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Indeed. This is a thought experiment libertarians often suggest. Just substitute "The government should ..." with "We should send men with guns to people's home

Indeed. This is a thought experiment libertarians often suggest. Just substitute "The government should ..." with "We should send men with guns to people's homes in order to ...". A bit hyperbolic maybe, but a useful lens.

dkarl 7y ago
I agree that we should keep in mind that violence underlies everything the government does, but I don't think we should act as if the violence is always realized. For example, we don't let a chemical plant emit more than a limited amount of certain toxic chemicals into the air. How does this "not letting" happen? The company operating the plant is careful to stay within legal limits because it does not want to be fined. It does not want to be fined, because if it does not pay, the financial institutions it does business with will freeze its accounts on order of the government. The financial institutions will freeze the accounts because their officers do not want to commit a crime by failing to do so. The officers do not want to commit a crime because they don't want to go to prison, and if they refuse to go to prison willingly, men with guns will take them there. I'm just guessing at the exact chain of enforcement, but I think we both agree, ultimately it comes down to the state's capacity for violence. However, that doesn't mean that when we pass environmental regulations we should envision people being dragged from their homes screaming in the middle of the night at gunpoint while their children soil themselves and are traumatized for life. We should envision what actually happens: companies keeping their emissions within legal limits and paying fines when they fail to do so. We should think about the reality of what enforcement will actually look like, not imagine the bank officers in solitary confinement for struggling with prison guards and their children in therapy for PTSD. I agree that we should keep that stuff in mind when that's the reality of enforcement. Drug laws, for example, do result in a lot of young kids seeing their parents and siblings dragged out of their homes at gunpoint. But I think it's a misleading image when talking about most government uses of power.
- ksdale 7y ago
  I don't think I agree. I think the drug example makes very explicit what the cost of this kind of enforcement is, and as a result a lot of people have very reasonably concluded that the price of enforcement is much higher than the cost of people being allowed to do drugs. Companies generally follow the law because it's very expensive not to, so much so that it hardly feels like coercion, as you explain. They basically agree that they should act a certain way, which is good for everyone, to be sure, but it's not like they could choose to act a different way. As you say, if they actually refused all the way to the end, they would be dragged off to prison, and we wouldn't necessarily feel bad for them, because the pollution they visited on the surrounding community would be real and terrible. But I think all this illustrates is that sometimes coercion is justified, and where it's very justified, everyone more or less agrees to go along, because people know that they would be dragged off to prison AND look like jerks. I don't think it illustrates that the system isn't that coercive, though. I think this view of coercion is rather like people consuming more meat because they're so far removed from the slaughterhouse. When you're in a McDonald's, it really doesn't feel like an animal died for that hamburger, it's just another thing to eat. Likewise, when most people follow the rules to the extent that it doesn't feel like coercion, we forget just how violent the system is to people who refuse to go along (and like I said, that violence may be justified, but the threat of it is never absent). Edit: I feel like we have been taught that coercion is always bad and never justified and so we want to do mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that what we're doing isn't really coercion, and I think it would be healthier for us to acknowledge coercion where ever it happens and also acknowledge when we all believe that we have found such an obviously correct policy (like no toxic pollution) that not only is coercion appropriate, but any sort of resistance to coercion would be seen as ridiculous. This acknowledgement has the upside of forcing us to be fully aware of the thin line we walk between a fair and just society and a violent and oppressive one.

dkarl 7y ago

I agree that we should keep in mind that violence underlies everything the government does, but I don't think we should act as if the violence is always realized. For example, we don't let a chemical plant emit more than a limited amount of certain toxic chemicals into the air. How does this "not letting" happen? The company operating the plant is careful to stay within legal limits because it does not want to be fined. It does not want to be fined, because if it does not pay, the financial institutions it does business with will freeze its accounts on order of the government. The financial institutions will freeze the accounts because their officers do not want to commit a crime by failing to do so. The officers do not want to commit a crime because they don't want to go to prison, and if they refuse to go to prison willingly, men with guns will take them there. I'm just guessing at the exact chain of enforcement, but I think we both agree, ultimately it comes down to the state's capacity for violence. However, that doesn't mean that when we pass environmental regulations we should envision people being dragged from their homes screaming in the middle of the night at gunpoint while their children soil themselves and are traumatized for life. We should envision what actually happens: companies keeping their emissions within legal limits and paying fines when they fail to do so. We should think about the reality of what enforcement will actually look like, not imagine the bank officers in solitary confinement for struggling with prison guards and their children in therapy for PTSD. I agree that we should keep that stuff in mind when that's the reality of enforcement. Drug laws, for example, do result in a lot of young kids seeing their parents and siblings dragged out of their homes at gunpoint. But I think it's a misleading image when talking about most government uses of power.

ksdale 7y ago
I don't think I agree. I think the drug example makes very explicit what the cost of this kind of enforcement is, and as a result a lot of people have very reasonably concluded that the price of enforcement is much higher than the cost of people being allowed to do drugs. Companies generally follow the law because it's very expensive not to, so much so that it hardly feels like coercion, as you explain. They basically agree that they should act a certain way, which is good for everyone, to be sure, but it's not like they could choose to act a different way. As you say, if they actually refused all the way to the end, they would be dragged off to prison, and we wouldn't necessarily feel bad for them, because the pollution they visited on the surrounding community would be real and terrible. But I think all this illustrates is that sometimes coercion is justified, and where it's very justified, everyone more or less agrees to go along, because people know that they would be dragged off to prison AND look like jerks. I don't think it illustrates that the system isn't that coercive, though. I think this view of coercion is rather like people consuming more meat because they're so far removed from the slaughterhouse. When you're in a McDonald's, it really doesn't feel like an animal died for that hamburger, it's just another thing to eat. Likewise, when most people follow the rules to the extent that it doesn't feel like coercion, we forget just how violent the system is to people who refuse to go along (and like I said, that violence may be justified, but the threat of it is never absent). Edit: I feel like we have been taught that coercion is always bad and never justified and so we want to do mental gymnastics to convince ourselves that what we're doing isn't really coercion, and I think it would be healthier for us to acknowledge coercion where ever it happens and also acknowledge when we all believe that we have found such an obviously correct policy (like no toxic pollution) that not only is coercion appropriate, but any sort of resistance to coercion would be seen as ridiculous. This acknowledgement has the upside of forcing us to be fully aware of the thin line we walk between a fair and just society and a violent and oppressive one.