Monopoly On Coercion
I have for years been saying that the state has a monopoly on coercion. Imagine my happiness when I read this today:
The monopoly on the legitimate use of violence (Gewaltmonopol des Staates, also known as monopoly on legitimate violence and monopoly on violence) is the definition of the state expounded by Max Weber in Politics as a Vocation, and has been predominant in philosophy of law and political philosophy in the twentieth century. It defined a single entity, the state, exercising legitimate authority or violence over a given territory as territory was also deemed by Weber a characteristic of state.
Woo hoo. Turns out there are many people that agree with me that the state has a monopoly on coercion. Depending on their politics they would be more or less inclined to agree with using the term ‘coercion’. Looks like that Max Weber, the guys who first used this definition, is almost as smart as me.
February 12th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
all violence=coercion, all coercion!=violence. kthxbye.
February 13th, 2008 at 1:18 am
So I guess your flavor of politics doesn’t allow for coercion. But you know what your flavor of politic does give coercion to? CORPORATIONS. To bad nobody else thinks that. Well except for democrats trying to get elected.
February 13th, 2008 at 2:35 am
Ideally, the government SHOULD have a monopoly on coercion AND it should be totally answerable to/mutable by the citizenry through democratic elections. However at the moment corporations DO have coercive power over consumers (if you don’t think Microsoft and Intel have coercive power over US computer buyers, your definition of ‘coersion’ is not useful), and the government is NOT fully answerable to/mutable by the citizenry (partially due to the corrupting influence of money in political campaigning, in my opinion). Given that the ideal conditions don’t exist, and MAY not be possible (certainly not any time soon), I’d rather use government regulations to lessen the coercive power of business, and support civil rigths groups to limit the coercive power of the government, rather than just shifting all the power directly from the government to businesses.
Yes, you’re constantly able to find problems with the current situation. That desn’t logically entail that a radical change, to the system you favor, would have no (or even fewer) problems.
February 13th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
Informally I defined coercion as the ability to force someone to do something they don’t want to do.
You argue that Microsoft has coercive force. Is Microsoft able to force you to use their software?
My brother, and the lab next door uses Apple software and hardware. As I type this response a machine running Unix software is processing functional data. If Microsoft can force people to use their software a whole bunch of people don’t know nothing about it.
Out of curiosity, how many different companies are there in the LA area that provide water for your property. I’m guessing one. If you want your property to receive water you are forced to use the state company. What about electricity? How about waste disposal? Do you have many options or are you forced into using just one of them. The state uses legislation to lock that industry to one company. Thats what we call a monopoly and unsurprising in order for them to exist the state has to get involved.
Fun fact: most of the justification given by a city to allow one company to monopolize a good or service is to help the poor. Translation: its policy you support that forms monopolies. Help the poor by eliminating the pressure that make companies find cheaper more efficient way to produce goods. Only in the mind of a liberal does that translate into helping the poor.