Image by Steve-h via FlickrOne of the key principles of libertarianism is the 'principle of non-coercion'. It states that with the exception of defending against the 'initiation of force' by another, it is immoral to coerce others. This concept underlies the insistence that taxes are illegal coercion and that government programs that help the poor are (at the very least) wrong, and (as often stated) evil. Further, that any interaction that takes place within a 'free market' is non-coercive, and therefore 'right', or 'good'.
Sounds great, doesn't it? Noble and high minded and unimpeachable. Too bad it's based on a ton of bad assumptions that make it not just misguided, but dangerously, almost delusionally misguided.
For smart people, libertarians can believe some pretty stupid stuff. I've already covered some of this here and here and here. Today, I'm covering the concept of coercion, and the assumptions that libertarian philosophy makes that 'ain't necessarily so'.
The primary assumption is that there is (or can be) such a thing as a 'free market', and that a 'free market' is inherently coercion free. Both parts of this are easily demonstrated to be false. This has been demonstrated beautifully (from two completely different angles) recently by Professor Ha-Joon Chang at Cambridge in 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism
, and by Professor Bernard Harcourt of the University of Chicago in The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order
.There is no such thing as a 'free market'. Markets are an intellectual concept based on sophisticated notions of human interaction, not 'natural law'. All markets have bounds and are defined by those bounds. There are concepts and products and services which are (and often necessarily) outside the market in every market. In fact, there are so many of these, in so many new catagories, that an entire industry of libertarian thought has sprung up to 'debunk' these exceptions. Kinda like whack-a-mole, because it's just not possible to debunk reality.
Some examples:
-Slavery is no longer a part of a (legal) market. Neither is the labor of children. The unpaid labor of homemakers and parents and caretakers for disabled and elderly family members are likewise not captured in the 'free market'.
-There is no 'free market' in nuclear materials, nor in deadly biochemical agents or in other materials with the ability to cause mass destruction.Nor is there a 'free market' in potentially unsafe medications that require a sophisticated understanding of medicine to properly dispense. Nor is there a 'free market' in nostrums and whackadoodles that don't work as advertised.
-Patents and copyrights and other devices serve to create coercion around the use of 'intellectual' property in order to make it saleable on the market. There is no 'natural force' that defines the bounds of intellectual property. It is a product of high order contracts.
The concept of ownership itself is a form of coercion, one that is so deeply engrained in our culture, with its deeply seated institutions, that we fail to recognize it as coercion. Coercion is implicit in ownership, not explicit, so it's easy to forget its nature.
There is no (and cannot be) human society without institutional coercion. Institutional coercion serves to 'put a lid on' individual coercion of the naked 'I've got a gun so fork it over' variety, and settle disputes in a way that works for the society. This coercion is known as 'government' and one of its primary purposes is to define and enforce property rights.
Property rights are not inherent, they are secondary to the relationship that individuals have with their societies. This ought to be prima facie knowledge, as the myriad of societies throughout history that have operated successfully with vastly different ideas of property are evidence, but libertarians don't view it that way. They view only government action with regard to property as violating 'freedom', greatly and incorrectly limiting the scope of the issue of coercion.
Coercion is inherent in any relationship humans have with property. There will always be disputes over who earned what, and there will always be disputes over what is right and just. It is the nature of human institutions to make decisions on these value judgments and then to enforce those decisions. The enforcement of those decisions inherently means the initiation of force.
- Defining the value of a disputed item or service initiates force.
- Claiming ownership of an item that others also claim initiates force.
- Determining responsibility for harm initiates force.
In our 'civilized' societies, acquiesence to this force inherent in our dealings with one another is so ingrained that only when something goes wrong do we ever see its naked hand
-During a divorce proceeding when a wealthy man divorces the woman who 'made him who he is' and they dispute who 'owns' the property accrued.
-During a corporate litigation when the inventor of an item challenges the right of the corporation who employed him to patent the invention and profit from him. Suddenly the force inherent in the concept of property loses its velvet glove.
Contracts are a sophisticated and effective attempt to forestall the naked use of force by initiating force before the fact. This is both a strength and a weakness in terms of human justice in economic terms, and are one of the many reasons for the necessity for government to interfere with the actions of 'the market' (which, as an abstract social construct, cannot exist without government).
Any libertarian will tell you that contracts are 'coercion free', but that simply doesn't pass the smell test. Contracts are legally binding agreements between parties that state the terms under which the two will interact. The coercion is implicit in the assumptions. The difference between a contract and a law is simply the nature of the parties involved. A law is a contract in which one of the parties is a government entity.
Both laws and contracts seek to bypass the naked use of force by embedding the implicit threat of force. A law promises force from one of the parties (the government) while a contract promises force from the third party who enforces the contract (the government), or occasionally from one of the parties with the promise of 'backup' from the third party.
In almost no cases are contracts made between parties with equal power in the exchange. Usually, one party has a greater need to enter into the contract than the other, and in those cases, the party with the lesser need has significantly more power in the situation.
Usually, the party with more power (usually economic power) in the situation uses the natural coercions of the requirements of living within human society to force negotiations into a range that benefits it, while the party with less power tries to incrementally move the terms in its favor. In other words, the party with more power defines the terms, and the party with less power then attempts to negotiate within those terms. Coercion, plain and simple.
To sum up: Wherever there is unequal power between parties to a contract, there is coercion. Even when there is equal power between parties to a contract, there is coercion implicit in its creation.
An employer-employee contract is an excellent example of the coercion inherent in uneven contractual negotiations. When the two come to the table, one of the parties (usually the employer, but not always) has already drawn up the 'rough draft' of the terms – how many hours, rough pay scale, benefits, vacation, job duties, et cetera. This is the party with the greater negotiating power.
Occasionally, the contract will be truly 'mutually beneficial', with both parties sure that it was fair. Far more often, however, one party or the other will accept terms that are passively or actively harmful to it in a calculation that not accepting the contract would be even worse. A choice between two bad alternatives is not a coercion-free choice.
Humorously enough, this is a given in management and business education. Business leaders know that they are coercing unequal terms on employees and talk about this casually, 'in house'. But many of these same business leaders, when it comes to stating the philosophy underpinning their business acumen, will deadpan without irony that there is no coercion involved in employment.
Libertarians will state that the prospective employee always has the 'freedom' to reject the contract (implying that this makes the contract coercion-free, but that ignores the larger context of the negotiations and the society in which they take place.
It is not only possible, but statistically likely that the prospective employee will have no contract choices that provide the opportunity for advancement, for safety, for compensation that provides economic security, or for dignity of person within the context of productive work.The vast majority of the people of the world do not have work available to them that provides all of these life essentials.
Neither party is going to 'hold a gun' to the other's head. It simply isn't necessary. The coercion is so well implied that both parties already know the score. So when (for example) an employer offers a position that requires a potential employee to take significant safety risks for a salary that is not quite enough for the employee to support his family on and allow him to further his education, the prospective employee is gambling that he will not become injured on the job before he is able to find a way to further his education and escape it.
This prospective employee in a 'free market' doesn't have the 'freedom' to demand proper safety protocols on the job, or benefits that include education, or pay enough to cover the costs of education. He is negotiating within the range of options available to him in his geographic location given the context of his life.
This may be the best job available to him at this time in this place (this may be the only job available to him at this time in this place), but it is not a good job for him, and there is no 'objective' standard that implacably states that he is earning what he 'deserves' ('free market' rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding).
What government can do in these situations is impose power on the side of the negotiation scale that was being affected by institutional coercion, and demand a greater range of contract negotiations from the other side. This can also be achieved, imperfectly, through labor unions and other organizations that use collective bargaining to improve the bargaining power of laborers in an economy - but these organizations need the backing of law (government) to be effective in the long run.
Government can impose safety standards that protect the prospective employee's health, and insurance (workman's compensation) standards that define the employer as the responsible party if the employee gets injured on the job while following protocols. It can set a minimum wage standard to prevent employers from hiring employees at levels that cannot support a family. It can institute unemployment insurance to give an unemployed prospective employee greater bargaining power at the beginning of the negotiation. It can legalize collective bargaining and pass laws that make it easier for collective bargaining units to form and maintain memberships.
In other words, government 'interference' in the market doesn't initiate force into a coercion-free situation, it balances force in a situation already fraught with coercion.
'But the employer doesn't create the coercion, he just takes advantage of it.' You say. 'It's not the employer's 'fault' that the prospective employee was born into poverty or limited means, that he or she was not given as many opportunities in life as other, or imperfectly took advantage of those offered due to various issues in life.'
'That's not my problem'
'I'm not responsible for that'.
Really? You want to go there? You want to say that the employers of (for instance) garment workers sewing in a locked warehouse making insufficient money to support families, living in squalor and then dying in a fire because the employer didn't value their safety were not in any way responsible for their living conditions or for the way they died?
You want to say that the former employers of the thousands of people left unemployed and accepting any job that is hiring after corporations 'outsourced' service jobs to India do not bear any responsibility for the spike in umemployment, or the crash in the home market, or any of the other effects of their actions?
To be fair, technically the libertarian is right when he says that he, individually, is not responsible for the inequities in life that create coercion in contract negotiations. But as a citizen in a democratic or representative government, he is provided the means to become responsible, and refusing to work to reduce those coercions is an abdication of those responsibilities.(More on that, later, and the implications for libertarianism and democracy).
Pontius Pilate washed his hands. He washed them over and over again, but the blood remained.
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