Isn't it time to start calling BS at some of the Libertarian arguments?

Great Debates
181

VarlosZ before you accuse me of anything nefarious let me explain that I got the definition I posted by searching reference.com which is something I link to on my gmail homepage because I use it all the time for my work.

If I thought that the difference between this definition and one from a conventional dictionary mattered I would have happily provided a definition from the Oxford English Dictionary which I think we’d agree is the mother of all dictionaries. And in fact I always prefer consulting the OED but was too busy at the time to log in so chose the one I found on reference.comas being what I thought was the most complete.

But lest it appear as though there’s something misleading about the wikipedia definition, here’s the relevant citations from the OED (note that I can’t post a link to the OED because, being the authoritative dictionary that it is, you need to have a subscription to it to log in. I use my local library’s subscription and you probably can too.

"Coercion I. The action of coercing.

1. Constraint, restraint, compulsion; the application of force to control the action of a voluntary agent. "

This is the very first meaning and it completely suits my purposes in naming “constraint, restraint, [and] compulsion” as the primary meaning of coercion. People in the no healthcare situation under discussion are indeed being constrained (by the lack of options), restrained (because they can’t break laws without facing prison) and compelled (because they have no choice but to take the kind of work that they can get) to live and labor without this important human need. To me there is no substantive difference between this and the wikipedia definition but even if you think here is, let me say right now that I’d be happy to switch to the above definition and rest my arguments on it alone.

Moving further down the list:

“b. Forcible restraint of (action).”

That’s the definition that you want to limit our conversation to. But I find that unhelpful for the reasons I’ve described.

The rest of the meanings aren’t especially relevant to us but I’ll list them in the interests of full disclosure–so that you know I’m not trying to do anything underhanded.

" c. The enforcement or execution of an ecclesiastical sentence. Obs. "
" 2. Government by force, as opposed to that which rests upon the will of the community governed; the employment of force to suppress political disaffection and the disorder to which it gives rise. In modern English politics, chiefly applied to the suspension of ordinary constitutional liberties, and other exceptional legislation, from time to time applied to Ireland. Coercion Act, Coercion Bill: popular name for the Act of Parliament of 1833 and various subsequent ones.
As the word has had, in later times, a bad flavour, suggesting the application of force as a remedy, or its employment against the general sense of a community, it is now usually avoided by those who approve of the action in question. "

" 3. Physical pressure; compression." [this one’s a scientific meaning as the examples make clear]

" II. 4. The faculty or power of coercing or punishing; ‘coercitive power’ or ‘jurisdiction’. (So L. coercitio.) Obs. "
" b. fig. Conviction, power to compel assent. "

Note that I find this one useful for my meaning as well.

VarlosZ, I hope this makes clear that I haven’t done anything misleading in posting the defintion I chose.

I really do want to leave this alone now because I don’t think there’s much point in continuing and I need to finish something for work! So I invite you to have the last word.

Thanks very much for your lucid posts and undoubted good faith.

182

Dorothea, although you are under no obligation to do so, I am curious as to why you avoided responding to any of my points. I’m especially curious as to how you’d answer this:

183

That certainly makes sense, and I apologize for implying that you were scheming. (For future reference, from now on when you’re looking for definitions you may want to make sure that reference.com is referencing dictionaries rather than encyclopedias.)

I’ll probably post some final thoughts on the topic later on.

184

Thanks VarlosZ, you really are a model of civil debate. :slight_smile:

Renob, it’s just because I’m busy and I’m not sure that our definitional disagreements don’t make furrther debate unuseful.

Later tonight I’ll check in on VarlosZ’s final words (to me) and if I can post a reply to you. Perhaps one of the other posters will want to continue beyond that.

185

Hi Dorothea Book. I’ve been reading this discussion on and off, and like VarlosZ, Renob and others, I’m really flummoxed by your use of terms and what that says about your underlying view of the world. I know that you declared the debate over, but I would like to ask a few questions to see if I can get a better idea of what you believe. I can’t coerce you into answering (or maybe I can? :)), so I’ll just post them below.

The first question is fairly off-topic, but it’s from another discussion which sometimes interests me, but brings up similar objections. Does the following constitute a valid argument against the existence of free will:
“I cannot fly like Superman, therefore free will does not exist.”?

Question Two. Which, if any, of the following situations demonstrate coercion
[list=a][li]A meteorite strikes and kills your child. You are never fully able to recover from the grief from your loss.[/li]
[li]You are a successful pianist. One day a small meteorite strikes you and removes your arm. Doctors are unable to reattach it, but you survive in good condition other than that. Of course your career is ruined.[/li]
[li]Same as above, but you are struck by a car rather than a meteorite (through no fault of the driver or mechanic). Does it make a difference whether you are or are not at fault?[/li]
[li]You are killed, or maybe just crippled, but some untreatable disease. The cure (useless to you now) is found two years later.[/li]
[li]You drive a Hummer (and enjoy doing so), but cannot afford to fuel it with gas at $4\gallon. You decide to drive a more fuel efficient car/take public transportation/ride a bike (choose your favorite).[/li][/list]

I have some predictions (which I could post if you would like) about what you’ll choose, but I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if any of them went the other way.

186

Well, Dr. Love since your questions are ones I can answer easily and don’t involve my repeating myself I think I can shoot off a brief reply.

No.

[quote]
Question Two. Which, if any, of the following situations demonstrate coercion
[list=a][li]A meteorite strikes and kills your child. You are never fully able to recover from the grief from your loss.[/li][/quote]

Strictly speaking if we follow the OED’s definition of coercion (constraint, restraint, compulsion) there is in a cosmic sense an element of coercion. That is, fate has dealt this person a terrible blow and the feeling of sorrow acts as a restraint on his/her happiness. However, in the terms of the debate here the example is irrelevant. Market forces have nothing to do with this event nor could government intervention have prevented it.

[quote]
[li]You are a successful pianist. One day a small meteorite strikes you and removes your arm. Doctors are unable to reattach it, but you survive in good condition other than that. Of course your career is ruined.[/li][/quote]

Same as above–coercion at the cosmic level but irrelevant to either the market’s determinisms or to government’s power to correct a market failure.

[quote]
[li]Same as above, but you are struck by a car rather than a meteorite (through no fault of the driver or mechanic). Does it make a difference whether you are or are not at fault?[/li][/quote]

It makes a difference to the person personally of course though I see no bearing on the topic of coercion–cosmic, market-driven, or otherwise.

[quote]
[li]You are killed, or maybe just crippled, but some untreatable disease. The cure (useless to you now) is found two years later.[/li][/quote]

Another “cosmic” case with no relevance to the market/government debate.

Somewhat more relevant to the debate at hand since market forces have had an impact on this decision. I would not call this a market failure, however, since the high price of gas has fortuitiously stopped this person driving a notorious gas guzzler at a time when global warming is a major concern. Indeed, a good example of market forces working for the collective good without any help from government :slight_smile:

187

“Cosmic” coercion? Really? Fate has dealt someone a terrible blow? You do realize, don’t you, that “fate” isn’t a person, right? You can’t have coercion unless someone is doing the coercion. Your definition of coercion is so broad that essentially anything that prevents me from doing whatever I want is coercion. I can’t be a basketball player, so I’v been coerced. I’m going to die from cancer. Why? Cosmic coercion. I have no skills that make anyone want to hire me for more than $4 an hour. I guess coercion is to blame.

Your use of the word makes it completely meaningless. “Coercion” does not mean “whatever is stopping me from obtaining my wildest dreams.” Or am I missing something?

188

Results from a simple google search of the words “market coercion”:

“For example, Paul argues that many institutional investors use CGI metrics “to decide whether or not to invest in or divest from a company” and that issuers must therefore “pay attention to the ratings” (p. 18). In turn, companies fall in line with ISS “checklist” or “one-size-fits-all” standards. This market coercion, Paul argues, stifles potentially valuable innovation in corporate governance and makes it too “homogeneous” (see generally pp. 18-19 and Part IV).”

“I took particular issue with the authors’ contention that graduate school is more of a postponement of real life than it is a useful educational experience, as I am currently a grad student myself (by choice, not by market coercion).”

“The resurgence of market coercion is causally related to a massive growth of insecurity. Part of the function of trade unionism is to resist such trends.”

"When new technologies are rolled out with the help of the private sector, there are issues around competition - i.e. there is a presumption that the technology is going to be useful for people, but it will be competing with other technologies already in the market. Is this a form of market coercion?

I could go on into the hundreds–perhaps even the thousands.

Results for “cosmic coercion.”

This one is an artwork entitled “Cosmic Coercion”.

This one is from a review essay in a peer-reviewed journal: “How can he offer his prophecy of cosmic coercion with a smile? The answer, I think, lies in his cagey response to Richard Dawkins’s selfish gene theory…”

This from a database, citing the works of the noted psychoanaltyic theorist Erik Erikson: “yet become part of a planned world fit for a wider identity and a new adulthood on earth, but not by way of the cosmic coercion of gadgetry”

This one appears to be from a peer-reviewed journal of philosophy or perhaps literary theory: “I posit a process of cosmic coercion of the Frieda figure, Kate Leslie, which seems to me to involve a distortion of the metaphysics of otherness…”

Yes Renob, you are missing something. An open mind.

189

P.S. I will try to reply to your earlier post tomorrow.

190

The only thing you’ve proven is that people other than you also misuse the term “coercion.” The idea that some cosmic force (or other impersonal factor) can coerce anyone makes the term completely meaningless.

191

This reads rather like “It’s not coercion if I agree with the outcome,” which I assume is not what you wanted to post. So I’m really not sure whether this is a yes or a no.

192

I believe he was speaking metaphorically. Debating the semantics of “cosmic coercion” is an irrelevance and diversionary tactic, though, in that meteors striking pianists are incredibly poor analogies for market failures that can be addressed by governments.

193

More like, it’s not coercion (in the sense of the market compelling a choice) with which the government ought to interefere.

Have you ever read Jeremy Bentham? All law is coercion according to him, but so long as the laws achieve a good effect they are, in his view, good laws.

194

Again, the “market compelling a choice” isn’t coercion. The “market” can’t compel anything. It’s not an entitity. It’s not an actor. Coercion comes from someone. It’s not the end result of a process.

Bentham is right that all laws are coercion. Some coercion is necessary, however, in order to prevent individuals from coercing one another.

195

I agree. But laws are no more entitites than the market it is.

196

Sam Stone, it’s not that liberals think the government can fix all our problems. But some problems can be fixed (or at least partially alleviated) by the government. And, moreover, some of these problems are simply not addressed by the market. The libertarian attitude seems to be “The government can never do anything right”, which is ridiculous.

In particular, this statement:

is ludicrous. Alleviating poverty isn’t just about having fewer poor people, it’s about making the lives of the poor less awful. The are enumerable government programs that have helped and continue to help the poor in this country. Without these programs many people who are today simply “poor” would instead be homeless and starving. Yes, some programs are more effective than others, some have more waste than others, but they do make a difference. Talk to a social worker if you don’t believe me.

197

Okay Renob, as promised I’m replying to your earlier post.

Here is a number of replies:

  1. When the market system that we have in place deprives a swathe of people of healthcare it does coerce them in various ways but this coercion does not occur at the level of individual insurance agents saying “no” to an interaction with these people

  2. There are non-violent forms of coercion. Check the OED’s definition.

  3. If you don’t accept the OED’s definition of coercion (variations of which, as the google examples reveal, are being used by everyone from economists, business people and graduate students to philosophers, geneticists, psychoanalysts and artists) then you need to admit that you’re using a very specialized and exclusive definition of the word–one that ordinary people and scholars would not recognize as being the only appropriate usage and that no dictionary confirms as such.

  4. That said, none of my arguments about the failures of the market require me to use the word coercion. I could easily use a word such as compulsion–not sure if that’s another hot button word for you–or describe the lack of healthcare (for instance) as a form of unfreedom.

  5. I agree that your neighbor refusing to buy your car from you, even if it leaves you short of cash that you need, does not constitute a coercive action on the part of your neighbor. However, when we look at the lack of healthcare in the US and debate what, if anything, the government can and should do about it, I see no obvious place for an analogy to your neighbor.

  6. The failure to provide so many with adequate healthcare is a failure of the market as it currently exists–one that can very likely be rectified or at least improved by reasonable government intervention. Therefore there is no reason to tolerate the current system’s coercion of so many whom it compels to live without healthcare.

198

Yes, but the people who enforce those laws are individuals. They are the ones who coerce.

How? You can say it all you want but I’d like you to actually describe how someone uses coercion to deprive someone else of health care.

I think you are confused. The OED definition is predicated on violence. Coercion either involves actual violence or the threat of violence. Intimidation and force are merely another way of saying that.

Use whatever word you want. Compulsion is basically coercion. You claim that the market can be just as coercive as the government. To make that claim you have to rely on a definition of coercion (or compulsion or whatever) that makes a mockey of the word. You still have failed to demonstrate any concrete examples to back up your point. You want to argue semantics and talk about “cosmic coercion” and bring up other nonsense definitions. I’m just waiting for you to actually demonstrate your point.

Why not? If you think that people going without health care is the result of them being coerced by the market, then you have to prove coercion. Please demonstrate an example of someone forcing someone else to go without health care.

You make two points here. The first is pretty debatable – it’s pretty clear to me that most of the “market failure” as it pertains to health care is because government is so heavily involved in the market. The second – that the current system “coerces” and “compels” people to live without health care is, again, ridiculous. I’ll ask again for you to explain who coerces them and who compels them to go without health care. Is someone coming to their house and taking it away? Is someone physically stopping them from making a willing transaction with a health care provider? Is someone threatening them to prevent them from buying insurance?

To be honest, I agree there is a lot of coercion involved in the current system that explains why people lack health insurance or health care access. Every state has a law, for instance, that threatens you with a fine or jail time if you sell insurance out-of-state. States also have laws that threaten you with a fine or jail time if you set your own prices for insurance or try to build a health care facility without the permission of your competitors. Yes, there is coercion in health care, but it comes from the government. There is no “market coercion” (whatever that is). There are no individuals standing around forcing people to go without health insurance. There is real coercion involved but I’m sure that’s not what you are talking about.

199

Yes, but by the same logic the people who enforce the lack of healthcare (whether it be the hospital staff who decline care or the police who prevent the alternative of robbing a bank) can be adduced to add this personal touch that you seem so fixated on.

Note that Bentham himself, by contrast, was not in the least concerned with individual enforcers when he described the coercive effects of laws. He saw laws as necessary means of manipulating the decisions of people. This happened only seldom at the level of interaction between persons but mainly at a systemic level: people would be familiar with the laws and, by and large, would act in conformity with them in order to maximize their interests.

J.S. Mill offers another interesting use of “coercion” in the opening lines of On Liberty. He’s specifically interested not in the government or in physical force but in the ways that “public opinion” coerces people to conform to stereotypical behaviors, making them and society unfree. Public opinion, for Mill, is an abstraction much like the legal system is for Bentham in the example above or like the market is for any number of economists and others who speak of market coercion.

Although certainly these abstractions include the sum total of all individual actors (who may enact or enforce laws, or utter coercive sentiments about how individuals ought to behave, or take part in powerful market decisions such as policies about which employees to cover with a healthcare policy) none of these systems is reducible to the specific effects generated by those individuals.

The reason is that complex systems have effects that work structurally–without the intention or even knowledge of all of the individuals who are part of the system. This is a basic tenet of social science that has been axiomatic for well over 100 years.

Because you resist thinking in these terms and cannot acknowledge the egregiousness and limitations of the terms you prefer, we really can’t have a productive debate.

FYI–I’d not be unwilling to discuss the ways in which bad government interventions adversely impact the availablility healthcare. That–and any other kind of empirical claim about effects–is something that no genuine utilitarian would decline to do.

But because you don’t want to allow the possibility that a government approach to healthcare problems might be beneficial–because you insist that any government intervention will be badly coercive while nothing else will (because in your chosen worldview the government’s effects have a human dimension that market forces somehow lack)–we can never get to that point.

Which is why we’re at impasse that makes further debate consist in our repeating ourselves.

200

And that’s where we differ. Enforcing the law is not a voluntary transaction. If a police officer comes to my house offering to arrest me, I can’t tell him “no, thanks, I’d rather not.” He has a gun and he can make me do what he wants. The whole structure of the state is behind that.

“Declining care” at a hospital involves no force. My refusal to enter into a transaction (of whatever kind) with someone isn’t force. It’s not coercion. It’s simply me choosing not to do something. How is that even close to a police officer stopping a robbery (a perfectly legitimate use of force, in my view)?

Again, it comes back to my question about my neighbor. If he refuses to buy my car he isn’t forcing me to do anything. If my neighbor is a doctor, you seem to be saying, and he refuses to treat me, then magically coercion has occurred.

You have yet to explain how any coercion is involved with people who cannot afford to buy health care or health insurance. Who is forcing them to go without?

The only “limitations” I want on the term is to use it accurately.

There are two dimensions of the argument. One is the wholly philosophical (or moral) dimension – the use of force is bad and therefore, yes, any action by the government to force people to either pay for someone else’s health care or treat them is immoral and wrong. I do think that but it’s kind of irrelevant when discussing policy. I do recognize such things as being necessary while still being wrong. Taxes, for instance, are immoral in my view but they are necessary because we need a government. So I can get beyond that and if you really want to have a discussion on the actual merits of government health care that’s fine, too.