OT: More Weirdness from California...

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Saturday, May 13, 2023 at 1:37:32 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 12 May 2023 11:09:13 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:

On 5/11/2023 5:23 PM, John Larkin wrote:

Personally, I\'m happy that the Romans colonized England and that
England colonized Ireland next. If none of that had happened, I
wouldn\'t exist, and then where would I be?

Yeah it\'s one of those angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin style questions that I imagine sometimes preoccupies people who view all of history as being just prologue to their own unique life.

Of course it is. And my existence does preoccupy me; it affects me almost every day.

Not in any useful way.

> The cool thing about chaos theory is that you can conjecture most any causality (today\'s news: brush fires in South Africa four years ago caused the drought (now floods) in California) and you\'re right.

If you are ignorant enough to think that chaos theory can be used to link any random event in the past with a-hard-to-predict event happening at moment, you\'ve definitely found a \"get out of thinking\" card.

Playing that card does have the downside that it identifies you as a self-deluding dimwit, but John Larkin has been doing that for years.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Saturday, May 13, 2023 at 4:13:25 AM UTC+10, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Fri, 12 May 2023 10:42:15 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs <bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thursday, May 11, 2023 at 5:24:56?PM UTC-4, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 11 May 2023 16:41:25 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:
On 5/11/2023 3:33 PM, John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 11 May 2023 11:13:37 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen <lang...@fonz.dk> wrote:
torsdag den 11. maj 2023 kl. 19.03.11 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:
On Thu, 11 May 2023 17:41:02 +0100, Cursitor Doom <c...@notformail.com> wrote:

<snip>

Rome was totally over-extended on a global scale, and threw in the towel in Britannia in the early 5th century. This cued a German tribal collective known as Angles to move in and settle the place, from which the name England ultimately derived. The most recent archeological evidence is that the Angles did not conquer England militarily, they just moved in en masse and started living there. The place was a perpetual battleground between the Angles-Saxons and Scandinavians who wanted a piece of the place too.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Angle-people

For some inexplicable reason it remains a prime destination for all sorts of people to this day. They all seem to want a piece of that craggy, soggy, rain-soaked lump of moss. What draws them to it? Could it be the awful climate? The indigenous racists who don\'t want them? The sky-high property prices? A weak and ineffectual government? The terrible food? Who knows!

Most of the people who want to get into the UK seem to come from war-torn bits of Africa. British agriculture got subsidised into a very productive state when the UK was part of the EC, and the potential immigrants will eat anything so long as it is vaguely nourishing. They don\'t care about the quality of the cooking.

The UK has put in a bit of work on making itself a Disneyland-like tourist destination. The recent coronation presumably sucked in lots of undiscriminating tourists, which might have justified the ridiculous expense.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[whit3rd]

On Friday, May 12, 2023 at 8:37:32 AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

The cool thing about chaos theory is that you can conjecture most any
causality (today\'s news: brush fires in South Africa four years ago
caused the drought (now floods) in California) and you\'re right.

Huh? Chaos theory isn\'t a magic phrase meaning all your fantasies...
chaos results from nearly-noninvertible matrices, with near-zero eigenvalues,
whose inverses have very large eigenvalues. Apply such an inverse multiple
times (to model, for instance, a daily progression) and you find that
the resulting model is good for a week, noise-sensitive for a month,
and entirely unworkable over decades.

Chaos theory really IS a meaningful phrase. It means your math models can be
trapdoors; OK if worked in the present-as-input, past-as-output directions, but
giving wacky results in the other direction. Sometimes, wacky in both directions.

Heck, extrapolation using polynomials is \'chaotic\' in a sense: all polynomials
blow up at plus-or-minus infinity, so all polynomial models are going to give
largely bad projections when you leave the data region...

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 12 May 2023 23:20:24 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Friday, May 12, 2023 at 8:37:32?AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

The cool thing about chaos theory is that you can conjecture most any
causality (today\'s news: brush fires in South Africa four years ago
caused the drought (now floods) in California) and you\'re right.

Huh?

It\'s a simple concept; let me explain:

If you could run two parallel universes, and could make a tiny change
to one of them, you could prove interesting things. Like, if you
delayed Napoleon\'s breakfast one day by one minute, the height of the
Golden Gate Bridge would change... a provable causality.

The brush fire theory was in our newspaper this week, and is obviously
true.

 

[Cursitor Doom]

On Sat, 13 May 2023 07:00:36 -0700, John Larkin
<jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 12 May 2023 23:20:24 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Friday, May 12, 2023 at 8:37:32?AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

The cool thing about chaos theory is that you can conjecture most any
causality (today\'s news: brush fires in South Africa four years ago
caused the drought (now floods) in California) and you\'re right.

Huh?

It\'s a simple concept; let me explain:

If you could run two parallel universes, and could make a tiny change
to one of them, you could prove interesting things. Like, if you
delayed Napoleon\'s breakfast one day by one minute, the height of the
Golden Gate Bridge would change... a provable causality.

The brush fire theory was in our newspaper this week, and is obviously
true.

There\'s a website I came across a few years ago - can\'t recall the URL
- which was able to provide proof - of this kind - that all sorts of
improbable causes resulted in the most disconnected outcomes
imaginable. You could input events and it would show a chain of
causality. Good fun to mess around with and makes a mockery of the
serious study of this subject.

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 13 May 2023 16:51:47 +0100, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sat, 13 May 2023 07:00:36 -0700, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 12 May 2023 23:20:24 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Friday, May 12, 2023 at 8:37:32?AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

The cool thing about chaos theory is that you can conjecture most any
causality (today\'s news: brush fires in South Africa four years ago
caused the drought (now floods) in California) and you\'re right.

Huh?

It\'s a simple concept; let me explain:

If you could run two parallel universes, and could make a tiny change
to one of them, you could prove interesting things. Like, if you
delayed Napoleon\'s breakfast one day by one minute, the height of the
Golden Gate Bridge would change... a provable causality.

The brush fire theory was in our newspaper this week, and is obviously
true.

There\'s a website I came across a few years ago - can\'t recall the URL
- which was able to provide proof - of this kind - that all sorts of
improbable causes resulted in the most disconnected outcomes
imaginable. You could input events and it would show a chain of
causality. Good fun to mess around with and makes a mockery of the
serious study of this subject.

There was the Ben Franklin \"for want of a nail\" thing. But in a big
chaotic system, there is not necessarily such a discrete path of
causality. Small changes just diffuse effects everywhere, and the
whole system changes.

It\'s really scary. Your probability of existing is basically zero.

One of my favorite circuits is the blocking-oscillator super-regen
detector. It\'s crazy simple and basically uses chaos theory to get
astounding RF sensitivity from one tube or transistor. Another
Armstrong invention.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Sunday, May 14, 2023 at 12:02:01 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 12 May 2023 23:20:24 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whi...@gmail.com
wrote:
On Friday, May 12, 2023 at 8:37:32?AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

The cool thing about chaos theory is that you can conjecture most any
causality (today\'s news: brush fires in South Africa four years ago
caused the drought (now floods) in California) and you\'re right.

Huh?

It\'s a simple concept; let me explain:

It\'s simple but false.

If you could run two parallel universes, and could make a tiny change
to one of them, you could prove interesting things. Like, if you
delayed Napoleon\'s breakfast one day by one minute, the height of the
Golden Gate Bridge would change... a provable causality.

That not an explanation, just an assertion. For starters, you haven\'t got two parallel universes to play with.

> The brush fire theory was in our newspaper this week, and is obviously true.

It\'s almost certainly total nonsense. Trumps claims about have having his victory in the 2020 election stolen from him do get published in newspapers, but that doesn\'t make them true.

The famous \"butterfly effect\" was a thought experiment designed to illustrate that point that particular weather simulation models were peculiarly sensitive to starting conditions. It wasn\'t so much what happened as when it happened, and if you want to change the weather flapping a butterfly\'\'s wing isn\'t an effective way of getting a particular result.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Sunday, May 14, 2023 at 2:22:57 AM UTC+10, John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 13 May 2023 16:51:47 +0100, Cursitor Doom <c...@notformail.com> wrote:
On Sat, 13 May 2023 07:00:36 -0700, John Larkin <jla...@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:
On Fri, 12 May 2023 23:20:24 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whi...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Friday, May 12, 2023 at 8:37:32?AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

<snip>

> One of my favorite circuits is the blocking-oscillator super-regen detector. It\'s crazy simple and basically uses chaos theory to get astounding RF sensitivity from one tube or transistor. Another Armstrong invention.

He means positive feedback. Too much and the results are unpredictable and useless. Just a little less and you have a lot of gain.

I\'ve used it to linearise a platinum resistance temperature sensor. So did Honeywell.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Joe Gwinn]

On Sat, 13 May 2023 16:51:47 +0100, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

On Sat, 13 May 2023 07:00:36 -0700, John Larkin
jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:

On Fri, 12 May 2023 23:20:24 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Friday, May 12, 2023 at 8:37:32?AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

The cool thing about chaos theory is that you can conjecture most any
causality (today\'s news: brush fires in South Africa four years ago
caused the drought (now floods) in California) and you\'re right.

Huh?

It\'s a simple concept; let me explain:

If you could run two parallel universes, and could make a tiny change
to one of them, you could prove interesting things. Like, if you
delayed Napoleon\'s breakfast one day by one minute, the height of the
Golden Gate Bridge would change... a provable causality.

The brush fire theory was in our newspaper this week, and is obviously
true.

There\'s a website I came across a few years ago - can\'t recall the URL
- which was able to provide proof - of this kind - that all sorts of
improbable causes resulted in the most disconnected outcomes
imaginable. You could input events and it would show a chain of
causality. Good fun to mess around with and makes a mockery of the
serious study of this subject.

Google for spurious correlations.

Joe Gwinn

 

[bitrex]

On 5/11/2023 5:55 PM, Cursitor Doom wrote:

IRRC JL not only thinks reparations are not a great idea (common
opinion) but is also of the opinion that \"colonization was the best
thing to happen to a lot of places\" (lunatic fringe opinion)

Colonization was a seriously bad idea, but you have to remember that
the standards of the time were vastly different to those of today and
we can\'t keep fighting yesterday\'s battles. It\'s time to move on and
recognize the new threats which imperil us all today - threats which
could wipe out the entirety of humanity in a heartbeat. We have never
been closer to worldwide destruction than we are today (with the
possible exception of 1962).

Correct, which is why eliminating systemic racism in e.g. the criminal
justice system is a good idea.

Systemic racism in that system in the US doesn\'t exist because every
police officer is e.g. a bigot against blacks. If it were really that
way it\'s highly unlikely any black people would ever sign up for the
job, but they regularly do.

Any logically consistent theory of the concept must also explain how
five black officers could beat another black man to death, it\'s not just
whites committing such atrocities:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tyre_Nichols>

The explanation is that it\'s systemic - as a dubious analogy the US
criminal justice system is like how Windows/IBM was for a long time;
crushed under the weight of its own history and need for
backwards-comparability. A poorly-conceived \"legacy system\" that runs
primarily on inertia, it\'s still fighting yesterday\'s battles.

 

[bitrex]

On 5/13/2023 11:51 PM, bitrex wrote:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tyre_Nichols

The explanation is that it\'s systemic - as a dubious analogy the US
criminal justice system is like how Windows/IBM

Meant to write Windows/Intel, IBM seems to have historically usually had
a better reputation than either Microsoft, or the cops

 

[bitrex]

On 5/12/2023 2:10 PM, Cursitor Doom wrote:

Rome was totally over-extended on a global scale, and threw in the towel in Britannia in the early 5th century. This cued a German tribal collective known as Angles to move in and settle the place, from which the name England ultimately derived. The most recent archeological evidence is that the Angles did not conquer England militarily, they just moved in en masse and started living there. The place was a perpetual battleground between the Angles-Saxons and Scandinavians who wanted a piece of the place too.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Angle-people

For some inexplicable reason it remains a prime destination for all
sorts of people to this day. They all seem to want a piece of that
craggy, soggy, rain-soaked lump of moss. What draws them to it? Could
it be the awful climate? The indigenous racists who don\'t want them?
The sky-high property prices? A weak and ineffectual government? The
terrible food? Who knows!

The US bills itself as \"The Greatest Country in the World\" particularly
in conservative circles.

Then some of the same people seem to get pissed when people will try
anything, even acting illegally to get here.

IDK, if they don\'t want people to come maybe they should try the slogan
\"America: it\'s Not All That\" instead?

 

[whit3rd]

On Saturday, May 13, 2023 at 7:02:01 AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

On Fri, 12 May 2023 23:20:24 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whi...@gmail.com
wrote:
On Friday, May 12, 2023 at 8:37:32?AM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

The cool thing about chaos theory is that you can conjecture most any
causality (today\'s news: brush fires in South Africa four years ago
caused the drought (now floods) in California) and you\'re right.

Huh?
It\'s a simple concept; let me explain:

If you could run two parallel universes, and could make a tiny change
to one of them, you could prove interesting things. Like, if you
delayed Napoleon\'s breakfast one day by one minute, the height of the
Golden Gate Bridge would change... a provable causality.

That\'s not \'chaos theory\' at all, just an example of complex interconnectivity.
Real onset of chaos is a noise runaway, preventing the Laplace demon operation
of knowing everything about an initial condition, then predicting for all times in future.

It\'s calculable as a statistical theory.

 

[John Larkin]

On Sun, 14 May 2023 00:04:36 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

On 5/12/2023 2:10 PM, Cursitor Doom wrote:

Rome was totally over-extended on a global scale, and threw in the towel in Britannia in the early 5th century. This cued a German tribal collective known as Angles to move in and settle the place, from which the name England ultimately derived. The most recent archeological evidence is that the Angles did not conquer England militarily, they just moved in en masse and started living there. The place was a perpetual battleground between the Angles-Saxons and Scandinavians who wanted a piece of the place too.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Angle-people

For some inexplicable reason it remains a prime destination for all
sorts of people to this day. They all seem to want a piece of that
craggy, soggy, rain-soaked lump of moss. What draws them to it? Could
it be the awful climate? The indigenous racists who don\'t want them?
The sky-high property prices? A weak and ineffectual government? The
terrible food? Who knows!

The US bills itself as \"The Greatest Country in the World\" particularly
in conservative circles.

I have seen no such billboards.

I suspect there are a few French people and Chinese people who think
their country is the greatest, whatever that might mean. Probably no
English feel that way.

Then some of the same people seem to get pissed when people will try
anything, even acting illegally to get here.

Again, you invent fictitious people so you have someone to mock. You
need someone to mock. That\'s weird.

IDK, if they don\'t want people to come maybe they should try the slogan
\"America: it\'s Not All That\" instead?

They? Who?

 

[RichD]

On May 11, John Larkin wrote:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-05-08/california-reparations-task-force-votes-approve-cost-recommendations-800-billion

I thought it was a principle under civil law that when someone has
been wronged and compensation deemed appropriate, the money is taken
from those who have become unjustly enriched and given to those who
have suffered as a result of that wrongdoing. But that\'s not what\'s
being contemplated here. The persons who committed the original wrongs
are all long dead, as are those who suffered at their hands. I don\'t
see how one can justly apportion blame among those alive today.

The Constitution requires fair compensation for public takings.
The blanket reparations based on race is unworkable and probably
unconstitutional.

The slave trade was one of the worst atrocities of history. (slavery was
never practiced by anyone but white men, of course)

Now, if you\'re going to compensate their descendants, any accountant
will tell you to consider both debit and asset sides of the ledger. So:

1. The beneficiaries will be today\'s generation. Had their grandfathers not
been kidnapped (by their cousins\' grandfathers in Africa), they would be
enjoying life in Angola. hmmm... what is the material advantage of american
standard of living, relative to Angolan? income, housing, medical, recreational,
educational... etc. This ought be deducted from the reparations.

2. Life expectancy, USA: 77 years
Life expectancy, Angola: 62 years
(WHO statistics)

How much is 15 years worth, to a 62 year old? This is a tractable question.
Experimental economists ask subjects: how much would you pay for this
product/experience/convenience? Or it might be estimated through
medical and life insurance rates.

3. The basis of the claims is the forced relocation across the Atlantic.
The beneficiaries condemn that action, and presumably wish it had
never occurred. That means they rightfully belong in Congo, and presumably
wish for that alternative history. Fine - hand every payee a one way ticket to
Congo. History\'s wrong will be righted. (Lebron James surely wishes he was
born there, not to suffer the miseries of life in racist USA)

4. The blacks didn\'t emancipate themselves. It was accomplished through
the blood and treasure of yankee whites. Their survivors were never
compensated. So, reparations... to be deducted from the payouts to
slave descendants.


Finally, if the sum of the above deductions exceeds the fair reparations, it
will be collected as a tax on afro-americans, to balance their profit from
the slave trade.


Also, re culpability: recall that american traders didn\'t go hunting inland,
they bought at auction, on the coast, from arabs and africans, the kidnappers.
Why no lawsuits and reparations from Angola, Nigeria, Morocco, and Saudi?


--
Rich

 

[Cursitor Doom]

On Mon, 15 May 2023 10:42:01 -0700 (PDT), RichD
<r_delaney2001@yahoo.com> wrote:

On May 11, John Larkin wrote:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-05-08/california-reparations-task-force-votes-approve-cost-recommendations-800-billion

I thought it was a principle under civil law that when someone has
been wronged and compensation deemed appropriate, the money is taken
from those who have become unjustly enriched and given to those who
have suffered as a result of that wrongdoing. But that\'s not what\'s
being contemplated here. The persons who committed the original wrongs
are all long dead, as are those who suffered at their hands. I don\'t
see how one can justly apportion blame among those alive today.

The Constitution requires fair compensation for public takings.
The blanket reparations based on race is unworkable and probably
unconstitutional.

The slave trade was one of the worst atrocities of history. (slavery was
never practiced by anyone but white men, of course)

Now, if you\'re going to compensate their descendants, any accountant
will tell you to consider both debit and asset sides of the ledger. So:

1. The beneficiaries will be today\'s generation. Had their grandfathers not
been kidnapped (by their cousins\' grandfathers in Africa), they would be
enjoying life in Angola. hmmm... what is the material advantage of american
standard of living, relative to Angolan? income, housing, medical, recreational,
educational... etc. This ought be deducted from the reparations.

2. Life expectancy, USA: 77 years
Life expectancy, Angola: 62 years
(WHO statistics)

How much is 15 years worth, to a 62 year old? This is a tractable question.
Experimental economists ask subjects: how much would you pay for this
product/experience/convenience? Or it might be estimated through
medical and life insurance rates.

3. The basis of the claims is the forced relocation across the Atlantic.
The beneficiaries condemn that action, and presumably wish it had
never occurred. That means they rightfully belong in Congo, and presumably
wish for that alternative history. Fine - hand every payee a one way ticket to
Congo. History\'s wrong will be righted. (Lebron James surely wishes he was
born there, not to suffer the miseries of life in racist USA)

4. The blacks didn\'t emancipate themselves. It was accomplished through
the blood and treasure of yankee whites. Their survivors were never
compensated. So, reparations... to be deducted from the payouts to
slave descendants.


Finally, if the sum of the above deductions exceeds the fair reparations, it
will be collected as a tax on afro-americans, to balance their profit from
the slave trade.


Also, re culpability: recall that american traders didn\'t go hunting inland,
they bought at auction, on the coast, from arabs and africans, the kidnappers.
Why no lawsuits and reparations from Angola, Nigeria, Morocco, and Saudi?

All very logical. However, the redistributionists who inhabit the
halls of power in places like California aren\'t persuaded by logic.
They only wish to enrich the feckless at the expense of the
productive, so no such offsets will be factored into the eventual
\'compensation\' sum. Sorry about that.

 

[John Larkin]

On Mon, 15 May 2023 10:42:01 -0700 (PDT), RichD
<r_delaney2001@yahoo.com> wrote:

On May 11, John Larkin wrote:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-05-08/california-reparations-task-force-votes-approve-cost-recommendations-800-billion

I thought it was a principle under civil law that when someone has
been wronged and compensation deemed appropriate, the money is taken
from those who have become unjustly enriched and given to those who
have suffered as a result of that wrongdoing. But that\'s not what\'s
being contemplated here. The persons who committed the original wrongs
are all long dead, as are those who suffered at their hands. I don\'t
see how one can justly apportion blame among those alive today.

The Constitution requires fair compensation for public takings.
The blanket reparations based on race is unworkable and probably
unconstitutional.

The slave trade was one of the worst atrocities of history. (slavery was
never practiced by anyone but white men, of course)

Now, if you\'re going to compensate their descendants, any accountant
will tell you to consider both debit and asset sides of the ledger. So:

1. The beneficiaries will be today\'s generation. Had their grandfathers not
been kidnapped (by their cousins\' grandfathers in Africa), they would be
enjoying life in Angola.

No. They wouldn\'t exist.

And many black americans (and native americans) have some european
ancestors.




hmmm... what is the material advantage of american

standard of living, relative to Angolan? income, housing, medical, recreational,
educational... etc. This ought be deducted from the reparations.

2. Life expectancy, USA: 77 years
Life expectancy, Angola: 62 years
(WHO statistics)

How much is 15 years worth, to a 62 year old? This is a tractable question.
Experimental economists ask subjects: how much would you pay for this
product/experience/convenience? Or it might be estimated through
medical and life insurance rates.

3. The basis of the claims is the forced relocation across the Atlantic.
The beneficiaries condemn that action, and presumably wish it had
never occurred. That means they rightfully belong in Congo, and presumably
wish for that alternative history. Fine - hand every payee a one way ticket to
Congo. History\'s wrong will be righted. (Lebron James surely wishes he was
born there, not to suffer the miseries of life in racist USA)

4. The blacks didn\'t emancipate themselves. It was accomplished through
the blood and treasure of yankee whites. Their survivors were never
compensated. So, reparations... to be deducted from the payouts to
slave descendants.

The English were the first in history to act against slavery. Many
English sailors died chasing slave ships.

Good flic, Belle, 2014.

 

[Cursitor Doom]

On Mon, 15 May 2023 12:40:47 -0700, John Larkin
<jlarkin@highlandSNIPMEtechnology.com> wrote:

On Mon, 15 May 2023 10:42:01 -0700 (PDT), RichD
r_delaney2001@yahoo.com> wrote:

On May 11, John Larkin wrote:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-05-08/california-reparations-task-force-votes-approve-cost-recommendations-800-billion

I thought it was a principle under civil law that when someone has
been wronged and compensation deemed appropriate, the money is taken
from those who have become unjustly enriched and given to those who
have suffered as a result of that wrongdoing. But that\'s not what\'s
being contemplated here. The persons who committed the original wrongs
are all long dead, as are those who suffered at their hands. I don\'t
see how one can justly apportion blame among those alive today.

The Constitution requires fair compensation for public takings.
The blanket reparations based on race is unworkable and probably
unconstitutional.

The slave trade was one of the worst atrocities of history. (slavery was
never practiced by anyone but white men, of course)

Now, if you\'re going to compensate their descendants, any accountant
will tell you to consider both debit and asset sides of the ledger. So:

1. The beneficiaries will be today\'s generation. Had their grandfathers not
been kidnapped (by their cousins\' grandfathers in Africa), they would be
enjoying life in Angola.

No. They wouldn\'t exist.

And many black americans (and native americans) have some european
ancestors.




hmmm... what is the material advantage of american
standard of living, relative to Angolan? income, housing, medical, recreational,
educational... etc. This ought be deducted from the reparations.

2. Life expectancy, USA: 77 years
Life expectancy, Angola: 62 years
(WHO statistics)

How much is 15 years worth, to a 62 year old? This is a tractable question.
Experimental economists ask subjects: how much would you pay for this
product/experience/convenience? Or it might be estimated through
medical and life insurance rates.

3. The basis of the claims is the forced relocation across the Atlantic.
The beneficiaries condemn that action, and presumably wish it had
never occurred. That means they rightfully belong in Congo, and presumably
wish for that alternative history. Fine - hand every payee a one way ticket to
Congo. History\'s wrong will be righted. (Lebron James surely wishes he was
born there, not to suffer the miseries of life in racist USA)

4. The blacks didn\'t emancipate themselves. It was accomplished through
the blood and treasure of yankee whites. Their survivors were never
compensated. So, reparations... to be deducted from the payouts to
slave descendants.

The English were the first in history to act against slavery. Many
English sailors died chasing slave ships.

Good flic, Belle, 2014.

If not *the* first, then one of the first, yes.

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Tuesday, May 16, 2023 at 4:07:23 AM UTC+10, Cursitor Doom wrote:

On Mon, 15 May 2023 10:42:01 -0700 (PDT), RichD <r_dela...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On May 11, John Larkin wrote:

<snip>

4. The blacks didn\'t emancipate themselves. It was accomplished through
the blood and treasure of yankee whites.

Not entirely. Quite a few former slaves worked quite hard on the project after they has escaped their bonds

> > Their survivors were never compensated. So, reparations... to be deducted from the payouts to slave descendants.

Reparations for what? Most of the yankee whites who were against the salve trade were engaged in virtue signalling and rewarded by higher social status.

> >Finally, if the sum of the above deductions exceeds the fair reparations, it will be collected as a tax on afro-americans, to balance their profit from the slave trade.

Now we get it - one more excuse for not spending enough on the underclasses,. who need all the help they can get to get out from under years of exploitation and under-investment in education and health care. Modern America doesn\'t facilitate social mobility - having well-off parents helps more than it does in pretty much any other advanced industrial country.

https://newrepublic.com/article/100516/inequality-mobility-economy-america-recession-divergence

and reparations could undo some of that.

Also, re culpability: recall that american traders didn\'t go hunting inland, they bought at auction, on the coast, from Arabs and Africans, the kidnappers.
Why no lawsuits and reparations from Angola, Nigeria, Morocco, and Saudi?

The first three aren\'t worth sueing, and Saudi Arabia wasn\'t a nation state when this was going on.

> All very logical.

Using the kind of self-indulgent \"logic\" that Cursitor doom is famous for.

> However, the redistributionists who inhabit the halls of power in places like California aren\'t persuaded by logic.

Not the kind of \"logic\" that Cursitor Doom exploits.

> They only wish to enrich the feckless at the expense of the productive, so no such offsets will be factored into the eventual \'compensation\' sum. Sorry about that.

\"Feckless\" isn\'t required in any of the people who might get compensated. You can\'t get compensation out of people who aren\'t productive, so \"productive\" is a non-negotiable requirement in the contributors

The aim isn\'t actually to \"compensate\" anybody, but rather to offer some social groups the kind of help that society should have offered them when they were younger, but which US society - which is devoted to the idea that the people who own the country should run the country for their own benefit - chose not to invest in them back when they were younger.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney