Principles of Economics Chapter 16: Violence

You're right in the individual sense. You cannot agree to reject violence if someone is directly using coercion against you.

The context the quote is referring to is about deciding on which social systems we choose for organizing society. Do we choose the market order of voluntary exchange, mutual respect, specialization, and the division of labor or the State order of the initiation of violence, coercion, and intervention.

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got it, thanks!

> “You cannot agree to reject violence if someone is directly using coercion against you.”

IMHO, one must.

The shift of society choosing “voluntary market order” as its organizing principle over “state imposed order” will require some large number of us to master this method (to avoid the infinite cycle of state control)

How to resist coercion without propagating violence?