I don't see how you can define the state taking money from the wealthy to buy healthcare for the poor as violently coercive but not also define a corporation withholding necessary care from a poor person as violently coercive.
If you are able to help them, and you refuse to do so unless they do something for you (i.e. labour to earn money to pay your fees) then it is absolutely coercive.
By that measure any salary a doctor demands, whether it's paid for by the patient or the state, is coercive. Or for that matter, any salary any person demands in exchange for work is coercive. I feel like it ceases to have a useful meaning when used in this way.
It's only coercive when we're talking about the means to survive. If you offer someone a choice between death or some action, you are coercing them to act.
And I don't think that "ceases to have a useful meaning". I think it just doesn't let you argue that your system is better based on absence of "coercion".
I don't believe for a second that you understand the word "coerce" to be limited only to situations of life and death.
Do you or do you not believe that doctors in the UK are coercing the government by demanding a fair salary in exchange for the lifesaving services they provide?
>I don't believe for a second that you understand the word "coerce" to be limited only to situations of life and death.
I don't think it's necessarily limited to that, but I do think all such situations are coercive. Whether someone is having a gun pointed at them, or being denied healthcare, they are being coerced. That said, I do think most coercion does ultimately amount to the threat of death or suffering, even if it becomes very indirect in practice.
>Do you or do you not believe that doctors in the UK are coercing the government by demanding a fair salary in exchange for the lifesaving services they provide?
Trying to evaluate the actions of individuals in a wider system is not very helpful. Are the doctors being coercive? Yes. But they're also being coerced in turn by the individuals they rely on for survival (i.e. the people they buy food from) so it's hard to ascribe blame. It's the system as a whole which is coercive.
And this is my point. Both market based healthcare and state provided healthcare rely on coercion to function, so you can't distinguish them morally on that basis.
The only hypothetical system I know of that would actually be free of coercion would by something like anarcho-communism, where people have free access to the means of survival, and it is produced by people's free choice to work for the benefit of others. But I'd guess you think such a system wouldn't work.
>And this is my point. Both market based healthcare and state provided healthcare rely on coercion to function, so you can't distinguish them morally on that basis.
Can you honestly not see the moral distinction between me intentionally shooting you with a gun and me not applying first aid after someone else has intentionally shot you with a gun?
I disagree with the asymmetry. Withholding care isn't actually 'doing nothing' and has the ability to be violent or coercive. Take a life-saving but expensive pill. 'Doing nothing' in the case of someone who needs but can't afford the pill would be actually doing nothing - that person could waltz in, walk behind the counter, take the pill, swallow and walk out. Bada-bing bada boom, problem solved no violence or coercion. Healthcare providers don't actually do that though, someone who tried to walk in and take the pill would be met with violence in order to prevent them from accessing the pill until they had paid. That violence is coercive.
----------------
Since the mods are rate-limiting me, here's my reply to your post below:
>Otherwise every person in every situation who demands to be paid for their work, including doctors who demand to be paid by the state in a universal healthcare system are all being coercive.
I agree that this is coercion.
>When taken to that level, the word coerce ceases to have a useful meaning.
Well no, when taken to that level coerce retains it's meaning perfectly, it just happens to illustrate that the market system has coercion baked into almost every aspect. Here, this guy says it better than I can:
But there is no neutral construction of “coercion” that would ever support such a distinction. As Hale aptly demonstrates, coercion occurs when there are “background constraints on the universe of socially available choices from which an individual might ‘freely’ choose.”
In a world of scarcity, all economic rules–including rules that create private property ownership, contract laws, and so on–impose background constraints on the universe of choices individuals can make (e.g. the choice to move into a building and sleep in it without paying anyone anything). When we talk about the economy, we are not arguing about whether we want coercion. We are arguing about what coercion we’d like.
Demanding to be paid for your work is not coercive. Otherwise every person in every situation who demands to be paid for their work, including doctors who demand to be paid by the state in a universal healthcare system are all being coercive. When taken to that level, the word coerce ceases to have a useful meaning.
