The Nature of Coercion

[UserGoogol]

Many people suppose there is an intrinsic moral distinction between restrictions on a person's options caused by other people and restrictions on a person's options caused by "natural forces" such as biology or the laws of physics or whatever. I don't see the logic behind this.

Surely, to the person who is actually having their life restricted, it doesn't really matter. If I want to fly to London, it doesn't effect me one bit whether the reason why I can't is because I don't have the money or because the government has put me on a no fly list. The outcome is the same either way: I don't go to London. And if doesn't matter to that person, why should it matter to anyone else?

Of course, I do not deny that there are differences. When restrictions on a person's freedom are caused by different things, they should be handled in different ways. If a person can't escape their house because all their doors are on fire, we handle it differently from if they can't escape their house because there's a homicidal maniac waiting outside. Similarly, it is not unreasonable for people to want to save the power of government for certain kinds of restrictions. But purely in terms of justice, surely (for instance) government health care should be more just than a government police force, because criminals have feelings, whereas tumors do not, which is not how people usually interpret things.

I admit that the argument above is not totally rigorous and handwaves past some important distinctions, but eh, a rigorous "proof" would both go beyond my talents and would be far too long for anyone to really want to read. I just feel that the opposite side hasn't made a particularly good case either, and would like to see if people could make their arguments more explicitly in this thread.

PS: I'm retarded, I meant to post this in Social Issues. If you're a mod, please move this.

 

[Dancing David]

Um, some people have arbitrary power to restrict other's choices. If one assumes that all people are equal and not endowed with some maigic power to be king by god, then you want to make sure they wield that arbitrary pwoer carefully. It makes sense in game theort term because then each player has a better chance of success. If you might fall from grace to a position without power then it makes sense as well for people who have power.

 

[Soapy Sam]

The intrinsic moral distinction is that natural forces have no input to morality. Morality is a human trait.
If I throw you out of a helicopter at 1000 feet, gravity is not morally responsible for your death. I am.

 

[UserGoogol]

The intrinsic moral distinction is that natural forces have no input to morality. Morality is a human trait.
If I throw you out of a helicopter at 1000 feet, gravity is not morally responsible for your death. I am.

Well yeah, there is that. I should've thought of that. (I'm slightly ambivalent about the idea of moral responsibility, but I will admit that if nothing else, it is a useful social construct. You certainly can't blame gravity in the same way you can blame the government.) But most people seem to take that distinction to degrees that don't really logically follow from that. The fact that a person is morally responsible for a thing only effects the person doing the bad thing, not the person on the receiving end of the badness. And yet many people (libertarians again being a useful example) think that as long as a person doesn't have any of those nasty bad people on their back, they still are free and their choices are still "voluntary" or whatever. But surely, whether or not person A is being assaulted by person C or by their own body effects neither person A nor taxpayer person B. And yet many people argue that it is okay to take from B to save A in the case of human force, but not in the case of natural force, which seems stupid.

 

[Puppycow]

Many people suppose there is an intrinsic moral distinction between restrictions on a person's options caused by other people and restrictions on a person's options caused by "natural forces" such as biology or the laws of physics or whatever. I don't see the logic behind this.

First: What Soapy Sam said. I think that morality requires an intelligent entity with free will.
If free will is an illusion, then perhaps you are correct.

(I'm slightly ambivalent about the idea of moral responsibility, but I will admit that if nothing else, it is a useful social construct. You certainly can't blame gravity in the same way you can blame the government.)

Because you don't believe in free will?
Still, I think we should assume that free will exists for practical purposes, because if it doesn't then we don't really need morality anyway, do we?

 

[Cain]

British political philosopher Alan Haworth has a slim book that mostly deals with this issue. Although I do not think it's a great book, I would suggest you pick it up if you're interested in this topic. The problem with this particular understanding of coercion/freedom is that some libertarians rely on it exclusively, and it simply lacks the power to do what they want. I consider the argument in the above post to be a decisive rejoinder to minarchism (or standard, limited government libertarianism). It's rather simple, really: negative rights entail positive obligations. Anarcho-capitalists are not vulnerable to this criticism, and choose to carry premises to logical (if absurd) conclusions.

We should also ask why exactly this particular definition of freedom is useful or important. It leads to ridiculous conclusions. What is it based on? It strikes me as arbitrary, something one can only arrive it after reverse-engineering their already-accepted political ideology. If you crash land your plane on a deserted island, well, you're perfectly free -- never mind if there's no food, no shelter and no one out to rescue you. Positive liberty/freedom/rights provides a richer, more enlightening perspective because it directly enshrines the concept of autonomy.

 

[Beerina]

Positive liberty/freedom/rights provides a richer, more enlightening perspective because it directly enshrines the concept of autonomy.

When voluntary. No libertarian has a problem with people voluntarily working together -- indeed, that's what gives capitalism its massive edge over centralized planning in providing good quality of life. But it's the voluntary part that's the key, and that's what gets lost when people start proposing [long stream of words] and therefore A gets some of B's money because A is unlucky or lazy or stupid or a combo of those. Every time you do that, you cut into the very productive energy that a free, voluntary society provides via its protection of rights.

 

[Beerina]

It's interesting that only with the advent of capitalism does an economy even generate enough wealth that detractors can begin to focus on "hey, what about the poor people?!?!?" Nations that are heavily socialized and/or corrupt (i.e. kickbacks to government to stay in business) like China, India, and Mexico are stuck, decade after decade, with massive numbers of old-school peasantry living in dirt-floored huts.

Worring about Petunia with her two kids not having Internet connections is a wonderful luxury that only the modern capitalist economy can provide.

 

[Cain]

When voluntary. No libertarian has a problem with people voluntarily working together -- indeed, that's what gives capitalism its massive edge over centralized planning in providing good quality of life. But it's the voluntary part that's the key, and that's what gets lost when people start proposing [long stream of words] and therefore A gets some of B's money because A is unlucky or lazy or stupid or a combo of those. Every time you do that, you cut into the very productive energy that a free, voluntary society provides via its protection of rights.

What's voluntary, or "voluntary," goes directly to the nature of coercion. According to most libertarians, women "voluntarily" worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. There, their machines leaked oil to the floor, buildings had inadequate fire-escapes, and doors were locked so that workers could not waste "company time" on bathroom breaks. The women working in the factory complained and knew it was a fire hazard (so their decision to stay was informed). Eventually a fire did break out, and many ended up leaping out windows to their death. Thankfully management got out safely and in time

What libertarians say -- and by the way, they're not even real libertarians. I'm sorry but that word has historically been associated with left-wing anarchists and was expropriated by American capitalists in the mid-20th century. It's a complete misnomer. Now where was I? Ah, yes, "libertarians," most of them, have an empty, formal understanding for the term "voluntary," in part because they fail to appreciate how workers labor against a background of coercion. People do not work in tinder boxes in any meaningfully voluntary sense; they do so because they need to eat. Moreover, people without education and in poor health, through no choice of their own, miss out on opportunities and choice. Negative liberty does not have a mechanism to handle the underclass, except to say they can rely on the charity of others.

 

[UserGoogol]

When voluntary. No libertarian has a problem with people voluntarily working together -- indeed, that's what gives capitalism its massive edge over centralized planning in providing good quality of life. But it's the voluntary part that's the key, and that's what gets lost when people start proposing [long stream of words] and therefore A gets some of B's money because A is unlucky or lazy or stupid or a combo of those. Every time you do that, you cut into the very productive energy that a free, voluntary society provides via its protection of rights.

I'm not going to deny that the free market is a delightfully efficient mechanism, but I feel that positive liberty contributes to technological growth just as much as negative liberty. If a person can't engage in some scientific research because they can't pull together the funding or because the government has outlawed research in that area, science has been held back all the same.

Furthermore, I feel that the aim of government intervention in this sort of area should often be the exact opposite of central planning. The invisible hand, after all, is merely a sort of decentralized planning. It magically "plans" the economy in such a way as to arrange resources into a pareto efficient fashion. But such a pareto efficient allocation might be a local optimum. And in order to escape local optimum, you need to be able to promote outright chaos so that every crazy possibility can be tried.

Growth requires experimentation, and truly free experimentation requires every possibility to be tried, even if those possibilities require taking away some people's freedom.