Freedom first: On coercion and coercive offers

Abstract The dominant theories of coercion and coercive offers today are moralized, in the sense that they explain the prima facie wrongfulness of coercive incentivization on the basis that such incentivization essentially involves some other, independent wrong, such as a conditional proposal to violate another's rights. I develop and defend a new version of a more old‐school theory, according to which coercive incentivization is prima facie wrong fundamentally because it threatens another's freedom. Coercion and coercive offers, I argue, are essentially exercises of power over another person for the purpose of steering that person's practical reasoning. This power‐dependent way of trying to steer another's practical reasoning threatens the other's freedom, thereby violates a general prima facie duty of respect, and is prima facie wrong for that reason.