Coercion, how I see it

[valtaherra]

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But if you are disgusted with the government, you can leave the country and renounce your citizenship. In both situations you have a way out.


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In the concocted sex-or-else instance, the worker only leaves her place of employment, someone else's property. Under government, one is coerced into fleeing their own property.

This distinction is very clear. The situations are in no way similar.

[valtaherra]

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Either are governments, there is no world government. This is completely subjective as to how you define a territory. If you define a territory as each country, that's very convenient, but if you define territory as the earth, or the northern hemisphere, etc. no single governments holds a monopoly.

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Government territories are objectively defined. If GOV coerces you and you decide to leave, you must sneak away from an objectively defined territory in the middle of the night into another objectively defined territory, namely Antarctica or a non-extradition-treaty nation.

However, if you leave your place of employment due to coercion, you do not have to flee to anywhere. Rather, you can get one of thousands of jobs within whatever subjectively defined territory you wish.

[bkholdem]

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The man is free to quit his job, but he is subject to the inherent coerciveness of his own human nature. That doesn't, however, mean that his boss is the coercing agent; his personal needs are.


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This seems like a strange argument to me. By the same logic, say my friend is in bad gambling debt and comes to me (his rich friend) for help. I offer to pay off his debt, with the stipulation that he pays me back tenfold what I loan him. Basically, he would be my indentured servant for life. But this isn't me being exploitative or coercive, it's him being coerced by his own need not to be killed and dumped in the East River.

This seems clearly untrue--it's obviously exploitative, and is coercive by the OP dictionary definition.

"the use of express or implied threats of violence or reprisal or other intimidating behavior that puts a person in immediate fear of the consequences in order to compel that person to act against his or her will"

In my example, I'm using a situational threat from a third party to get someone to act against his will. It's less direct than the loan shark threatening to murder him, but it's still coercive.

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You make a pretty convincing case as to why people should not incur debts when they do not have the money available to pay that debt off. I encourage you to continue to spread the word at your leisure. I support your efforts to educating people about why gambling with money one can not afford to loose is generally something to be avoided.

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That's great but you didn't address his comment. If everyone was a genius that never did dumb things that would be great, but that's not reality.

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He does not sound like this persons 'friend' to me. His little comment puts up one possible scenario, like a false dichotomy. I do not feel any obligation to respond when he is attempting to box in a discussion in such a manner.

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You seemed to feel obligated to respond to my "little" comment, just in a wholly useless way.

And how is taking issue with HMK's ridiculous "there is no coercion/exploitation in the free market" position boxing in discussion? To make it clearer, I'm saying that if party A is forced by party B (party B can be nature or a loanshark or whatever) to go to party C, and party C takes irresponsible advantage of the situation, then at the very least it's exploitation, if not actively coercive.



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Why is your friend, party A, going to you, party C? Why is he not going to his friend, party D who not only wants to charge him a tenfold increase to pay off his debt, but also wants to dress him up like a girl and have him perform oral sex while party D yells forth: "Statism is evil, I am a libertarian and you are my sissy statist bitoch!" and at the same time the acts would be video taped and party D would have contracts with all the child molesters in the world and would distribute the tapes to all of them for $1,000 per tape. And the child molesters would use the tapes to entrap more children into their evil clutches and also give them drugs and get them hooked on gambling with the long term goal of turning them into indentured servants of party D who will save them from party B after they get in over their heads with a gambling debt?

p.s. How many people have been killed under statism for gambing debts not paid?

[samsonite2100]

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Why is your friend, party A, going to you, party C? Why is he not going to his friend, party D who not only wants to charge him a tenfold increase to pay off his debt, but also wants to dress him up like a girl and have him perform oral sex while party D yells forth: "Statism is evil, I am a libertarian and you are my sissy statist bitoch!" and at the same time the acts would be video taped and party D would have contracts with all the child molesters in the world and would distribute the tapes to all of them for $1,000 per tape. And the child molesters would use the tapes to entrap more children into their evil clutches and also give them drugs and get them hooked on gambling with the long term goal of turning them into indentured servants of party D who will save them from party B after they get in over their heads with a gambling debt?

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He's not going to party D because there's no party D in my scenario, or in the real-life parallel where people have "choices" between equally horrible exploitative jobs. Or sometimes no choice at all as in the case of illegals that essentially become indentured servants.

I guess the Cuban janitors at U of M that never got a raise in 20 years and had no health care weren't being exploited though, right? It was their natural instinct for self-preservation that must be held accountable for them eating cat food and not having teeth, etc.

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p.s. How many people have been killed under statism for gambing debts not paid?

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What does this have to do with anything?

[ianlippert]

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Capitalism is a system by which there is a market for labor power. Thus there are some who own capital and buy labor power to produce using said capital, and those who do not own capital and thus must sell their labor power.

We have two classes, and it is clear that in most cases those who sell labor power need the buyers more than vice versa. It is one thing to be a lawyer or a physician, but your average factory or farm worker doesn't have the privelege of market power. Thus the employer is able to act in a way that I consider coercive and essentially "get away with it."


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The ultimate goal is to get the labour market to a point where its a sellers market. We want labour to be in high enough demand that people are going to pay high prices and not resort to being douchebags by asking for sexual favours. Free market capitalism is the system that maximizes the value of labour. Every pro-labour initiative almost invariably hurts the worker. Min wage, unions, trade barriers, etc. Increasing the cost of labour decreases its demand and hurts labour in the long run.

The reason walmart can get away with paying people minimum wage is because so much consumer capital is being ripped out of the economy through taxation. This money gets spent on the most rediculous government programs and prevents the average worker from earning a decent living.

[bkholdem]

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Why is your friend, party A, going to you, party C? Why is he not going to his friend, party D who not only wants to charge him a tenfold increase to pay off his debt, but also wants to dress him up like a girl and have him perform oral sex while party D yells forth: "Statism is evil, I am a libertarian and you are my sissy statist bitoch!" and at the same time the acts would be video taped and party D would have contracts with all the child molesters in the world and would distribute the tapes to all of them for $1,000 per tape. And the child molesters would use the tapes to entrap more children into their evil clutches and also give them drugs and get them hooked on gambling with the long term goal of turning them into indentured servants of party D who will save them from party B after they get in over their heads with a gambling debt?

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He's not going to party D because there's no party D in my scenario, or in the real-life parallel where people have "choices" between equally horrible exploitative jobs. Or sometimes no choice at all as in the case of illegals that essentially become indentured servants.

I guess the Cuban janitors at U of M that never got a raise in 20 years and had no health care weren't being exploited though, right? It was their natural instinct for self-preservation that must be held accountable for them eating cat food and not having teeth, etc.

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p.s. How many people have been killed under statism for gambing debts not paid?

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What does this have to do with anything?

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I agree that people find themselves in difficult situations all the time.

This has also been true since the beginning of time.

It will continue to be true regardless of who is 'in charge' or if no one is in charge. That is simply reality.

Are you under the impression that life is supposed to be fair?

[neverforgetlol]

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I should also mention most libertarians don't object to blackmail, which is pretty much the definition of coercive.

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1. Most people I know object to blackmail. A lot of people I know (myself included) also object to smoking. However, I don't think either one constitutes a violation of self-ownership, and thus

2. I think libertarians (or rather, all people) ought to find blackmail distasteful and unethical (and it might be coercive, depending on the defintion), but it isn't aggressive, so it seems 'fine' under a thin conception of libertarianism.

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The Austrian angle does not object to blackmail, see Block, et. al

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So do you think, on a free market, no one should be able to work for anyone else?
I agree and sympathize with some of the points you make in this post, but I fully support someone's right to live as they see fit, including 'selling their labor' if they so choose. On a free market, however, I see no reason to beleive that such transactions would be inherently coercive, since there would be full right of unionization, far less consolidation in industries, more competition, and less concentrated wealth.
If free markets don't lead to "work for employer X or starve" situations, then it is hard to see why "have sex with me or be fired" scenarios would be truly coercive, since the woman really would have other available options.

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I'm speaking in descriptive terms, not prescriptive. To me, if there is a market for labor power it is not anarchy. I don't deny this will subsist for some period of time.

[neverforgetlol]

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Actually the point of that was to show both situations are coercive, by showing the claims of government are analagous to that of a capitalist. It was certainly not to justify government.


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You are comparing government - as in an entire social institution, a comprehensive, no exceptions, all-encompassing mechanism of coercion - to one individual in one hypothetical instance. This is the flaw in your analogy.

One boss might fire a hot chick if she doesn't blow him. This might happen in AC-land. Then again, it has and might continue to happen in the statist' dream world, our current reality. There might be repercussions in either one. Then again, the boss might get away with it in either one.

You have failed to demonstrate how bosses demanding sex-or-else is endemic of anarcho-capitalism, or government for that matter.

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I am giving an example, is that ok with you?

I am pointing out things that can happen under capitalism, and do happen because of it's structure. Just like certain things government do because of it's structure. I believe both are inherently coercive.

[neverforgetlol]

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We have two classes, and it is clear that in most cases those who sell labor power need the buyers more than vice versa. It is one thing to be a lawyer or a physician, but your average factory or farm worker doesn't have the privelege of market power. Thus the employer is able to act in a way that I consider coercive and essentially "get away with it."

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Your troubling conclusions stem from the following:

1) You incorrectly divide "us" into two classes, capital-owning labor buyers and capital-less labor sellers. In truth, there are capital-less labor buyers and capital-owning labor sellers, as well as capital-owning do-nothingers and capital-less do-nothingers.

2) You imply that capital-owning labor buyers owe something to capital-less labor sellers, put another way, that CL-LS's are entitled to something owed to them by CO-LB's. At least that's what I understand when you say employer's act in a way "you consider coercive" and "get away with it". However, you do not define or justify this entitlement. Whatever this entitlement is though, it cannot possibly be natural, and so it can only be your subjectively determined, arbitrarily defined entitlement.

3) You fail to understand capitalism as a continuous development of the division and specialization of labor, and the continuous increase in the productivity of labor. Inherent within capitalism is the continuous increase in laborer market power.

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1) We can just say capital owners and non-capital owners, i.e. the bourgeouisie and proletariat. zomg marx

2) i did not say capital owners owe something to those who don't own capital, i just believe the system of owning capital is exploitive.

3) Absolutely not true, if productivity does not increase for a certain time period it's somehow not capitalism anymore? bs.

[neverforgetlol]

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But if you are disgusted with the government, you can leave the country and renounce your citizenship. In both situations you have a way out.


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In the concocted sex-or-else instance, the worker only leaves her place of employment, someone else's property. Under government, one is coerced into fleeing their own property.

This distinction is very clear. The situations are in no way similar.

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That doesn't mean they are completely dissimiliar, just that they are not exactly the same. The issue brought up was whether you had a choice in leaving or not. When leaving the country, you leave your own property, but can buy property elsewhere. When you leave your job, you may have to leave your property anyway if you can't find a job in your area.

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Government territories are objectively defined.

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What do you mean by objectively? There are many countries where the border of that country is heavily disagreed upon. Israel, for example.

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If GOV coerces you and you decide to leave, you must sneak away from an objectively defined territory in the middle of the night into another objectively defined territory, namely Antarctica or a non-extradition-treaty nation.

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Whoopee. Who's stopping you?

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However, if you leave your place of employment due to coercion, you do not have to flee to anywhere. Rather, you can get one of thousands of jobs within whatever subjectively defined territory you wish.

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You may have to leave if you can't get another job in your area. Who cares? What is your point?