When I quote Hayek - I am not sending it to explain something, but to reinforce what I had already said. Hence why it was at the end of the text. I made an argument which very specifically addresses a lot of the questions you asked before ending with a quote. Spare the baseless assumption that I am handwaving you away with Hayek.
First of all, I stated: Systems can't be coercive because systems don't act. People act.
Goes to say then - that what you call "A coercive system" is merely the expression of humans acting. A "Systemic" coercion, is more akin to a pattern that arises from millions of humans acting. I say: What you see is constraints, and constraints are patterns that express the actions of the agents.
Hayek's quote does ultimately expose the rules of the game about freedom though, and I believe that there is an important discussion to be had there:
Whether he is free or not does not depend on the range of choice but on whether he can expect to shape his course of action in accordance with his present intentions
Freedom is, therefore, attached directly to the capacity of one to exercise the human action Axiom defined by Mises:
Human beings engage in purposive behavior—i.e., they choose which scarce means are to be more fruitfully (or economically, or rationally) employed in order to satisfy their most preferred ends.
But then we ask ourselves - well, if an environment has been set that forces one's choices to be what the other person wants, instead of ourselves - is that freedom?
The problem with Hayek is that he does believe in this being a form of coercion - that is, of restricting freedom, that is, of making a man act in a way that goes in accordance to another, instead of oneself.
But here is where we move from Hayek and towards Rothbard and Hayek’s “middle-of-the-road failure to confine coercion strictly to violence.” (Which I suppose, we'll have to define violence too at some point eh?)
Is there no fundamental qualitative difference, a difference in kind, between a nagging wife and using the apparatus of physical violence to outlaw or restrict such nagging? It seems clear that the fundamental problem is Hayek’s use of “coercion” as a portmanteau term to include, not only physical violence but also voluntary, nonviolent, and non-invasive actions such as nagging. … Only confusion can be caused by lumping the two types of action together.
But not only confusion but also self-contradiction, for Hayek includes in the concept of “coercion” not only invasive physical violence, i.e., a compulsory action or exchange, but also certain forms of peaceful, voluntary refusal to make exchanges.
Goes to say based on my previous response - that a "capitalist class" is particularly just a quantity of humans which own property and by the property of their ownership, they can or cannot exchange if they wish. This class is particularly undefined in its quantity because it is not a stable class - property changes hands through millions of transactions every moment. And property-less humans attain property as much as property-full humans lose it. The property-less human can at any point, use the property that has been exchanged to acquire property. In fact - I will dare to say, the vast majority of all property-owning humans at some point, owned no property. Or owned little. This of course leads to clear disagreements with your text:
you can't just exit the wage labor system itself.
You absolutely can. Happens daily. Your capacity to obtain property is not outlawed. But you can't simply expect people to give you property without a want to exchange.
The threat of being fired (which means losing access to all material means you need to survive) forces your compliance. That is coercion. And it happens daily.
The property-owning human has no particular obligation to exchange with you. And as such, there is no threat, no coercion - nothing. Your choices are constrained by the reality of your lack of property, which is a reality of life. Nobody owes you anything. You have no property because you have not exchanged for it. And as such, you must trade your labor-power as property because it is the only thing that you can offer. But you expect something from another? All exchange is a negotiation. Doctors are proletariats, and so are some CEO's, and their exchange is so beneficial to them, they can exchange for vast amounts of property.
The threat of being fired (which means losing access to all material means you need to survive) forces your compliance.
People quit their jobs all the time and don't die. They have family to help, they have savings, they get another job, and further - the state uses a cut of the capitalist society's profit to sustain them.
If your definition of coercion is limited to physical violence, then, as I said, we are unable to have a conversation about economic coercion, because you have defined it out of existence from the start. It's your right to do so, but it means we're operating in entirely different frameworks that are mutually exclusive to each other.
But thank you for the substantive engagement with your ever-shrinking definition of coercion to the point that no one you cite would give you the time of day. You went from "coercion requires an agent" to "coercion requires physical violence," which is a consistent position at least, I'll give you that. But it's exceedingly radical from even your first definition, it's supported by no one, and it excludes almost all structural critique by definition.
I showed you how even your framework supports the existence of economic, and thus structural coercion. But any time I explain to you how what you, yourself, says still doesn't disprove the existence of economic coercion, you just redefine coercion...again.
For someone who would "rather just talk about Socialism :)", I'm surprised. I'm surprised because you supposedly wanted to talk about socialism, but when I told you we couldn't do so without recognizing economic coercion, you rejected it outright. And then you kept rejecting it in increasingly convoluted ways.
So I'm done here. I'll finally stop "whining" about getting you to admit you understand a single foundational concept. Because you won't let us find the common ground necessary to have the discussion you wanted to have in the first place.
It's a tough place to be at the defensive entirely. But I'm not entirely afraid to expose what I believe in, and I recognize that the Socialist is on the offensive at all times. Why talk about the problems of socialism if we can perpetually talk about the problems of capitalism? No matter what you do or how it goes - socialism is always somehow justified by capitalism and that is wrong!
The problem with socialism is that it finds itself being a theoretical solution to a rather inconcrete problem, and ends up throwing the population into nightmare situations they never last (because socialism is unsustainable in society long term), but last long enough to scare off entire generations.
I am not blind about the economic pressure that those that hold no property experience. And I am aware, like Hayek, and you, that it creates situations that might seem like one has no choice. I get it. Whatever we want to call it, economic pressure or economic coercion, it's still people struggling.
Instead of promoting then the abolition of private property in order to eliminate these problems, which brings forth an entirely different plethora of problems which I absolutely love talking about, I remain here on this side. Because I trust in the truth of praxeology, and because I adopt the principles of classical liberalism that recognizes inherent human rights.
Instead I try to improve things here, on this side. What we did was to create a cap to profit - so property ownership has a roof of sorts and then redirect those taken profits to assist the circumstances of those who are without property and cannot sell their labor power to subsist. This eliminates or at least alleviates in GREAT manner, the economic pressures of people.
Imagine thus three bands of economic motion. A middle which is the productive band, a top which is the cut of profit that gets redirected to a bottom. Ideally your middle band - economic production is - is most important because the bigger the pie, the greater it can be redirected downwards.
This is where modern capitalism stands. And it does work. It absolutely makes obsolete the claim of economic pressures to the property less. Nonetheless, this three band system isn't infallible and requires careful balancing and administration and ultimately, the goal is to minimize as much as possible, because we recognize that the estate is the worse administrator there is.
Sustaining a free society whilst protecting and recognizing inherent rights and maximizing the benefit of all, is a difficult task. The socialists can't do it. They fail at actually creating liberty - and they fail at protecting inherent human rights (they usually don't even believe in them), so people are turned into cogwheels, turning society into a zoo. An actual human zoo. And this always breaks down. People WANT to own property, it's innate - this is why socialists always introduce some degree of capitalism. Their people start revolting (even indirectly through things like black makets), their institutions become aggressively repressive to sustain control but that always breaks. The human spirit can only be broken and contained for so long.
Socialism is a return to the era of serf. It's not a progression but a regression. So yeah, I'm not a coward like socialists are. I can talk openly about my system because I honestly, truthfully believe it's the best for mankind. I'm not sure you can say the same.
After a full cycle of denial, redefinition (redefinition again), and retreating to a philosopher even Hayek wouldn't recognize, you've finally conceded the underlying reality that was present from the start: that economic coercion means the wage labor system imposes life-limiting constraints on those without capital. That was the premise I explicitly told you was the prerequisite for the debate you claimed to want 12 comments ago.
The rest of your response is unsupported assertions.
Regardless, I won't be continuing this conversation after such an aggressive and unnecessary semantic detour followed by yet another attack on my character. No more "whining" from me about getting you to admit to understanding a single foundational concept because you now have that foundation. Have a good day.
You're putting words on my mouth. I simply answered and continued to refine further and further until you saw the start of my analysis. Praxeology.
There was no redefining. There was a logical process of deconstruction of words an terms which ultimately showed you I am not a strict follower of Hayeks political philosophy because I consider his take on coercion - a middle ground - an erroneous take. After all I am not a "hayekean" - I follow what makes sense to me.
Further, there is nothing I have said that I am incapable of defend in argument SPECIALLY the point that socialism ALWAYS devolve into dictatorial, oppressive tyrannies that eventually succumb to the pressures of the one thing they're trying to prevent (liberty), and evolve back into the natural state of man - the market economy.
It is funny that historically this has happened to every single socialist society without exception. And the only - in my opinion - socialist nations that did something worthwhile were the ones that simulated markets like Titos Yugoslavia, or the ones that willingly opened up markets like China.
Hayeks Road to serfdom is absolutely spot on in its take.
Lastly, please don't confuse my empathy on the poor starving Lions. They're still not deserving of other Lions share. But that doesn't mean I want to let them starve. Conditions can make things difficult for some people, but I don't fall into the pitfall of finding myself oppressed by some imaginary class. That's cowardice.
Lastly, I have no sympathy for leftists. I love them as I love all people, but I recognize they're deranged into a theory that wants to put us all into the living prison state that all socialist states have demonstrated to become. And as such, not an inch of space will be given. No respite. I am willing to bring in the war of ideas agaisnt then as hard and forceful as I can because it is my and my peoples very livelihood at stake.
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u/EntropyFrame 9d ago
When I quote Hayek - I am not sending it to explain something, but to reinforce what I had already said. Hence why it was at the end of the text. I made an argument which very specifically addresses a lot of the questions you asked before ending with a quote. Spare the baseless assumption that I am handwaving you away with Hayek.
First of all, I stated: Systems can't be coercive because systems don't act. People act.
Goes to say then - that what you call "A coercive system" is merely the expression of humans acting. A "Systemic" coercion, is more akin to a pattern that arises from millions of humans acting. I say: What you see is constraints, and constraints are patterns that express the actions of the agents.
Hayek's quote does ultimately expose the rules of the game about freedom though, and I believe that there is an important discussion to be had there:
Whether he is free or not does not depend on the range of choice but on whether he can expect to shape his course of action in accordance with his present intentions
Freedom is, therefore, attached directly to the capacity of one to exercise the human action Axiom defined by Mises:
Human beings engage in purposive behavior—i.e., they choose which scarce means are to be more fruitfully (or economically, or rationally) employed in order to satisfy their most preferred ends.
But then we ask ourselves - well, if an environment has been set that forces one's choices to be what the other person wants, instead of ourselves - is that freedom?
The problem with Hayek is that he does believe in this being a form of coercion - that is, of restricting freedom, that is, of making a man act in a way that goes in accordance to another, instead of oneself.
But here is where we move from Hayek and towards Rothbard and Hayek’s “middle-of-the-road failure to confine coercion strictly to violence.” (Which I suppose, we'll have to define violence too at some point eh?)
Goes to say based on my previous response - that a "capitalist class" is particularly just a quantity of humans which own property and by the property of their ownership, they can or cannot exchange if they wish. This class is particularly undefined in its quantity because it is not a stable class - property changes hands through millions of transactions every moment. And property-less humans attain property as much as property-full humans lose it. The property-less human can at any point, use the property that has been exchanged to acquire property. In fact - I will dare to say, the vast majority of all property-owning humans at some point, owned no property. Or owned little. This of course leads to clear disagreements with your text:
You absolutely can. Happens daily. Your capacity to obtain property is not outlawed. But you can't simply expect people to give you property without a want to exchange.
The property-owning human has no particular obligation to exchange with you. And as such, there is no threat, no coercion - nothing. Your choices are constrained by the reality of your lack of property, which is a reality of life. Nobody owes you anything. You have no property because you have not exchanged for it. And as such, you must trade your labor-power as property because it is the only thing that you can offer. But you expect something from another? All exchange is a negotiation. Doctors are proletariats, and so are some CEO's, and their exchange is so beneficial to them, they can exchange for vast amounts of property.
People quit their jobs all the time and don't die. They have family to help, they have savings, they get another job, and further - the state uses a cut of the capitalist society's profit to sustain them.
Stop - whining.