Reparations and Private Property (Correction & Clarification)
Incorrectly I gave the impression in this entry on The Paleo Blog that all concepts of reparations derive from an unjust starting point in ethical theory. Rather, reparations are purely libertarian and just, if applied and used properly. The differentiation is that, on the one hand, they avoid the "tribal revenge" collectivism from left-liberalism's concept of reparations and, on the other hand, they avoid conservatism's muddled understanding of private property rights.
Simply put: B1 steals X property from A1, and both later die. A2 is the descendant and inheritor of A1's property and B2 is also a descendant and inheritor of B1's property. Does A2 have a right to take X from B2? The answer would have to be yes. If A1 had got back what was justly his when alive, then A2 would have inherited it and the possession of X would never have had anything to do with B2. B1 had no just title claim to X and no claim to give it to anyone else. No real property title was past down. Equally, if X did not change hands from B2 to A2 and instead this was left to the descendants of them, the same standard would have to apply. Justice cannot have an expiration date if justice is to be justice. A3 would therefore have a just claim, if he could prove it, to B3's holding of X. Likewise for the relationship of A3 and B5, or even, logically, An and Bn. But, clearly, the further we move in time the more difficult it would be to prove. So only in that sense is there a "statute of limitations."
Black slavery reparations consequently would be just if and only if it matched the above. For example, say B1's claim to X was produced on the back of A1, B1's slave. Would An have a right to it and would Bn have to give it up (if it can be proven)? The right answer, if private property rights mean anything, would be yes.
Or, to look at a couple of different cases, say that the A family died out and there is no An alive in the present. What about X? Since Bn, where n >1, did not himself steal X (or be a part in the theft in any way) he can then be considered a just owner; an owner that nonaggressively "homesteaded" X from a state of nonownership. However, say that B1 is alive but the A family is still gone. In this case it could not be said that B1 justly owns X in any conceivable sense. He obtained X through aggression and can have no claim to it. Hence, X must be considered open to "homesteading" to nonaggressors. (Not only does this comply with our intuition, it's also axiomatic-deductive in its justice. It seems just as absurd to say the opposite is true in these cases as it would be to say that self-ownership in man's physical body is false.)
It is worth adding, to conclude this blog entry, that the indefensibility of today's statist society is directly determined by an analysis of the justice and ethics of private property. Whereas utilitarian defenses are important to show how private property and free markets are the very source of civilization and that all statist interventions into the economy are counterproductive, pure utilitarianism is not enough to defend a free society. In practice, utilitarianism by itself leads to a defense of the status quo of the current composition of property title distribution, despite it being just or unjust. And who defines the status quo? The State! But it is not the State that makes something just or unjust. It is not that the State says that private slavery is wrong that it is wrong; anymore than when the State said private slavery was right and good that it was right and good at the time. Those that disregard self-ownership and private property rights, of homesteading and contractualism, are to fall into the trap of positivism-relativism and will end up at slavery.
Read: Chapter four, especially the section "Toward a Critique of Existing Property Titles," of Egalitarianism As a Revolt Against Nature by Murray N. Rothbard. For further reading, see chapter nine of The Ethics of Liberty.
