No they don’t. The plantation owner has title to the plantation. They may have a theoretical lien against the property, but it doesn’t pass to their descendants, no more than a mechanics/materialmen’s lien passes in descent and distribution. The value the slaves may have added to the property (not necessarily the case) was paid when the plantation owner sold the property. The subsequent purchasers are not riding on anybody’s labor.
Except it hasn’t been stolen. The only thing that’s been stolen is the market rate of compensation for their labor, and they retain a claim for that against the thief/slaveholder. The measure of damages would be the prevailing market rate for labor of their type, less the room and board they received while slaves.
If you stiff the plumber who repairs the drain in your house and he dies, it doesn’t mean his heirs several generations removed can sue the subsequent purchasers of your house twenty years later.
Olovetto, very few African slaves were actually enslaved by Europeans - for the most part, the latter paid natives(who practiced slavery themselves to a much smaller extent) for the former.
I don’t know the particulars of the case and I doubt you know everything about it, so I won’t continue on this.
Why not? Anyway, I say we drop this because we the particulars of this hypothetical are ill described.
I have the following question for you: Should slaves receive reparations?
Yes, but the only logical form they can take are as damages in tort for false imprisonment.
Next question: if the slaves didn’t receive their damages, then they die, should their descendants inherite those damages?
Complete strawman, as others have pointed out.
And therein lies your problem.
Don’t need to waste my time, since I know the gist of his argument. Sure, I used a strawman to make my point but the OP contained a question based around a ‘do libertarians think…’ strawman. Still doesnt change the fact that Indians didnt homestead much of anything.
No, for the same reason that a credit card company shouldnt be able to go after a deceased father’s son for an unpaid credit card bill that the father racked up.
Who says they did? Prove it.
And in that sense, I mean it both ways. You prove who says so, as would the claimants - have to prove, through land titles etc that it was legitimately owned by them (homesteaded) & stolen.
Block states in the audio, which you haven’t listened to, that there would be hardly any cases or proof.
Should there be any inheritance at all?
What is his argument, according to you?
OK, so he elaborates a little bit. Fine, tomorrow I will give it a listen, but I still disagree with inherited debts and that is the crux of my bone with his theory.
If done within a legal will, yes.
That debts (specifically: unpaid wages for labor) can be inherited to a descendant who never committed the offense itself.
I just browsed one of Block’s Alston’s paper and the argument is that slaves homesteaded the land and so the descendants of the slave owners have no legitimate title to it.
So who does the property go to if there is no legal will?
Debts are offenses?
Just out of curiosity, whats your take on that theory?
A private court should make that determination. More than likely family members or close friends.
Dont you think they are?
No, just as one doesn’t inherit, say, one’s great-grandfather’s cause of action for being falsely imprisoned. Much less the descendants of the tortfeasor being presumed to inherit their ancestors’ liabilities.
Sounds theoretically plausible. If Smith inherits stuff that was originally stolen from Jones, he can’t complain if Jones claims his stuff back.
I think you should read/listen to more Block.