In the latest issue, you wrote:

“The entirety of human interactions can be divided into three fundamental categories. The first category—coercion—occurs when A takes Y from B without giving B anything in return. As a result, A has both X and Y; A seems to have gained, but B has certainly lost. The second category—sacrifice—occurs when A gives X away to B without asking or expecting anything in return. As a result, B now has both X and Y; B seems to have gained, but A has certainly lost. The third category—trade—is the only one in which neither party loses. Both A and B leave the exchange more satisfied than they entered it.”

You then proceed to describe the three categories, showing that coercion leads to more coercion and dwindling respect, sacrifice leads to the sense of entitlement and the development of masters and servants, and that trade produces the best outcome.  For the most part, I agree completely.  However, those who use coercion will disagree with your conclusions about coercion, and those who use sacrifice will disagree with your conclusions about sacrifice.

For example, in your Objectivist defense of the anti-abortion stance, you suggest that disallowing pregnant women from legally ending the lives inside them would be a good thing.  I can argue that enforcing such a law would be coercion.  I think you would argue that the enforcement of rational laws is not coercion.  I can agree with that argument, but I would also insist that we avoid the term “coercion” specifically because it provides the opportunity to disagree about what it means.  The same quagmire can be created for the categories of sacrifice and trade.  The point is that different people will come to different conclusions and be unable to find common ground.  I offer that insight as a safe precursor with which you can agree.  If you disagree, you are simply proving that you and I come to different conclusions and are unable to find common ground, so I stick you with the contradiction fallacy.

Granted, one of us might be an idiot, and that could be me, but I think it’s far more likely that we’re both really smart.  So off I go into the main insight that I hoped to share…

I think of every choice, whether it is coerced or a sacrifice or both or neither, as a trade.  Law enforcement agents may coerce you to pull over, to pay a fine, to appear in court, or whatever, but in each case you are trading away a worse outcome for a better one given the circumstances (of which the agent is a part).  The religion-crazed mother who gives most of family’s savings to her church as a sacrifice is trading that money away for hope, perhaps of getting into heaven herself, or of buying one of her children a ticket.  Every choice is a trade.

So I cannot in good faith agree with an argument that coercion and sacrifice are two other basic categories for all human action of which trade is the third.  What I can argue is that expecting others to help you pay for what you want generally makes your life worse than expecting to earn it for yourself.  Thus, you may coerce, if you feel that is the best way to earn it for yourself.  But if you vote or lobby or make donations to pass a law that benefits you, can you call that earning the enforcement of that law?  I cannot.  I think it’s a great way to identify laws the enforcement of which a lot of people will be willing to financially support, but that’s not the system we have… yet.  Furthermore, voting to utilize the resources collected by force from unwilling citizens to enforce the laws I like is not, to me, the same as earning the enforcement of those laws.

You have a much greater reach than I do, I assume.  I hope that my ideas might inform, enlighten, or help you in some way as you continue to share ideas with others that will help create more happiness and joy in the world.

It is possible to improve your own life and the lives of others who will disagree with your rational and objective view by teaching them principles.  They can assimilate the principles despite their inability to see objectively.  Using rational thought as a tool to guide your decisions is extremely rare.  Far more prevalent is just doing what you’ve seen others do because it looked to you like it worked for them.  So I tell people all the time that I try not to expect others to help me pay for what I want.  I assume that they can tell that this works for me and I hope they will follow my example.

My website, litmocracy.com, asks people to make comparative decisions (which is the better of two pieces of writing?), and uses these decisions to identify high-quality writing.  The intention is two-fold.  First, I wish to show people that finding consensus in a group can be done far more effectively using comparative voting (Google ‘Condorcet’ or ‘vote-123’ ).  Second, I want to use that principle to bridge the gap between socialist thought (many quite naive socialists are mostly interested in having a better world) and free-market thought.  Finding arguments and authors that can reach the brainwashed masses and provide them with a small bit of help out of their invisible prison is quite difficult.  I think comparative voting is one of the best ways to solve it.

Response by Mr. G. Stolyarov II, June 6, 2006: