Michael Golding,

If two people are each willing to pay 1/3 the cost of a pony to share, but a third person is unwilling to pay that amount, then you might say that the two (who voted, or were polled, etc.), who want the pony on the condition that all three are forced to pay, should hire a thug to use force to extract the 1/3 cost from all three. After all, then they'd have a pony, and ponies are good, and the majority is willing to tax themselves to have the pony, and we're not sure who owns the joy of having a shared pony...

You might say that one could view it (as I do) as the two people coercing the third, or one could view objecting to this mechanism (as you seem to) as the third person coercing the first two.

I'm really surprised that someone who is obviously as bright as you are cannot see that these two instances of "coercion" are incredibly different. And, that the second instance of "coercion" is not considered as such at all by those who believe that people should have self-ownership.

I don't think the morality changes if we multiply the numbers by hundreds of millions.

Gil