  Edmundson's criticism of the canonical view of the state as coercive reveals a deeper root to some disagreements over coercion. In effect, Edmundson provides a reason to question how special or important coercion really is. Coercion may make some actions necessary, but human beings in any natural world will be constrained by necessities of many sorts: the physical limits of our bodies in our environments, and our needs for things such as nourishment, shelter, protection, and even perhaps community, recognition, and love. To be coerced adds to or alters in some ways what it is necessary for one to do. But being subject to a coercive set of laws might also provide one greater opportunities or freedom from necessity, as arguably the criminal law does, at least if well-drafted and  enforced.[27]  If just laws provide us protection from wrong-doers while leaving us at liberty to take any morally justifiable act (assuming here that the criminal law prohibits only unjust acts), then the law's threatened use of force against lawbreakers may not merit any special scrutiny. We might instead regard it as a shifting, regularization, and rationalization of the necessities to which human beings are anyways subject. Edmundson and those he disputes with can all agree that coercion used for illicit ends is a matter of moral significance and a cause for special scrutiny and opposition. What Edmundson shows is that moralized approaches to coercion make it hard to see why the technique itself and the agents who can use it are especially worthy of our attention.