> That attitude might work for arguments like mathematical proofs, but we're talking about social policy here. It's too complex for that kind of certainty, so trust and good faith matter.
That's absolutely ridiculous. You can evaluate the policy and make an educated assessment as to what its effect will be. The person suggesting the policy is not some kind of oracle, they don't have some mystical ability to foresee how the policy will play out in practice. So again, their intent doesn't matter, only the content of the policy does. This smells an awful lot like a way to discard the policies of people you don't like without attacking the policies on their merits.
> That is not in fact what's happening today, which is why the response consists of social policies like affirmative action instead of stuff like garnishing the wages of the descendants of slaveholders to repay the descendants of slaves.
You make it sound as though affirmative action is without cost to the people who don't benefit from it. Even the least-intrusive form of affirmative action, where organizations must actively ensure their employment processes are not discriminatory, have a cost. But I'm not opposed to that piece specifically.
What is more often costly to individuals is affirmative action that is implemented in the form of a hiring quota. If you lose a job versus someone who looks good for "quota" purposes, sure, your wages aren't garnished by the government directly, but you lost out all the same. And then you might say something like "they're white, they'll be fine, they can just get a job somewhere else." As if to imply that all white people come from privileged enough backgrounds that it's not even an issue worth caring about.
> I even alluded to that.
If you're going to have a conversation about something like social policy, perhaps do something better than "allude".
> Another way to look at it is the wrong wasn't solely committed by the individuals involved (e.g. slaveholders), but by the government and other institutions that enacted policies like slavery and Jim Crow. The government and those institutions still exist, and have the responsibility and ability to take corrective action.
Here is the problem. A government is not an entity that exists in the same way as a person, or even a company does. Saying that "the government" must take corrective action really means _all of the American people_. And that gets right back to the issue of fairness, because as soon as you start spending government money to solve this problem, you spend taxpayer money.
> Running with examples is like running with scissors; they're both bad ideas that can turn to serious errors.
Closing with a comment like this -- suggestive of a slam dunk -- seems like the more serious error when a great many parts of my argument went completely unaddressed.