Your question is wrong. Voluntary means that the person giving you the choice is not the one creating the choices.

So your choice is "work", or "starve and die" - the person offering the job is not creating the "starve and die" choice, therefor it is voluntary.

Your choice is "work", "I will beat you" - this in involuntary.

Your choice is "work for $1,000,000", or "work for a bar of gold" - this is involuntary because the person offering the choices created the choices.

“Do this or die” does not imply meaningful choice. It doesn’t matter if that death is from murder or starvation. For all of us who are not independently wealthy “work” is involuntary, but choice of jobs often (but not always) is voluntary.

> “Do this or die” does not imply meaningful choice.

You are upset that the person does not have good options. But that does change anything - deciding to accept a job offer does not make the work involuntary.

You are focusing out the outcome, but outcomes are not the question here, choices are. The employer is not responsible for the way the universe exists, and they are not forcing the person to live in it.

You're suggesting a different definition of "voluntary" which is:

>the person giving you the choice is not the one creating the choices

Who is creating the choices if not the people who are offering the jobs?

>So your choice is "work", or "starve and die"

So then you've answered my second question above, which is, if there is a persistent acceptable choice of "die" then any alternative must be voluntary.

My question is, from your perspective unless someone is physically restrained then anything they do is purely voluntary?

> Who is creating the choices if not the people who are offering the jobs?

Is that a real question? The universe create the choices. This person offered a job - they are not God, they do not have control over the person. They simply offered a job. I guess you would rather they didn't offer the job?

> My question is, from your perspective unless someone is physically restrained then anything they do is purely voluntary?

Obviously. Although there are other kinds of restraints, threats for example.

I mean, any other definition leads to contradictions and ridiculous situations where employers are blamed for offering jobs to low value occupations.

I can't find it right now, but someone wrote an essay that basically boiled down to how when people help others, instead of getting credit for what they did do, they get blamed for what they could have done.

That's what you are trying to do. In such a world no one is willing to help anyone.

Don't do that, it leads to a horrible world.

I believe you may be referring to the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics [0].

"The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it."

[0] https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/QXpxioWSQcNuNnNTy/...

Yes that's it! Thank you.

Does this mean that as long as there are two people making offers, anything you do is voluntary?

Your sentence is not written carefully.

Rephrasing: As long as there are two independent people making offers, your choice between the two offers is voluntary. (Do not forget the 3rd option: accept neither offer.)

Would you like to work for the Garbage Collection Company of America?

Would you like to work for the American Garbage Collection Company?

Would you like to starve?

Aha, you've volunteered to work as a garbage collector.

I think this isn't what people think of as voluntary. Sophie's Choice is a better description.

You clearly didn't read what I wrote, because your options do not match the situation I wrote.

I mean you wrote two basically the same companies, while I clearly said "independent", and you wrote "Would you like to starve", i.e. these companies are telling him work for us or don't work at all, while I clearly wrote that the person giving the choice must NOT create the choice.

And in Sophie's Choice the camp Dr setup both options.

I have to ask: If you are going to ignore what people say to you, why do you even bother replying? If you just want to tell people your opinion post it as a top level comment, not a low effort reply.

> Rephrasing: As long as there are two independent people making offers, your choice between the two offers is voluntary. (Do not forget the 3rd option: accept neither offer.)

I then make a very obvious example where there are two independent companies offering similar crappy jobs. Plus your 3rd option.

There's no one person giving the choice, there are two companies and your third option. Perfectly conforming to what you say:

> clearly wrote that the person giving the choice must NOT create the choice

Ok? So there is a situation, a very obvious one, that arises from the conditions that you're claiming making something voluntary. You have two different companies offering substantially the same thing. Now it is voluntary when the outcome is no different from if there were just one company offering the (only) choice.

That is clearly something you will have to explain. I know you can't see how many upvotes a comment has, but I can tell you it doesn't seem like I am the only person who has spotted this.

> And in Sophie's Choice the camp Dr setup both options.

But it is also a term that means "an undesirable decision that has to be made".

Before you accuse other people of not reading, I think it's worthwhile to have a scan for irony.