The difference between being coerced and coercing

[pvn]

From another thread:

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What is the difference between your child tripping outside and being impaled on a knife and dying... and me charging at your child with a knife and stabbing her to death?

[/ QUOTE ]
I see none.

[/ QUOTE ]

The reason this person sees none is that he is only looking at one narrow aspect:

[ QUOTE ]
In both instances my child would be dead, I would be sad, and I would remove the hazard after the fact (too late for my child, but hopefully in time to save others from the same fate).

[/ QUOTE ]

In other words, he is only observing that someone died.

He is totally ignoring that in one case someone *acted* and the other one didn't.

There is a difference between looking at cases where one is forced to do something and looking at cases where one forces others to do something. There is not a one-to-on mapping.

People are forced to "work or die" every day. People are "forced" to eat to survive. But there is no moral agent at the other end making a *decision* to force people into these situations. There is nobody to blame. Yet those who only see someone being coerced think that *someone* must be "made responsible". Yet there is nobody who can justly be saddled with the obligation to remedy these conditions.

This is the critical fallacy that has struck a long line of distinguished politics posters, including moorobot, propertarian, and most recently jogger.

[Nielsio]

One force is the force of nature, and the other is force between human beings (and most notably: human beings with moral capacity and thus responsibility).

[bkholdem]

You should cross post this in SMP to see what they have to say about it. I think that forum has more traffic.

[mosdef]

The difference between someone falling on a knife versus being stabbed is evident (even to me).

I think a more interesting scenario is the case of a "criminal" in an AC world who is not locked up but who can't find anyone to transact with him because of his criminal past. Now, the "AC citizens" (slight misnomer, but I think you'll know what I mean) aren't really aggressing on the criminal with violence. But if the guy starves to death or is eventually shot for trespassing because he can't find anywhere to go, well then it didn't make much difference to him that the citizens killed him in a passive way rather than an aggressive way. I think there is a richer debate to be had regarding this situation where the intent is to exclude the criminal from society, and even though it is done passively rather than with violence aggression the intent is still the same. The outcome here isn't accidental.

[mosdef]

[ QUOTE ]
This is the critical fallacy that has struck a long line of distinguished politics posters, including moorobot, propertarian, and most recently jogger.

[/ QUOTE ]

Also, thanks for not including me in this list of "silly statist pinkos".

[BCPVP]

Yet in this case, the criminal has no right to interact with other people against their will. People do have a right not to be stabbed by other people.

[jogger08152]

[ QUOTE ]
From another thread:

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What is the difference between your child tripping outside and being impaled on a knife and dying... and me charging at your child with a knife and stabbing her to death?

[/ QUOTE ]
I see none.

[/ QUOTE ]

The reason this person sees none is that he is only looking at one narrow aspect:

[ QUOTE ]
In both instances my child would be dead, I would be sad, and I would remove the hazard after the fact (too late for my child, but hopefully in time to save others from the same fate).

[/ QUOTE ]

In other words, he is only observing that someone died.

He is totally ignoring that in one case someone *acted* and the other one didn't.

[/ QUOTE ]
At risk of a brief threadjacking, at what point would it be okay for me to intervene? Remember that your right to wield a knife in a manner I (but perhaps not somebody else) considers intimidating is absolute. So is your right to charge toward my child.

How can I do anything other than what I describe above, whilst still behaving within the constraints of "AC morality"?

[mosdef]

[ QUOTE ]
Yet in this case, the criminal has no right to interact with other people against their will. People do have a right not to be stabbed by other people.

[/ QUOTE ]

But if the criminal owns no property at all (other than himself) and no one who owns property will allow him reside on their territory or interact with him, that person has been deemed by the others to have no right to live. Is it morally superiour to starve him to death on the basis of property rights rather than to execute him on the basis that he's just a terrible person?

As a side note, I'm not really "challenging" AC here with this edge scenario. I just think it's a more interesting, if somewhat irrelevant, hypothetical.

[NeBlis]

[ QUOTE ]
At risk of a brief threadjacking, at what point would it be okay for me to intervene?

[/ QUOTE ]

at the point were the interaction becomes non voluntary.

IE as soon as he charges the child w/ a knife you can / should shoot his ass.

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
This is the critical fallacy that has struck a long line of distinguished politics posters, including moorobot, propertarian, and most recently jogger.

[/ QUOTE ]

Also, thanks for not including me in this list of "silly statist pinkos".

[/ QUOTE ]

You're not even close to making that list. Those people have all explicitly made that argument - that someone *being coerced* is a "worrying condition" (for lack of a better term) which someone must be responsible for eliminating, as opposed to someone *coercing others* being the condition which must be remedied (the difference being the identification of the responsible party).