically
inefficient system.  More recently, Thomas Sowell's book _Markets_
_And_ _Minorities_ pointed out that the areas of the South that were
the most involved with slavery were the poorest under slavery, and
remain very poor today.  He asserts that the tremendous costs 
associated with preserving slavery (which required substantial
governmental assistance) impoverished the society as a whole.
Slavery, for the most part, satisfied a need for dominance much
more than economic need, and only because the governments of the
South (and after 1850, the North) redistributed wealth to preserve
slavery did it last as long as it did.  (Want a more detailed and
very readable analysis?  Read Sowell's book.)

Should those of us whose families contributed lives and suffering to
end slavery be required to compensate blacks?  Should we try to determine
which whites today are descended from slaveowners?  How will we apportion
compensation to blacks who are part-white?

Sowell's book also contains another interesting point on the issue
of compensation.  If compensation is intended to address the discrepancy
between white and black wealth today, why not make the compensation
based on the difference between black African wealth and the wealth of
black Americans?  Except that then blacks would have to compensate
whites.  Silly?  Of course.  So is this whole idea of compensating D
at C's expense for crimes committed by A against B.