UN Demands "Reparations" for Colonialism
The United Nations wants trillions in reparations for colonialism and “systemic racism” in its latest kleptocratic grift.
The resolution passed 123 to 3 -- the rich countries abstained. And the price tag to dismantle racism, according to the UN-linked Brattle group, is a bracing $131 trillion.
That’s less than a gazillion, but it is more than all the money in the world — not a joke.
It includes $26 trillion owed by the US -- close to half a million per household.
$24 trillion from Britain who -- fun fact -- abolished slavery in a series of wars against Arabs and Africans.
Portugal gets off easy, owing just $20 trillion to Brazil -- roughly $5 million per household in Portugal.
The United Kleptocracies
Trillion dollar grabs are par for the course for the UN’s bevy of kleptos picking your pocket while dreaming up new and interesting ways to take your constitutional rights, from the World Health Organizaiton’s Covid tyranny to global warming to treaties to ban guns, population control, and mass surveillance.
But more important is the premise is backwards: In fact colonialism is the best thing that ever happened to the third world.
We know this because a pair of MIT economists including Nobel Laureate Deron Acemoglu crunched the numbers in a 2001 paper that found every prosperous third-world country is prosperous because Europeans showed up. And every collapsed one is collapsed because Europeans either left too early or never colonized.
The insight was quantified in a separate 2006 paper, and the results are striking — and obvious.
When Britain left Hong Kong in 1997 it was 40 times richer than China. Guam -- still a US colony -- is 10 times richer than independent Philippines.
Puerto Rico is by far the richest country in Latin America -- and 20 times Haiti, which won its independence before the United States.
French Caledonia is 12 times richer than nearby Solomon Islands. France’s caribbean colonies -- Guadeloupe and Martinique -- are also 12 times richer than Haiti
Britain’s Bermuda is 40 times richer than Haiti.
India’s 10 times richer than never-colonized Afghanistan. Demographically similar Pakistan is 5 times richer than Afghanistan.
Even within Africa, the last decolonization -- 1990 Namibia -- is 5 times richer than never-colonized Ethiopia.
When Apartheid fell -- call it internal colonization -- South Africa was 20 times richer than next-door Mozambique.
Spot the pattern.
Why Colonies Work
So what accounts for it? Easy: rule of law and culture. Which interact to deliver courts that aren’t corrupt, and the bourgeois values of honesty, thrift, industry. All of which foster social trust that helps natives stop genociding each other and encourage locals to save, invest, and build.
The rule of law and culture is why the West was rich enough to colonize the third world as a side gig. And the colonizers imposed law and culture so colonies would prosper enough to generate the taxes it took to run them.
In long-occupied colonies it stuck -- Singapore or Hong Kong. In early independents like Haiti -- or never-colonized like Ethiopia -- rule of law and culture remained stunted.
Incidentally, it’s not a white thing -- it’s universal that when rich countries colonize poor countries the “victims” are the biggest beneficiary.
Rome civilized Britain. Sumeria civilized Persia. Japan civilized Okinawa. China civilized the Turks of the Gobi and subsistence tribes in the Taiwan highlands.
The difference is today we can measure it. And today we have UN bureaucrats trying to turn it into a trillion-dollar hustle running backwards.
What’s Next
Colonialism had its brutality, but these pale by orders of magnitude to native brutality.
Toss in the tech -- penicillin, electricity, water filtration and crops that withstand drought -- and the West has nothing to apologize for.
In fact, reparations should go the other direction — to the colonizers.
Still, so long as Western education systems continue pushing Marxism -- and the UN continues trying to monetize it -- hold on to your wallet. And your rights.
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This was a great article. Thank you for the research. Love to hear that we have actually helped other nations improve their standard of living.