Political Theory

Re: Why is coercion bad?

Zerubbabel — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:53:29 GMT

I gave an example, economic duress, with a situation in mind: Rockefeller meets with his competing refineries one at a time and offers to buy them out or he will drive them out of business through a pricing contest. Having concluded another voluntary exchange of exclusivity with the railroads he solely posses low shipping rates. He also had control of great capital and could sustain losses far longer than any small or medium refiner. There was no deception. Everything was plainly laid out, 'Sell or be crushed and this is how I'm going to crush you.' The majority of refiners evaluated their positions and concluded that selling out was the better option. Many went on to acquire employment positions within Standard Oil and also profited greatly through stock valuations. Others clung to their individualistic goals and were crushed.

Although all refiners signed voluntarily none wanted to do so. They signed under duress because they felt boxed-in with no other, better, option (coerce stems from the same root word where we get "ark" + co or "together with" kind of like "in bed together").

"The combination is here to stay. Individualism has gone, never to return." JDR

This is really quite prophetic because today selling out to the larger entity is the fully accepted norm and perhaps even the initial goal of entrepreneurs. The entrepreneur innovates something new that directly challenges a big existing corporation and comes to the negotiating table fully intending to sell and only waiting for the right price. It is even the ideal of the land owner whose family farm exists in the path of urban sprawl. He may publicly lament the economic conditions that caused the destruction of such Norman Rockwell feel-good things like the family farm but he is smiling to his core when he is signing the PSA with the developer ... just my little social commentary.

Re: Why is coercion bad?

Anenome — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 07:43:26 GMT

Zerubbabel:

Yes of course a thinker may appropriate an existing word and create his own unconventional meanings. I think of Hannah Arendt and labor, work and action for which she developed precise and distinct meanings.

You may do the same with coercion. But "To coerce is to force." only moves the question to the meaning of force. Can force (which stems from the root for strength) be physical, intellectual, psychological or moral in nature? Can not force be applied in a defensive as well as an offensive (aggressive) way?

Your examples seem to point only to physical force, which you may of course make a condition of your meaning of the word coercion. But the application of non-physical force (e.g. economic duress) to compel one's action is a reality and it would seem incumbent upon you to find a place for it in your linguistic scheme.

I can give you a very good integration of non-physical force into my schema.

Any non-physical force I call indirect force. I didn't speak of it because it is a corollary of the definition I gave, logically extractable from it. An example of indirect aggressive-coercion would be any instance where one achieves a value from another that that other would not have given them had they known the truth of the situation. This means that lies or fraud are indirect aggressions / coercions.

Re: Why is coercion bad?

Zerubbabel — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 01:08:40 GMT

Yes of course a thinker may appropriate an existing word and create his own unconventional meanings. I think of Hannah Arendt and labor, work and action for which she developed precise and distinct meanings.

You may do the same with coercion. But "To coerce is to force." only moves the question to the meaning of force. Can force (which stems from the root for strength) be physical, intellectual, psychological or moral in nature? Can not force be applied in a defensive as well as an offensive (aggressive) way?

Your examples seem to point only to physical force, which you may of course make a condition of your meaning of the word coercion. But the application of non-physical force (e.g. economic duress) to compel one's action is a reality and it would seem incumbent upon you to find a place for it in your linguistic scheme.

Re: Why is coercion bad?

Anenome — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 03:25:17 GMT

I don't think it matters that much what the traditional or agreed upon definition of a word is, since in the scope of an argument the only way to be precise is to define your terms.

To coerce is to force (but coercion alone is ethically neutral), and aggression is the initiation of coercion (which the NAP defines are innately unethical in every circumstance). The libertarian ethic makes an implicit distinction between responsive coercion (my term), such as the force a police officer might use to stop a suspect from murdering, and the initiation of coercion, such as the suspect bringing down the knife on a victim for the killing stroke, etc.

Re: Why is coercion bad?

Zerubbabel — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 02:34:47 GMT

Jack, after the ad hominem piece I expected you to seek precision in words. Actual meanings of words are socially mediated, yes. But the meanings never fall far from the etymological tree. And the understanding of a word through different languages always finds a mediator in the, usually Latin or Greek, root i.e. the "Non-English" root (as if distinct from the English root). It is possible to search the many dictionaries to find a meaning with the desired connotation.

See Wiki's article on Coercion. The legal meaning of Duress. and to my example, see Economic Duress

This is not merely semantics (although the hurricane example is) because the idea underlying the word 'coercion' is central to the libertarian argument. If the State is the exclusive wielder of sanctioned violence, and coercion must always resort to violence, then NO voluntary exchange can be coercive. There is the black-n-white world-view.

Here is the co- of coercion:

"The combination is here to stay. Individualism has gone, never to return." JG Rockefeller Sr.

Re: Why is coercion bad?

JackCuyler — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 22:58:42 GMT

That doesn't explain how a hurricane, which has no purpose, can be coersive. Also, dictionary.com says , "Uset of force or intimidation to gain compliance." Every other dictionary site I've checked has a similar definition. We must remember that English words often have very different definitions than their non-English roots.

Re: Why is coercion bad?

Zerubbabel — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:23:55 GMT

"the traditional definition of coersion, which is violence (or the threat of violence) with a purpose."

The purpose is built into the word; co- meaning together or joining or working together is the ultimate purpose of all coercion. The State may coerce you to join them in their endeavors by paying taxes or joining the military and this they do with the tacit threat of violence.

But the second half of the word, arcēre - to enclose, does not require violence.

Coercion restricts freedom of choice or encloses one into a situation of having no choice, or more accurately only one choice. But to restrict abundance of choice is also a form of coercion. To restrict the abundance to a single choice is in effect the removal of the freedom of choice. Voluntary exchange will have some level of coercion if the abundance is removed. When the free-choice becomes a "no-brainer" that is to say "an offer you can't refuse" and not in the sense the mob would use it, but as a marketing type would use it, there is no freedom of choice and any exchange that followed would be voluntary only as a formality.

The State coerces with violence but Standard Oil was equally as coercive, yet non-violent, when all the competing refineries chose to sell-out to him. They only had one realistic choice, to sell or be crushed, in a purely metaphorical sense.

Re: Why is coercion bad?

JackCuyler — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 04:45:13 GMT

fakename:

Now there are only 2 types of coercion (1) non-human and (2) human. Now as other's have said, non-human coercion is unavoidable (hurricanes) and since it is absurd to be against the unavoidable, it is absurd to be per se against non-human (or non-purposeful) coercion. But for humans there are two types of coercion too (1) libertarian (2) non-libertarian. In the former the government or PDA stops a criminal. Now one could argue that the criminal forfeits his self-ownership and right to be uncoerced but that response implicitly denies the humanity of the criminal which is impossible. So libertarian cannot be per se against coercion. Likewise non-libertarian coercion like that employed by a king over his sujbects, is also not bad unless his purpose is not suited to coercive tactics (a law commanding fasting to all men) or if coercion is simply intrinsically wrong at the time (forcing people to convert to Catholicism).

Am I correct in inferring that you are equating coersion with violence or the threat of violence, regardless of context? If not, I'm having trouble understanding how a hurricane could be coersive. It certainly can't using the traditional definition of coersion, which is violence (or the threat of violence) with a purpose.

EDIT: Fixed a typo.

Re: Why is coercion bad?

fakename — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 02:05:01 GMT

To OP:

First for your question: Taking into account your argument and the assumption that the abundance of choice can exist w/o freedom and vice versa, it seems like freedom is something totally different from abundance of choice. Rothbard's use of the word "power" to distinguish it from freedom is what makes me hypothesize that Rothbard means that freedom of choice means "pre-suppositional choice" and power or abundance of choice means "suppositional choice".

What does this mean? Imagine walking; before you take a step there is a freedom or lack of determination as to where you 'll put your foot. But after you take a step, there's indeed, a choice to take another step, but as far as the category "walking in this direction" goes, there's no more freedom. So one type of freedom is freedom without limits or w/o supposing some other action (pre-suppositional) while the other freedom is analogical freedom which assumes some limit. And this last thing is what is called abundance of choice.

Now I assume that coercion is bad then, because it takes away unequivocal freedom which, for Rothbard perhaps, was the greatest good for man.

As for my opinion on the morality of coercion (that is, the morality of having your highest end thwarted), if the purpose fits it, then coercion is good and vice versa. As such then, coercion is a neutral thing.

Now there are only 2 types of coercion (1) non-human and (2) human. Now as other's have said, non-human coercion is unavoidable (hurricanes) and since it is absurd to be against the unavoidable, it is absurd to be per se against non-human (or non-purposeful) coercion. But for humans there are two types of coercion too (1) libertarian (2) non-libertarian. In the former the government or PDA stops a criminal. Now one could argue that the criminal forfeits his self-ownership and right to be uncoerced but that response implicitly denies the humanity of the criminal which is impossible. So libertarian cannot be per se against coercion. Likewise non-libertarian coercion like that employed by a king over his sujbects, is also not bad unless his purpose is not suited to coercive tactics (a law commanding fasting to all men) or if coercion is simply intrinsically wrong at the time (forcing people to convert to Catholicism).

Re: Why is coercion bad?

Zerubbabel — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 21:38:23 GMT

Thanks Self-Searcher, that is a good article. Although clearly written it is entirely based on nuance.

If the troll (noun) trolls (verb) for a reaction then we are all trolls because everybody is hoping for a reply to their posts, nobody posts and then thinks "my work here is done." The nuance that the troll is seeking an emotional responce is still not acurarte because the responce must be negative and not negative in the sense that it raises resentment against a third party, such as an OWS demagogue inciting resentment against the 1%. Specifically the troll must raise resentment against himself or his own ideology.

There-in lies the biggest nuance in that it is the anti-troll that determines trollishness by his own feelings of resentment. The Troll may stick entirely to an idea-based argument, but the accusation of trollishness must, by its very definition, judge the motives of another and so is an ad hominem argument which seeks to discredit the idea by it's association with an un-virtuous malevolently motivated individual.

Re: Why is coercion bad?

Autolykos — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 18:21:56 GMT

Wikipedia has a good article on internet trolls. Basically the idea behind trolling is to engage in dishonest and/or provocative behavior with the goal of receiving a certain - typically emotional - response. The troll finds the desired response to be entertaining. I think this is because the troll is either a psychopath or else has a strong (perhaps insatiable) desire to feel in control of others.

Many times I think people call others "trolls" as a bullying or intimidation tactic. A lot of "debating", both online and offline, really just amounts to bullying IMHO.

Re: Why is coercion bad?

Zerubbabel — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 18:03:52 GMT

I wish JackCuyler would define trollishness as he did ad hominem. Ad hominem I get. It is "to the person" as opposed to "to the idea."

But trollish seems to be bound up with the concept of for or against. The exact same argument could be trollish in one forum and anti-trollish in another forum. And I reject any idea that trollishness is related to civility because the anti-troll is as often as strident as the supposed troll.

As one who has a tendency towards contrariness I have often been called a troll and felt the frustration of there being no precise definition of this term other than as an unkind invective against the 'other.'

Re: Why is coercion bad?

Autolykos — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 16:27:57 GMT

Oh, the irony of a troll calling his targets trolls...

Re: Why is coercion bad?

Anenome — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 09:50:25 GMT

Wait, LaRose actually claimed there were no truths? Hah, I will have to read the rest of this thread for the sake of the comedy.