Slavery and Collective Guilt

Much has been said about the role of slavery in the history of the United States, and while that history cannot be recounted in a brief article, it is important to clarify some of the ethical principles underpinning the institution of slavery in light of contemporary debates about reparations for slavery. A number of states have expressed an intention to pay slavery reparations. For example, the New York Times reports that,

Almost 200 years after slavery officially ended in New York, the City Council passed legislation Thursday authorizing a commission to study the devastating effects of human bondage and to develop a plan to make reparations for the harms caused.

In these debates, rather than confine ourselves to considering whether the states generously offering to pay reparations can even afford it—as the reparations bill from California alone is said to amount to $800 billion—it is also important to address the underlying ethical concerns.

Unethical and immoral

From a Rothbardian perspective, the reason why slavery is wrong is that it violates the principle of self-ownership. Self-ownership is a natural right vested in all human beings, from which it follows that no man can own another. In the Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard cites with approval the following quote from William Lloyd Garrison:

The right to enjoy liberty is inalienable…. Every man has a right to his own body—to the products of his own labor—to the protection of law…. That all these laws which are now in force, admitting the right of slavery, are, therefore, before God, utterly null and void…and therefore they ought instantly to be abrogated.

From the perspective of Roman law, Edgar Shumway explains that slavery was a legal institution founded in both the law of persons and the law of property: the slave was,

…an object of property and possession, alienable like other property…but the fact that the slave was a human being differentiated him from other objects of property, and assimilated his position in certain important respects to that of a descendant under parental power.

Clearly, examined in light of Rothbard’s principles of ethics, Roman law on this point is unethical and immoral. But it is one thing to pronounce that historic legal codes were “ethically unsatisfactory,” as Shumway puts it, and quite another to assert that something ought now to be done to cure and redress the historic wrong. This is where the “reparations” activists go astray.

Collective guilt

We can recognize that it was wrong for African slave-traders to round up their own kin and sell them into slavery, but does it follow that we should now demand that modern African states like Nigeria must atone for those historic crimes? Similarly, it was wrong for Arab pirates to raid the British Isles for centuries, seizing English, Cornish, and Irish people from their homes and selling them in North African slave markets, but does this mean modern North African states like Algeria and Tunisia should pay reparations to the UK?

As an ethical matter, the claim that people today should pay for historic crimes overlooks the basic moral principle that punishment for a crime can only be meted out upon the criminal himself, not upon his descendants. As David Gordon reminds us, “moral responsibility is individual rather than collective.”

In addition, utilitarian considerations may arise as to the feasibility of correcting historic wrongs by levying financial penalties on today’s taxpayers. Would taxpayers be asked to recompense all historic wrongs that have ever occurred in the history of the country? If not, how would it be decided which historical wrongs “deserve” reparations and which ones do not? Walter E. Williams pointed out that, “In addition to black Americans, the Irish, Italians, Jews, Puerto Ricans, Poles, Chinese, Japanese, Swedish, and most other ethnic groups have shared the experience of being discriminated against by one means or another.” To that we could add the experience of the South under Reconstruction. Lew Rockwell explains that, “After the War Between the States, the Union’s ‘Reconstruction’ tyrannized the South”—a grave injustice for which no restitution is being offered. No principled argument has been presented by reparations claimants as to why some ethnic groups deserve reparations but not others.

On the ethical question, one view sometimes put forward is that slavery is the “worst” historic injustice and, therefore, distinguishable from all other historic injustices. This is not a principled view, as slavery is not worse than murder—should victims of murder, regardless of their race, then not be entitled to reparations above victims of slavery?

Some people have tried to construct a hierarchy of evil based for example on the numbers who were victims of the crime or the longer-lasting legacies such as income and wealth gaps between different groups today. The problem with all these victimology measures of “who suffered the most” is that suffering is subjective and all comparisons of whose suffering was “worst” have no principled foundation. An ethical position should be based on sound moral principles, not by attempting to evaluate who suffered the “worst.”

Laurence Thomas’s analysis of “The Morally Obnoxious Comparisons of Evil: American Slavery and the Holocaust” illustrates what happens when such an attempt is made—all groups feel that the historic evil their group suffered has been belittled and derided. Rather than yielding a clear “winner” of the victimology stakes, it only serves to mire all groups even deeper in their own sense of grievance.

For these reasons, Murray Rothbard rejected the entire notion of collective guilt. In his essay “Guilt Sanctified,” he argued:

Now, the entire culture is characterized by massive collective guilt, and if anyone fails to give due public lip-service to a long list of solemnly avowed guilts, he is literally driven from public life. Guilt is everywhere, all-pervasive, and brought to us by the same scoundrels who once promised us easy liberation. A brief rundown: guilt for centuries of slavery, guilt for the oppression and rape of women, guilt for the Holocaust, guilt for the existence of the handicapped, guilt for eating and killing animals, guilt for being fat, guilt for not recycling your garbage, guilt for “desecrating the Earth.”

Rather than trying to assess who deserves money from taxpayers for their historic grievances and how much they should be paid, we should reject the entire premise and guard against falling into the traps of collective guilt and collective punishment.

Originally Posted at https://mises.org/

zerohedge
Economics , News , Politics , Science
November 22, 2024
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Utility Companies Are Not On Our Side

Authored by Linnea Leuken & H. Sterlin Burnett via RealClearPolitics,

When electric power was a novel idea and just beginning to be adopted in urban centers, the industry had a Wild West feel to it as multiple companies strung wires, opened power plants, and sold electricity on an unregulated market. Competition was fierce, but state and local governments concluded that the inefficiencies and redundancies endangered the public and imposed higher costs.

So states set up service territories with monopolistic or oligopolistic service providers, who were entrusted with providing reliable power and sufficient reserve for peak periods in return for being guaranteed a profit on rates proposed by the utilities but approved or set by newly established state public utility commissions (PUCs). These commissions were charged with ensuring public utilities served the general public universally within their territory, providing reliable service at reasonable rates.

Much has changed since then. Politicians began to supplant engineers to decide, based on self-interested calculations, what types of power should be favored and disfavored, and what types of appliances and modes of transportation Americans could use. As the 21st century dawned, a new consideration entered the picture: Climate change.

Under the banner of combatting global warming, utilities were at first encouraged and then coerced into adopting plans and policies aimed at achieving net zero emissions of carbon dioxide. The aim of providing reliable, affordable power – the rationale for the electric utilities’ monopolies in the first place – was supplanted by a controversial and partisan political goal. Initially, as states began to push renewable energy mandates, utilities fought back, arguing that prematurely closing reliable power plants, primarily coal-fueled, would increase energy costs, compromise grid reliability, and leave them with millions of dollars in stranded assets.

Politicians addressed those concerns with subsidies and tax credits for renewable power. In addition, they passed on the costs of the expanded grid to ratepayers and taxpayers. Effectively, elected officials and the PUCs, with a wink and a nod, indemnified utilities for power supply failures, allowing utilities to claim that aging grid infrastructure and climate change were to blame for failures rather than the increased percentage of intermittent power added to the grid at their direction.

Today, utilities have enthusiastically embraced the push for renewable (but less reliable) resources, primarily wind and solar. PUCs guarantee a high rate of return for all new power source (wind, solar, and battery) installations, which has resulted in the construction of ever more and bigger wind, solar, and battery facilities. The costlier, the more profitable – regardless of their compromised ability to provide reliable power or the cost impact on residential, commercial, and industrial ratepayers.

A new report from The Heartland Institute demonstrates the significant financial incentives from government and financiers for utilities to turn away from affordable energy sources like natural gas and coal, and even nuclear, and instead aggressively pursue wind and solar in particular. All of this is done in the name of pursuing net zero emissions, which every single major utility company in the country boasts about on their corporate reports and websites. Reliability and affordability come secondary to the decarbonization agenda.

Dominion Energy is a good example, as they are one of the most aggressive movers on climate-focused policy. Dominion CEO Robert Blue speaks excitedly about government-forced transitions to a wind- and solar-dominated grid in interviews. During one interview with a renewable energy podcast, he said:

“[S]ometimes the government needs to focus on outcomes. We’re trying to address a climate crisis, and we are going to need to move quickly to do that.” In the same interview, he expressed enthusiasm about federal policy that would achieve a government-directed transition.

And why wouldn’t he? Dominion, like most utilities, is granted government tax credits and guarantees on returns for investing in large, expensive projects like offshore wind, the most expensive source of electric power. The bigger the project, the bigger the profit with guaranteed returns.

Also, onshore wind companies have received special “take limits” from the Fish and Wildlife Service to kill protected bald eagles and golden eagles, while prosecuting oil companies if birds are injured or killed on their sites.

Net zero policies are not the environmental panacea that climate change activists proclaim. Industrial-scale wind and solar use substantially more land than conventional energy resources, disrupting ecosystems and destroying wildlife habitats in the process.

And despite recent technological advances, wind and solar are still not dispatchable resources, meaning they cannot provide consistent power at all times needed. Refuting claims made by environmentalists and utilities that wind and solar are the cheapest sources of electric power, costs have risen steeply as the use of wind and solar has increased. Customers of Duke Energy in Kentucky, for example, are paying 78% higher rates in the wake of coal-fired plant closings.

Politicians and utilities are pushing for even more electrification for appliances and vehicles despite the fact that Federal Energy Regulatory Commission officials have repeatedly warned in recent years that adding more demand for electric power while replacing reliable power sources with intermittent renewables is destabilizing the power system.

It appears that the utilities prioritize short-term profits over grid reliability or keeping costs reasonable – and the government officials who are supposed to keep them in check are only encouraging them. It doesn’t need to be this way. The U.S. grid was not always this way. Only in recent years, with the obsessive pursuit of net zero, have rolling black and brownouts become so common.

Today, utility companies are sending lobbyists to conservative policymakers in order to convince them that the utilities have our best interests in mind. Their track record tells another story. Meanwhile, Americans have less reliable electricity at higher costs.

Linnea Lueken (llueken@heartland.org, X: @LinneaLueken) is a research fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute.

Tyler Durden
Fri, 11/22/2024 – 06:30