Why coercion is the tactic of psychopathic personalities and why I think the tactic is uncivilized
Coercion defined
To limit confusion I will present below a definition of coercion:
Coercion (/koʊˈɜːrʒən, -ʃən/) is the practice of forcing another party to act in an involuntary manner by use of threats or force.[1] It involves a set of various types of forceful actions that violate the free will of an individual to induce a desired response, for example: a bully demanding lunch money from a student or the student gets beaten. These actions may include extortion, blackmail, torture, threats to induce favors, or even sexual assault.
Coercion is the practice of forcing another party to act in an involuntary manner by threatening to use force against them if they don't. Coercion is the tactic of the rapist, the torturer, the blackmailer and the extortionist.
Rape is a form of coercion
Coercion is about one person gaining control over another person. The person using the tactic of coercion (threat of violence) is doing so to try to force another person to behave in a way which they want even if the other person disagrees. So the tactic of coercion is a tactic of control which violates the free will of the target. Rape is made possible by coercion because the threat of violence is used by the rapist to remove the free will and ability to consent from the person being raped. The rapist only seeks to gain complete and total control over the body of the other person with no concern for the psychological or emotional effect it could have on them.
Why coercion is the tactic of the psychopath
Psychopaths are known not to feel empathy. To coerce a person is to take away their free will (their ability to choose without the threat of violence to influence them). A non-psychopath is capable of empathy and does not want to cause unnecessary pain and suffering in other people. It is known that coercion produces pain and suffering but psychopaths (unlike non-psychopaths) simply do not care what the other person or other people in general might be feeling unless to exploit to gain even more power and control over others.
Why I despise the use of coercion
On a personal level I despise the use of coercion. In my opinion some may use coercion out of desperation because they have no other way which they know they can make money. This could be the extortionist for example. This kind of coercion is theft by threat of violence. The use of coercion justifies violence to be directed at potentially anyone. This means sooner or later someone you love and care about could be subjected to the coercion. For this reason alone it is enough for me to despise coercion as a tactic (just as I despise torture).
But I also recognize that how I might feel about the use of coercion has nothing to do with being secure from it. At the end of the day security is about risk management. That is the idea to reduce risks. Coercion is just a tactic (and a particularly cruel tactic). The world is an uncivilized place where extortionists, blackmailers, and rapists exist. This means we can only do our best to protect ourselves from their activities and protect others.
Why coercion renders democracy irrelevant
Because coercion can and does exist it is also the reason why democracy fails to work. Unless votes can be kept secret (unless privacy can be maintained) it is not possible for anyone to vote without being coerced to vote in a manner or for a candidate which they don't actually want to vote for. The threat of violence if a certain candidate loses an election is a form of coercion.
Democracy itself is coercion, it doesn't matter if the process is safeguarded from coercion because the end result is always mob rule.
That is a very abstract interpretation of the definition of coercion I gave. Why do you believe this and do you have evidence to support your argument?
Demo-cracy is mob rule, rule by majority. If the majority mandates the minority be tonight's side dish it's perfectly OK, despite if that agreement was reached through completely voluntary means.
Why do you think mob rule is ANYTHING but coercion is the real question, because there's no stretch of reason or interpretive semantic disagreement that would make mob rule not coercion for the minority, especially considering that we've not had a Majority agree on anything, EVER, and it's been a looooong time since a majority even got together to make such decision?
My counter argument:
You could make the same vague argument that morality is coercion. You can make the argument that love is coercion. You can make the argument that society itself is coercion. Because when you have any of these things you can no longer do exactly what you want to do but you have to consider how others may react to what you decide to do.
But the definition of coercion I agree with is the one I used in my post which is a lot more narrow. The coercion I discussed in my blog is the kind of coercion where an individual is trying to control another individual in violation of "free will". So no I'm not going to expand the meaning of coercion to fit something political.
If you would like to make that case however then it is up to you to present a compelling argument for why you would compare democracy to rape, or torture, or blackmail, or extortion. It is also up to you to offer an idea of how society is supposed to work and show an example of a society working without for instances law which you could define as coercion under your vague definition. I'm interested in learning more about what you believe, and why you think "mob rule" is democracy yet offer no real alternative to "mob rule".
Even if I can agree that democracy could be defined as "mob rule" it doesn't mean that there is any lack of "mob rule" without a democracy. Under a dictatorship isn't that also "mob rule"? Maybe the mob is smaller (anyone who can influence the dictator).