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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • Propaganda is by definition misleading and political in nature. It can lead to policies that can make life very bad for a lot of people (see Nazi propaganda).
    A misleading, nonpolitical ad, may make you waste money, but it’s unlikely to lead to police rounding up foreigners in the night. Dishonest interpersonal communications will make you lose friends but it (generally) doesn’t set political policy.
    Thats not to say that advertisements can’t be dangerous, but at least they’re regulated to limit potential damage. Anyone can push any political statement as fact and get away with it as long as it doesn’t piss off the wrong people too much.





  • Thanks, it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time since it was a big discussion topic in my circle for a while.

    I haven’t given the same level of thought to universal basic income, but I guess it would be a start. What people really need is a way to not only survive but to build wealth and pass that wealth on to their descendants. Like I said in my previous comment, education, investment opportunities, infrastructure upgrades, etc. will go a long way towards that goal. In my mind, a universal income could be a part of that but not the whole solution. And yes capitalism will find a way to ruin it but we can always hope.


  • I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and let you know that white people were indentured servants. While the conditions were just as bad as the slaves, indentured servitude was for a finite amount of time, while slavery was for life. This allowed the white people a chance to rebuild wealth and their children did not have to experience their parents’ conditions. Slaves never had that chance.


  • Imagine you’re running a very long relay race. Just after the race starts, members of the other team jump out of the bushes, beat up your runner and tie them up. This happens for several laps until someone decides that this is probably bad so they stop beating and restraining you. But the race doesn’t stop and the positions aren’t reset, but the other team is like 20 laps ahead and allowed to finish. Is that fair?

    Reparations would theoretically allow your team to catch up but former slaves and their descendants have never been allowed that. What’s more, in the UK, former slave owners were paid for the inconvenience of no longer owning slaves (edit: up until 2015!!!) while the former slaves got to continue living as second-class citizens for a while.

    Also, saying slavery ended hundreds of years ago and no one benefits from it today doesn’t work because all slave-owner countries still benefit from slave labour in the form of generational wealth, advanced infrastructure and old laws that specifically aim to disadvantage black people (whether they were abolished or still on the books the effects are still felt). Imagine your great-granddad was able to build up a fortune, how likely would it be that your family would still be rich? Imagine your great-granddad lost every cent, how likely would it be that your family would be still poor? Sure, it’s possible that situations drastically over time but that’s the exception and not the rule. There are reasons why things are the way they are.

    I believe that reparations should not be any lump sum of money but in the form of education, investment opportunities, resources and infrastructure. That way all persons living in former slave countries can benefit and pass those benefits down to their descendants.

    Edit: I believe that up to last year Barbados went after Richard Drax for reparations due to his family’s direct involvement in slavery in that country. I don’t know how successful that was, but I support it.