what's the idea behind coercion not being ipso facto bad? how does this apply to the abolish schools discourse?
first off have to bracket this by saying i've never discussed coercion at length, because it doesn't tend to be used particularly formally, and because i'm allergic to the cats in the narko squat. but, to the point: there's no big idea behind it. that's just it—if you want to claim something is ipso facto bad, you have to do the moral legwork there; you have to own the edge cases. when you don't do this, you really mean something like 'X phenomenon in many cases causes Y phenomenon, where i find Y bad'. in the case of coercion, people don't tend to explain why it's bad very seriously, because it doesn't actually make any sense to claim that something ipso facto bad becomes un-bad when it's, like, legitimated through some procedure, and attempting to redraw the lines such that it’s only coercion when not legitimated in this fashion stretches credulity. but on the other hand nearly all of us are comfortable with *some* uses; we just try to bracket them in a way which makes them appear non-problematic.
a clearer example of what i’m talking about with more straightforward ramifications would be domination, because we can pick out a more definitive account to consider. we can basically read it as the capacity to affect the choice set of another party; at first blush this makes sense & leads us towards an account of freedom. the trouble is that i’m always in-principle in the position to affect the choice set of a third party, because even something as basic as a market transaction affects something like supply or price in a fashion that renders the choice fundamentally different. the ability to buy something at a dollar and the ability to buy something at a dollar and a penny are different choices, as is the ability to access a good for which one has to queue at t=1 or t=2. but, we don’t even have the conceptual capacity to talk about what it would mean for agents to only make ramification-less choices in this way. it’s ultimately purely specious. the classic example in the literature is that refusing to let a neighbour without a pool use your pool at odd hours of the day is dominating them, but if anything this undersells how badly domination overgeneralises.
i understand coercion and domination aren’t precisely the same, but they’ve been read together by domination theorists to the point where you can appreciate how applying force to change the calculus of the choices before someone is once again a species of this sort of power-over.
the overall way in which to situate my lack of care for concepts of coercion etc., though, comes in the fact i don’t think personal identity or metaphysical conceptions of the subject hold water, & so i find most conceits of autonomy & so on fall apart in much the same way. i’m not a rights-thinker, or a contract-thinker, or a duty-thinker, or other species of liberal.
it’s a neat question how that squares with the abolition of schools, because i do have the sort of gut moral sentiments that seem to comport with this philosophical position fairly awkwardly, though. another example that came to mind recently was my profound distaste for the whole voluntary-death moral panic. ultimately i do think it’s possible to square the circle, but it requires a deeper ethical sketch than i have space for here. to take a very quick stab: when we don’t find ourselves possessed of the idea that moral facts are out there to be discovered by clever metaphysicians, we’re forced to, well, ask questions, and make our peace with using language to do so. in other words, we listen! this is something that perfectionisms, whether of the hedonistic-utilitarian or aristotelian bent, do not.
my scepticism towards schools, aside from sheer horror at the idea of telling someone how i want to dispose of the next ten years of their life, is a scepticism towards knowing what kind of person you ought to develop into. i can help you develop into the kind of person that would bring you satisfaction, and i can tell you the requirements of those rules, but i would never presume to you know your good. because ultimately the aggregate social good i’m looking for comprise, along with everyone else’s, your evaluation of your life as a whole anyway!
