From: bomgard@moose.cs.indiana.edu (Tim Bomgardner)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Private sector coercion and equal footing
Date: 30 Sep 92 18:39:46 GMT
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington

wlee@argo.acs.oakland.edu writes:

}Question to the "anarcho"-capitalists and "libertarians" at large:
}
}Whence the seemingly unshakeable faith in the inability of the private
}sector to coerce?

By private sector coercion, I take it you mean the right of the owner
of some particular goods or property to determine under what conditions
or on what terms he will part with them.  For instance, if I have a
bushel of wheat and you want it because you're hungry (i.e., you "need" it),
but I insist you pay for it anyway (i.e., I do not recognize your "need" as
a moral claim on the results of my productive labor), that's coercion.  In
that sense, the private sector not only has the ability to coerce, it is
predicated upon it.

"Private sector coercion" is also often used in the context of employment
contracts, the idea being that any conditions placed by an employer on
his offer of employment is coercion, since you have no choice except to
acquiesce or starve.  

Is that really the case?  (I quote from one of my previous articles:)

If you don't want to starve, you have two choices.  You can produce food
directly yourself (e.g., farming), or acquire it from someone who does.  
There are no other possibilities.  They only question is how you will 
acquire it.  Socialism is based on the premise "If you need it, someone 
has a moral obligation to give it to you", or, for the more highly 
motivated, "If you need it, you have the moral right to take it."  A
recent Statist revision is this: "If you need it, someone has a moral
obligation to give it to you, or at least offer it to you on terms you
personally consider reasonable."

The "economic dictation" (or private sector coercion) of capitalism amounts
to this: I will trade you the product of my labor for the product of yours,
if we can agree on terms.  The moral basis of capitalism is the uncoerced 
exchange of value for value.

As an employer, this means I will pay you to work for me.  It also means
you have no "right" to the job, and no right to compel the terms under
which I offer it.  If you don't like the terms, you are free to seek
employment elsewhere, or negotiate to change them if your services are
that valuable to me ("your" meaning you as an individual, or you as a 
member of a group, i.e., a union).

What if you can't find employment elsewhere?  In other words, what if 
what you can (or are willing) to do is of no value to anyone else?  Then 
you have no choice but to acquiesce or starve.  Your desire to not starve
does not constitute a moral obligation on my part to feed you on whatever
terms you decide are acceptable.  

As others have pointed out, the term coercion, as used by libertarians, 
means governmental coercion, ultimately at gunpoint.

}Seems to me in a buyers' market or sellers' market the sellers or
}buyers respectively get the short end of the deal.  Market leverage is
}Power.  There are all kinds of things I would do differently if not for
}its existence, and I believe I would be freer absent of it.
}
}I have a positive attitude about exchanging equal value for equal value,
}IF I can approach my adversary on an equal footing.


So you would be "freer" absent a free market.  I wonder what you mean by
"freer".  Since you talk about "the short end of the deal", I suppose
what you mean is that as a buyer you would be free to ignore the market 
price and coerce the seller into accepting whatever you thought was "fair"
(if anything), and as a seller, you could prevent buyers from doing business
with your competition at a lower price (or alternately, prevent your 
competition from offering less than a "fair" (i.e., your) price).

"Equal footing" seems to mean that YOU determine the value of both your 
goods (or services) and your adversary's, and can force your adversary to 
accept your evaluation.  Or, put another way, there is some mechanism that 
forces your adversary to want your goods just as much as you want his.  You
certainly don't seem to mean that you are both equally free to accept or
decline the exchange, which is what a libertarian would call equal footing.

If you don't want a free market, does that mean you want a regulated
market?  Who regulates, and on what moral basis?


Tim Bomgardner
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian