Week 15 Reflection - The Uneven Freedom-Coercion Scale

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This week we had the pleasure of listening to Dr. Davies talk on government coercion and its effects on society. He gave many examples of when government coercion took place not only in the United States, but around the world, and the unintended consequences that resulted. Some of these include increased electrical deaths, increased pollution, and smaller grocery stores going out of business. Overall, I think Dr. Davies hit the nail on the head on government coercion.

One example that Dr. Davies discussed was requiring licensing for electricians. This sounds like a great idea that would benefit the consumers by having better quality electrical work, which is what the government intended. Some of the results of the required licensing were exactly what the government planned on, which was reducing the amount of low-quality electricians. However, this led to less of a supply of electricians, thus increasing the price of a licensed electrician and leading to homeowners doing the electrical work themselves. The result was homeowners getting into electrical accidents because they had no idea what they were doing. Therefore, the government coercion intended to reduce the number of electrical incidents resulted in the exact opposite, an increase in electrical incidents.

This is just one example of the many examples that Dr. Davies discussed, but they all have the same common denominator. The government's coercion to force citizens into doing or not doing a certain act had negative unintended consequences. After listening to the lecture by Dr. Davies, I completely understand his thinking on government coercion. Dr. Davies did also talk about government coercion that works in our society, like stoplights and speed limits. This is government coercion, but it is socially acceptable and does not feel like an impediment to our freedom. In a successful society, there needs to be a healthy mix of freedom and coercion. If there is too much freedom complete anarchy would almost surely happen, and if there is too much coercion we could end up in a George Orwell book. Unfortunately, I do not know the answer as to what is a healthy mix of freedom and coercion, but with the way our government and society is headed, the freedom-coercion scale could look very lopsided on the coercion side.