I don't have a legal background, but it seems to me that the legal case for basing reparations would be weaker because the individuals are dead, and then people who have a grandmother who was into genealogy as a hobby would be benefitted, while those who don't know would not qualify. And records on names of slaves were never particularly good. People's last names were changed all of the time.
I think corporations shown to benefit should pay, but because genealogy probably couldn't be sorted out, the general fund idea seems like it would be best.
However, has there ever been a class action suit based on people denied the right to vote in 1960? That should have some estimable cash value. Same with being denied access to a school or right to do business. It wasn't clear what value Rodney King having his civil rights violated should be, but he still won an award and they came up with a number.
> > Doing some very informal calculating several years ago, I
> arrived at a figure of six trillion dollars, or about $200,000
> per capita if there are 30,000,000 full heirs of the slaves.
> Of course this figure could be much higher or lower depending
> on how one calculated; I proceeded rather conservatively. Note
> that _only_ lost wages are considered; other charges, as for
> pain and suffering, are excluded because it is much harder to
> put a money value on them. Because the assertion of debt is
> so controversial, it is well to construct an armor-plated
> argument. Even discussing the amount, regardless of whether
> anything is ever paid, would be of enormous educational
> value.
>
> Arguments such as that the slaves received goods and services
> or that they were better off than in Africa are of no account
> in this approach, because we are discussing only wages owed.
> Since the slaves were slaves, they could not make contracts to
> receive the goods and services, and so these were gifts or
> impositions rather than compensation.
>
> I thought that the proposal for payment should specify that
> the money be paid by the governments mentioned out of general
> revenues, probably _per_stirpes_ -- that is, a person's share
> of the money would depend on the proportion of a person's
> ancestors who could reasonably be identified as having been
> slaves. This would account for persons of less than full
> ancestry in slavery. In any case the money _must_ be paid to
> individuals to prevent it from being skimmed, diverted and
> dissipated by politicians, bureaucrats, and institutional
> functionaries into "programs".
>
> I believe all of the above is thoroughly within classical
> liberal political philosophy, so that no charge of communism,
> socialism, social democracy, Welfarism, or improper reification
> of abstract categories could be brought against it -- neither
> group responsibility nor group benefit is suggested. It is
> simply the payment of an undoubted debt to those who are
> undoubtedly owed the debt by those who undoubtedly owe them.
> It is also theoretically feasible in the sense that, while
> six trillion dollars is a lot of money, it _could_ be raised
> by the governments. For instance, the Federal government
> could abolish the Department of Defense at $300 billion a year
> and pay off the six trillion in just 20 years, plus a bit of
> interest. In test runs on Usenet, my proposal caused great
> frothings at the mouth, but no substantial counter-arguments.
>
> But perhaps all of this is redundant in these environs.
>
>
>