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On Tue, 19 Feb 2002, Arthur S. Alexion wrote:
> At 03:24 PM 2/19/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>
> >If two people and/or companies who might do business are not BOTH willing,
> >then that particular business will not be conducted. Where is the
> >coercion in any of this?
> >
> >Nowhere.
>
> On the way back to your car after the next PLUG meeting, a stranger, larger
> than you, appearing to have a gun confronts you and give you the choice
> "your money or your life". You "freely exercise" the choice he has given
> you and you chose to give him your money, which he takes and runs away.
Well that's a neat trick. Turn a situation in which a thug is restricting
my choices, and make it sound like he's offering me choices.
You see if I were walking down the street after the next PLUG meeting, I
would have many choices about what to do next. However, when the
humongous stranger (he'd have to be to be bigger than me! :-) ) threatens
that if I don't give him my money he's going to kill me, that means I'm
being forcibly prevented from doing lots of other things that I might
otherwise have chosen to do. Go into a convenience store and buy a coke?
Nope. Go install NetBSD on that old computer at home? Nope. Go visit my
girlfriend? Nope, there's this guy threatening my life, you see. I have
fewer choices, not more. If I get out of this situation alive, then I'll
be back to where I was with lots of choices, but at the moment he's
threatening me, he's restricting my choices, not offering me choices.
> Have you been coerced or did you "make a choice"? Where do YOU draw the line?
I draw the line at people minding their own business. If your thug were
instead a vendor selling goods and said he wouldn't do business with me
unless I promised not to do business with his competitors on the next
block, I would simply choose to do business with him or not. But he's not
threatening my life for not doing business with him.
> PS Are you having fun with the absurd extreme to which you have taken this
> argument, while we take your bait, or do you really believe this nonsense?
To be honest with you I do enjoy a good debate, although I believe it is
your example which is nonsense. I really believe in the position I'm
taking, although I realize it's off topic, I find it hard to leave some
absurd arguments of others alone.
Wayne
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