Punching someone is coercion.
Advertising is not coercion.
Threatening to punch someone is maybe coercion.
Stealing a wallet is coercion.
Firing someone (and reducing his income) is not coercion.
An uninsured bank going bankrupt is probably not coercing its customers.
Maybe I mean “violate natural rights” rather than “coerce”.
A better definition of coercion is to use power over someone to make them do something you want. Might even be a dictionary definition.
All of the examples could be coercion using this definition, and its clearer how to treat the grey zones:
the punch uses physical power over you; without trying to make you do something it's not coercion though
Advertising might be if they're using tricks to bypass your judgement
Threatening to punch someone is definitely coercion, unless you are stronger than them/they don't have that power
Stealing your wallet definitely is
Firing somebody sometimes is. The big questions are:
- does the company(or manager) have power of the individual? Eg. Can the employee easily replace the company; do they even need a job? Are they on a work visa? - is the company trying to make them do something?
Ah, yes, this makes significantly more sense.
> Maybe I mean "violate natural rights" rather than "coerce".
Well, "coerce" obviously has a "or threaten to do so" and a "in order to cause or prevent certain behaviour" tacked onto it's definition, but "violate natural rights" otherwise seems like a plausible definition in and of itself; the question that immediately follows being what qualifies as a natural right. Absence of unprovoked physical violence certainly sounds like it would be included in that, but short of contrived and circular definitions of "violence" and "physical", it isn't really sufficient.