Compensatory Justice and the Problem of Knowledge
The concept of coercing those who have indirectly benefited from either racism, or sexism to pay compensation to those who have been negatively effected is a ridiculous legal concept that holds tyrannical potential. However, not only is the program nigh impossible due to the fact that the amount that must be compensated to the victims of discrimination is an example of knowledge throughout society, but it is also absolutely immoral to penalize individuals retroactively.
As Friedrich A. Hayek elucidated in his article:“The Use of Knowledge in Society”, it is impossible to centralize the information contained in society in such a fashion as to make it possible to make decisions based on it. The reason for this is because of the dynamic nature of society, especially the modern society of the information age, and that the knowledge per se is of an extremely precise, and ever-changing nature being related to a specific circumstance in both space, and time. The importance of the peculiar nature of knowledge cannot possibly be understated for this feature illuminates the impossibility of centralized planning since a top-down structure cannot efficiently adapt to circumstances perpetually in flux. The reason for this is that a board of planners does not have the knowledge necessary to adapt to problems for they cannot centralize the tacit character of knowledge. This relates to the problem of compensating victims of discrimination in that it thus follows that it is impossible to calculate the amount that would be given assuming the program is initiated. Therefore, any attempt to compensate victims would have to utilize monetary quantities that have basis only in the sentiments of the politicians constructing that plan rather than the actual damages done by discrimination. Hence, grave injustice could be done against those who have not profited as much from this crime as much as the plan accuses them resulting in the necessary condemnation of any such plan.
Furthermore, the very act of penalizing individuals who benefited from past injustices based on activities done when they were note explicitly illegal is an absolute affront to the very basis of law. By punishing individuals for actions that were completely legal when the actions were done, the state is creating a scenario in which the law is no longer absolute, rather it is merely tentative. This undermines the purpose of legal institutions in society; where they were once meant to give stability to society against certain actions deemed illegal, now they provide an atmosphere in which individuals within society live in legal insecurity not knowing the legal boundaries that they should beware. It may very well be that an action seen as completely acceptable one day may be a ticket to a life-sentence in jail a decade following, and this precedent would be a great restraint to the cultivation of a society in which citizens are all considered equal under the law. In fact, under this system, it may very well be that all citizens are equal under the law until a future generation deems fit for their own purposes, and this sort of a power would grant the government far too much potential for tyranny. Overall, any retroactive legal policy must be condemned on grounds of legal stability, and for the sake of preventing the growth of government-tyranny.
In the end, the policy of compensating victims of discrimination at the cost of those who benefited from it must be condemned to to the impossibility of calculating the monetary quantities involved in such a policy, and because of its legal implications.