Something to make you think: should the government be involved in trying to fix past wrongs? Where should our focus be when it comes to past wrongs?
Should the government be involved in trying to fix past wrongs? When it comes to past wrongs, where should our attention be?
SB24-53 (linked first below) is one that I've not dived into much up til now. There are a few reasons for that, but chief among them is the fact that there was no money given to fund the bill's proposed study.**
A study and recommendation that, quoting from the Sun article linked second below, would come from a commission directing "... History Colorado to conduct historical research across areas such as housing, economic mobility, education, health care and the criminal justice system before the group can create recommendations for corrective actions."
As I say, absent the money to act, this bill was mainly just talk. Until now. Per the Sun article, there is enough private money to fund the commission and study. So it will proceed.
This now presents some questions. Difficult questions, but not necessarily difficult because they involve uncomfortable topics.
When you go looking for racism, will you find it (whether it's there or not)?
Racism exists. Racism existed in the past. Outside of things like redlining or policies that prevented the hiring of some races, however, if we go looking back at the past with the (what I will term) generous definition of racism from today, will we find things that had no racist intent or effect that we need to now fold in and try to remedy?
What kind of corrective actions can be taken? Who takes them?
I will take this up in the second post today, but if we try to use the government to take corrective actions to fix the past, we open up not only a series of difficult problems, we create a moral hazard.
Lastly, and this one is tougher to articulate, but where should our focus be?
By choosing to look at the past, by choosing to try to look back there with an eye toward corrective action, we will have to forego a focus on the here and now. Yes, understanding our past is important. Yes, teaching our past is important. Should we let that take attention away from trying to figure out ways to prevent a child from reaching his or her full potential now? From trying to figure out ways to help someone turn their life around now?
This bill (passed by Democrats and signed by Polis on June 4th) brings with it a lot of baggage, and I think it will end up being something that no one finds satisfactory and that doesn't really help anyone.
If it does prove to be the above, I hope that at least we don't spend a lot of money to find out.
Let's talk moral hazard in post two.
**The first version of this bill was changed from being funded by the government to not having money. Quoting the Sun article: " ... the law came with no state funding. Advocates needed to raise $785,000 to pay for the first year of work during the racial equity study, because they said, the contentious bill would not have passed if its success had relied on state funding." I find this last bit curious. When have the Democrats shied from using our money to fund their pet projects and satisfy their base?
https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/sb24-053
https://coloradosun.com/2024/06/24/senate-bill-53/
What to do to fix a historic loss?
In the previous post, I talked about efforts to correct the past leaving us with tough questions, one of those being that if we do try to take corrective action, who does it and how?
This is a big topic, but I thought I might pull up a corner of what I mean and let you look under it briefly.
Recently (see the CPR article and the actual report linked first and second below), an Indian group released a report detailing losses suffered as whites moved into Colorado. To see what the report authors wanted to accomplish, look at screenshot 1 (from the report's executive summary).
Skipping a tremendous amount of detail, one of the recommendations by the group is a 0.01% fee (remember that TABOR requires a vote of the people, something that apparently the group did not want to undertake) on all real estate transactions in Colorado which would be given to tribal groups from Colorado as compensation.
Indeed here we have one way that you might try to correct the past. You might try to take from people who you think historically benefitted and give to those who you think historically lost.
That leads right to the following moral issue: is it right (fair?) to ask for reparations?
Before diving in, let me outline my approach. I want to state from the beginning that I do not think reparations are fair. I do not agree with this approach, nor do I agree with the contention that what I have now is necessarily and entirely a product of what people did over 100 years ago. I also do not agree that where Indians are now is necessarily due to those actions.
Having said that, I want to approach this question by putting those thoughts aside. In other words, I want to try and treat the arguments made by the proponents with some measure of respect and try my best to take it on its own terms.
Toward that end, the first thing I present you with is an email response from a spokesperson in response to a question about whether it's fair to ask people living now who didn't participate in taking land from anyone to pay back those admittedly bad actions.
That response is in screenshot 2.
Let's take our cue from this email and assume that people living now do have more resources (money, land, etc.) as a direct consequence of the past and that Indians living now have less as a direct consequence of the past.
Fairness would seem to dictate that those living now should therefore share some of their ill-gotten gains with those that have less because of it. Fair enough, but now we are left with the pragmatic question of "how"?
How do we apportion the guilt? How do we find the proportion of money that is owed and to whom it is owed? Who does the apportioning?
Can you imagine even a tenth of the complexity? My father in law is from Cyprus and moved here when he was in college. How much did he benefit? How much does he owe? I have lived here all my life, but one half of my family moved here from Missouri in the 20's/30's (along with a tiny tiny amount of Cherokee blood on the other side). How much have I benefitted? What do I owe? What does someone who proudly displays a pioneer license plate and who settled on the Plains as a homesteader owe?
Who do we all pay to and how much?
It is a pretty commonsense notion that people pay back sins in proportion to the amount of their sin. This notion seems to cross time and culture. We don't put people in jail for life after they jaywalk. We don't fine someone millions for littering.
If we do a flat real estate transaction tax, we will INEVITABLY be taking from some more than they sinned (or benefitted) and giving to some more than they lost.
And this would seem in direct contradiction to what Rick Williams, who headed the project which wrote the report, is quoted as saying in the CPR article:
“'We're not going to ask any person that has private property to give up any land,' said Williams. 'That would defeat the purpose because our people understand what it was like to have to give up their land and move away. And we never want that to happen to anybody else.'”
You see, even if we try to start with genuinely trying to fix the problems of the past, we run up against a horrendous difficulty. If we try to circumvent that difficulty by flattening the recompense, we run up against a moral hazard.
Thus one of the issues trying to fix the past (and esp by using the government).
Wrap up in post 3.
https://www.cpr.org/2024/06/14/new-report-details-indigenous-treatment-in-colorado/
Wrapping up the day: using the government to balance the scales of the past is fraught with problems.
We are all products of our nature and our nurture, the sum of our genes, our environment, and our choices. Tilting exclusively to one or the other is foolish: saying that the environment you are raised in has no effect on you is as dumb as saying everything you do is because of the environment you were raised in.
I think, therefore, that it is morally right to look at those who have less and those who are of groups that have been subjected to mistreatment in the past with sympathy. It is morally right to ask what we can do now to help those that struggle and want opportunity regardless of where they come from.
We humans owe each other that. We that have been fortunate to not have the same struggles owe each other that.
But this doesn't answer the question of how we try to fix the issue, of how we try to help. There are multiple correct ways to do this in my opinion, but having the government involved, particularly the coercive power of the government, subjects us all to a moral hazard.
I don't think there's a way to do this fairly if you try to get the government to take from one and give to another. Doing so cannot come without in some way harming either the innocent, taking more than someone benefitted (even if you grant that someone now can benefit from the past, not something that is a given in my book), or giving to someone more than they lost (again if you grant that someone now lost from the past).
Our government should mainly be about making the playing field level. There is a place for them to get involved in setting a tone of course, but I see that more as encouraging (not compelling) us to do what we know is right: help our fellow humans to be all that they decide they want to be.
We cannot change the past. We should learn it. We should learn from it. In terms of solving problems, we should focus on those that start where we are now. We should be focused on those that are living and what we can do to remove roadblocks to success either those that are from the outside or those that are self-imposed.