BigBallinStalin wrote:[1]
For issues that matter, e.g. exchanges with the government, then around this level:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a73_1254508478Directly stand in front of one of those, and tell me if you think it hurt you.
(Did you agree to that? Did you sign a contract with the government do that to you?
(What about having a kid? Were you/gf raped or did you agree to have the child? Did you agree to dealing with kids? Again, having kids involves many ambiguities, but such concerns become significantly less relevant when we discuss the citizen and the government.)
i don't really think those are the only issues that matter... but yes i agree that there is less ambiguity when it comes to government, the primary reason being that it is so one-sided. the government is so much larger than any individual, which allows it to exercise such a high level of coercion. that being said, the choice to follow federal laws is still a choice, although one very skewed towards the "involuntary" side of the spectrum.
you claim in the first link that the difference between voluntary and involuntary is clear despite the ambiguities... which doesn't make sense considering that this means two parties involved can have different perspectives on whether an exchange was voluntary or involuntary.
free will is a whole different debate and i am assuming ITT that free will does exist. if it doesn't then every action is involuntary and the debate is over (unless you redefine "free will")
BigBallinStalin wrote:[3]
"it ALL depends on individual interpretation"
It really isn't as subjective as you think, but of course any crazy person can say, "The MOON is CHEESE cuz it ALL depends on individual interpretation."
no. language is a human construction and words factually DO have different meanings to different people.
anyway here's a summary of my position (since you asked):
since free will exists (which is our assumption ITT) humans always have the choice to engage in any action that they are capable of doing. every action is influenced by an uncountable number of external influencing factors, and some factors exert a larger influence upon our decision-making than others. in this way we are "coerced" by many, many things to varying degrees every time we make a decision.
last week i decided to purchase lunch at mcdonald's. i was coerced in a small way by mcdonald's advertising, in a medium way by the corporation's decision to place a restaurant in downtown chicago near my workplace, in a large way by my past experiences with mcdonald's (which in turn were originally coerced by my parents' initial decision to feed me mcdonald's occasionally as a kid), and in a super-size way by my coworker's recommendation of the new chicken wings that mcdonald's has recently brought to our area.
however, i think you can agree that my decision to eat at mcdonald's was largely voluntary.
you can see that coercion doesn't have to be a threat of physical violence, or even a threat of anything for that matter. you could regard mcdonald's advertising as a form of aggression against the healthiness of americans, if you wish. it doesn't change anything. actions SHOULD only be deemed "good" or "bad" based on their effects. if someone strapped a bomb on me permanently and threatened to detonate it the next time i smoke heroin, then their aggressive coercion is going to benefit me in the long run, especially compared to the gentle coercion of my friend who first got me addicted to heroin (spoiler: i am not actually addicted to heroin). this is what i meant when i said that FT was pushing his morality onto me- he sees aggressive coercion as an automatically bad thing regardless of its effects, and i don't agree with that.
there is a parallel in government: we are forced essentially at gunpoint to not murder our fellow citizens. this is direct coercion akin to the bomb-strapping and is a largely involuntary exchange. you CANNOT say that it's voluntary simply because our choice to kill someone is immoral- firstly, killing is not always immoral, and secondly, the moral goodness of an action has nothing to do with the degree to which that action was voluntary. the government is directly limiting our choices.
however, assuming you aren't a total anarchist, i think you can see the benefit of this exchange. the aggressiveness of the government's coercion goes from this extreme, to jail time if you assault someone, to a ticket if you're caught speeding, to michelle obama's efforts to get kids to eat healthier (and her disapproval of those who eat mcdonald's like me). in each case the government is exerting their influence on your decision-making processes. yet michelle obama is not forcing me to do anything that most people would call "involuntary".
so, not only does it not make sense to try and define a line between voluntary and involuntary, it also doesn't make sense to try and talk about governmental influence as if it was separate from all other forms of coercion. and it doesn't make sense to declare all forms of coercion to be immoral, but that may be a separate discussion.
