• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Looks Like Indigenous People Own the Moon

Olmstead said:
Taking something by violence is morally dubious. Buying and then owning something that has been taken by violence is also morally dubious. Technically, all land has been taken by violence (much of it explicitly so). The only moral thing to do is obviously to abolish private ownership of all land and resources.
Click to expand...
Sounds more like communism than socialism to me. Still, come the day you rule the world you can try to impose it. I assume you did mean a worldwide abolition of private property...
theprestige said:
A lot of the land taken by violence represents ancient grievances, that have long been redressed or dismissed in one way or another. There seems to be some collective sense of a "statute of limitations" on the subject. And in many cases, the culture that took the land no longer exists anyway. Nobody is holding modern Italians liable for overrunning the Etruscans. Nobody even thinks they're unfairly occupying land that was stolen from the Etruscans. That is all literally ancient history, and for the most part everyone is content to leave it that way.

But the European overrunning of Native American land is recent history. Modern history, even. The culture that did it is continuous with the culture that occupies that land today. The culture that was driven out is continuous with the culture that claims a grievance today. It is facile and disingenuous to dismiss the Navajo grievance as if it's on par with the Etruscan grievance.
Click to expand...

Ok, so what do you propose the "non indiginous" people of the US shoud do about it that would make a significant difference?
 
theprestige said:
Dang, I was hoping that as an indigenous person you would stick around long enough to explain the rationale for the Navajo's claim of proprietary religious interest in the moon, and why we should take it seriously instead of pointing and laughing at it.
Click to expand...

It may well be that a large number of indigenous people also find the claim ridiculous.
 
Trausti said:
Well, before the White people arrived, everything was peaceful; no war; no conflict. Everyone shared in a proto-socialist paradise. Or, at least, that’s what you learn in college.
Click to expand...

Ah, the old noble savage myth.

It's nice that white guilt means the education system buys into it and kids here learn it from day 1 of school.
 
lobosrul5 said:
Navajo culture is extant; Etruscan culture is long since extinct. Once a culture is extinct there is no longer any purpose in redressing any grievances.

I once Googled what time an eclipse was occurring for a Navajo co-worker because she had to be indoors at that time and didn't want to risk googling it and seeing a picture. I was happy to learn something about her culture... once she convinced me she wasn't pulling my leg.
Click to expand...
Which shows the memes are lies, and they will benefit from being colonized.
Check the work of Bruce Gilly.
 
Olmstead said:
Taking something by violence is morally dubious. Buying and then owning something that has been taken by violence is also morally dubious. Technically, all land has been taken by violence (much of it explicitly so). The only moral thing to do is obviously to abolish private ownership of all land and resources.
Click to expand...

Last time I check "abolish private owernships of all land and resources" is just another way of phrasing "take all land and resources by violence". It certainly included a lot of violence when it was done in the Soviet Union and China.

I say that as someone who is close to being a Georgist, but the idea that taking land from people under threat of violence doesn't count as such when its your own government doing it doesn't make much sense.

That doesn't mean it can't be a good idea if done in the right way. For instance, if people are reimbursed for the value of their land. The threat of violence need not turn into the act of violence if people are given a generally good deal. You can also have more gradual transitions which can give people the time to adapt to the new regime. Both of these things (and others) can limit the need for violence in the enforcement of something like land collectivization. But the same sort of thing could be true of an outside force taking land from a local population. Negotiation backed by the threat of force is still backed but the threat of force.
 
Roboramma said:
Last time I check "abolish private owernships of all land and resources" is just another way of phrasing "take all land and resources by violence". It certainly included a lot of violence when it was done in the Soviet Union and China.

I say that as someone who is close to being a Georgist, but the idea that taking land from people under threat of violence doesn't count as such when its your own government doing it doesn't make much sense.

That doesn't mean it can't be a good idea if done in the right way. For instance, if people are reimbursed for the value of their land. The threat of violence need not turn into the act of violence if people are given a generally good deal. You can also have more gradual transitions which can give people the time to adapt to the new regime. Both of these things (and others) can limit the need for violence in the enforcement of something like land collectivization. But the same sort of thing could be true of an outside force taking land from a local population. Negotiation backed by the threat of force is still backed but the threat of force.
Click to expand...

The redistribution of land and resources will obviously be prompted by a mass enlightenment of every single person on the planet due to the clear righteousness of this course of action.

More seriously, I have no illusions that this is viable or even desirable. I think it's useful as a philosophical persepective on the concept of ownership and could help drive the adoption of better social policies.
 
Steve said:
I will never understand why anyone would feel guilty about events that happened before they were even born. You can recognize that people were treated poorly and take action to compensate for at least some of that without any guilt whatsoever.

But ceding them the moon is not a part of that compensation.
Click to expand...

It's not so much guilt over what was done hundreds of years ago but guilt from wilfully carrying on the attitudes and mores which caused those actions into the present day and, as a result continuing the cycle of denigration and discrimination.

Remember the modern conception of racism, which still holds far too much sway, was created to give moral justification to western European cultures' mass enslavement of people from African cultures. Before slavery and helotage became an exclusive "preserve" of non white people, racism didn't exist in the same way and with the same level of virulent harm.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom