Page skates around one issue slightly in his text. The chief reason why coercion can be justified is in cases where there is some form of violence with either of the two options (not to suggest that there have to be a mere two). It is only in cases like these that coercion needs to be used in order to reduce the amount of suffering. Page touched upon this issue when mentioning crime: that if you ignore the criminals, the victims suffer; if you punish them to harshly, the criminals suffer. Another argument that Kirby introduces but does not use sufficiently is the case where someone’s mind is going and they have a lack of self control. This example allows the suffering to be primarily put onto one person to prevent that person from causing more suffering to other people. This is the distinction which I feel Page should draw, since he concluded that there are insufficiently good means of nonviolent coercion.
There must be justifiable violence since in many cases it comes down that only violent methods can be used. However there still must be a moral choice for the situation, since one option must be better than the other. This option would be the one where the least suffering is occurring as a result of the decision. Therefore violence must be moral in certain circumstances to reduce the total amount of violence.
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