From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rafal@smigrodzki.org)
Date: Fri Mar 21 2003 - 11:44:25 MST
On Fri, 2003-03-21 at 11:32, Greg Jordan wrote:
>
> More troubling to me is how libertarianism understands "force" never to
> include economic force. Especially in the contemporary world, the
> difference between economic force and civil-law defined (I
> guess) "violent" force is blurred at best. Property laws can exert
> mechanical memetic force and economic and political structures can exert
> institutional, systemic force (partly memetic, but also accessing
> everything from human muscles to sentient weapon systems and population
> control grids).
### It is a very dangerous path to stray from the rules of reciprocity
and allow the redefinition of an economic activity as the use of
"force". Richard Epstein writes about it at length. The only situation
where the line between violence and economic "force" is blurry is in the
monopoly situation. In the multilateral market, "economic force" is a
contradictio in adiectio.
But still, I'd be interested in reading some specific examples of
non-monopoly market behaviors which you would describe as the use
"economic force".
Rafal
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