As a Canadian I feel somewhat alien to this discussion. And I would
imagine that most people in other countries would feel the same.
Political discourse in the United States has become so rhetorical, so
motivated by unstated goals that the carefull distinctions outlined below
are ignored, denied, etc. for political purposes that have nothing to do
with reasonable intellectual discussion that it is probably best to
ignore it.
On Mon, 15 May 1995, Michael Gibbons (GIA) wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, 15 May 1995 [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> > Dr. Schweitzer asks, "When did economists first equal government
> > intervention with the use of force?"
> >
> > Weber defined the state as the institution in society that claims the right
> > to use "legitimate" force in its dealings with other members of society. I
> > use a version of this idea and state that the state is the institution that
> > "authorizes" the "legitimate" use of force. The reason I emphasize
> > "authorize" is because I want to allow for the Nozick argument (originally
> > taken from Rothbard et. al.) that private defense agencies are possible.
> > In my opinion Nozick's private defense agencies would still require some
> > process in which it is decided when the use of coercion is legitimate and
> > that process or set of institutions would be the state. Hence, the
> > anarachism discussed by these particular libertarians is a pseudo-anarchism
> > since the main question of moral legitimacy still must be bridged.
> >
> > Prior Weber I would pick Hobbes as the "economist" (and I do consider
> > Hobbes an economist in the sense of Mandeville and Smith) who first saw the
> > state as prohibiting absolute liberty by the use of the threat and exercise
> > of coercion.
> >
> > I am sure that careful research might turn up non-Western sources of
> > earlier vintage (I suspect Chinese philosophers would have recognized what
> > was so obvious about the state power under which they lived).
> >
> > A more interesting question is when an option placed before a rational
> > utility maximizing action can be described as "coercive." If I promise to
> > give you a job that pays you 10 x your next-best opportunity but only on
> > the condition that you first commit some outrageous act, am I coercing you
> > to commit that act?
> >
> > Best wishes
> >
> > L. Moss
> >
>
>
> The discussion of the use and idea of coercion in 17C and 18C
> political discourse needs to be approached in the context of that
> discourse. Invariably, thinkers of that period made a distinction
> between license (which is usually considered to be not informed by
> reason) that leads to anarchy, tyranny (which usually comes about as a
> result of anarchy) and liberty, which is the pursuit of self-interest
> consistent with reason. For the overwhelming number of political
> thinkers of the time (they would not have much distinguished between
> economic and political thinkers themselves), liberty was secured only by
> way of a properly constituted political system. This idea continues at
> least through the debates surrounding the US Constitution, I would argue.
> I would also argue that the reason/liberty/polity thread can even be
> found in Hobbes, although he isn't very optimistic about how much liberty
> is available in comparison to, say, Locke or Sydney. From the
> perspective of most of these thinkers, there is no inherent conflict
> bewteen liberty and the properly constituted public sphere, since the
> former can only be secured through the latter. The coercion of the
> public sphere is evident only vis a vis those who engage in license, i.
> e. the will to do just anything one wants without consideration or
> concern for others.
>
> For better or for worse (worse I think), in the 20C we have come to think
> of liberty as what earlier thinkers would call license. And we
> tend to think of any infringement on our license as an act of coercion.
>
> MTG
>
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