You Were Not Harmed By Past Wrongdoing

One of the most important philosophical insights has earthshattering implications and decimates the case for reparations

Many people are quite resentful about things that happened before they were born. They think it’s quite unfair that they had to grow up in a world with various features—late stage capitalism, perhaps, or climate change. They feel personally wronged by these things.

Others support reparations for past injustices. They claim, for instance, that modern black people should be paid large amounts of money because they were made worse off by slavery. They’ll point to charts trying to estimate how much richer black people would be on average if slavery had never happened, and then claim that this justifies reparations.

These arguments are completely wrong, and I think this can be proved beyond any semblance of doubt—at a level of certainty that is rare in philosophy. These arguments, in their standard form, cannot possibly be right. You were not harmed by any wrongdoing that took place before you were born. Oh, and the same broad insight—one of the strangest and most important in philosophy—shows conclusively that George Washington caused 9/11, no one has any rights, and about half of things that seem terrible are for the best.