You’ve got to eat to live and got to work to eat. That’s coercion. The fact that the coercion arises from a state of nature might mean that we can’t blame anyone for the coercion itself, but it certainly doesn’t prevent us from blaming those who exploit it. And capitalism doesn’t just permit that coercion, it can’t function without it. The distinction between someone who puts a gun to my head and says “you must work for me or die” (bad coercion, to libertarians) and someone who points to my certain starvation if I don’t work and says “you must work for me or die” (good coercion, to libertarians) is almost entirely irrelevant to how I actually experience life and liberty. And the latter condition afflicts many millions of people. The reality of death due to starvation and exposure might be a state of nature but the exploitation of that state of nature to satisfy self-interest certainly is not. But this exploitation is at the very heart of the libertarian and capitalist project.
L’Hôte: coercion