Exploitative bargaining and spiteful omissions can themselves constitute interference.

Evidence

Context is always relevant to determining whether a given act worsens someone’s choice situation, since context fixes the baseline by reference to which we decide if the effect is indeed a worsening. This contextual sensitivity has important implications for the extent to which interference occurs. It means that acts of omission, for example, may count in some circumstances as forms of interference. Consider the pharmacist who without good reason refuses to sell an urgently required medicine, or the judge who spitefully refuses to make available an established sentencing option involving community service instead of prison. Such figures should almost certainly count as interfering with those whom they hurt. The contextual sensitivity will have other effects too. It may mean, for example, that exploiting someone’s urgent needs in order to drive a very hard bargain represents a sort of interference. Consider the pharmacist who agrees to sell an urgently required medicine but not for the standard fee—not even for the fee that is standard in the circumstances of an emergency call— only on extortionate terms. Such a person interferes in the patient’s choice to the extent of worsening what by the received benchmark are the expected payoffs for the options they face. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 285

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the moral-panic-era literature on sumptuary/moral judgments as context-dependent baseline-setting. — connects to: Interference is non-dominating when structured by shared-interest conditions and contestable penalties — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 128; Arbitrary interference ignores the affected parties’ own interests and opinions — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 291

Broader Connections

• Interference is non-dominating when structured by shared-interest conditions and contestable penalties #qualifies (0.80) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 128
• Arbitrary interference ignores the affected parties’ own interests and opinions #qualifies (0.75) — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 291