How Does The Threat Of Secession Modify The Size Of Redistributive Programs?



How Does The Threat Of Secession Modify The Size Of Redistributive Programs?



Introduction

Economic secession is a term that John T. Kennedy introduced to refer to a libertarian anarchist activist technique. Kennedy and others suggest that people who oppose the state abstain as much as they are able from the state's economic system - for instance by replacing the use of government money with barter or commodity money (such as gold), providing goods and services without submitting to government regulations and licensing, avoiding taxation by keeping assets out of traceable accounts, etc. This paper discusses how the threat of secession modifies the size of redistributive programs.

The most controversial, and most intriguing, remedy sought by proponents of slavery reparations involves massive redistribution of wealth from whites to blacks within the United States. This is not to say that reparations proponents have focused only on racial redistribution. Some have called for an official apology from the U.S. government. Others seek the creation of a foundation or institute, funded by U.S. tax dollars, to be devoted to furthering the interests of African Americans, including the funding of K-12 educational programs for black children and the funding of general civil rights advocacy to counteract the lingering effects of racism in American society. (Collier, 1998)

Threats of Succession & size of the Redistributive Programs

In a relatively new twist, some state governments have passed laws requiring companies to disclose the extent to which they or their predecessor companies were involved in or benefited from the practice of slavery; and some local governments - notably, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Detroit - have adopted ordinances requiring companies seeking to do business with the city's government to disclose any profits they received from slavery. A similar slavery "accounting" was also one of the remedies sought in the recent lawsuits brought by slavery descendants against corporations alleged to have historical ties to slavery. Nevertheless, at the core of most slavery reparations proposals are calls for either cash or in-kind transfers from whites to blacks. Such redistributive programs will be the focus of this paper. (The Economist, 2001)

Broad-based racial redistribution would, according to proponents, provide a measure of compensation to the present generation and perhaps to future generations of African Americans for the harms caused by slavery, including the many years of unpaid slave labor. Furthermore, a white-to-black redistributive transfer would reduce the colossal inequality of resources between whites and blacks in America. Given the historic scope of the injustice slavery represents, the potential size of a fully "reparative" transfer could be astronomical. Although most slavery reparations proponents decline to suggest specific dollar estimates of the appropriate transfer, some are willing to venture a guess. One researcher, for example, focusing on a stolen-labor measure of harm and using 1790-1860 slave prices as proxies for the value of unpaid slave labor, calculated a sum of between $448 billion and $995 billion, which in 2003 dollars would be approximately between $2 trillion and $4 ...