 Steiner differentiated offers , threats and throffers based on the preferability of compliance and noncompliance for the subject when compared to the normal course of events that would have come about were no intervention made . Steiner 's account was criticised by philosopher Robert Stevens , who instead suggested that what was important in differentiating the kinds of intervention was whether performing or not performing the requested action was more or less preferable than it would have been were no intervention made . Throffers form part of the wider moral and political considerations of coercion , and form part of the question of the possibility of coercive offers . Contrary to received wisdom that only threats can be coercive , throffers lacking explicit threats have been cited as an example of coercive offers , while some writers argue that offers , threats and throffers may all be coercive if certain conditions are met . For others , by contrast , if a throffer is coercive , it is explicitly the threat aspect that makes it so , and not all throffers can be considered coercive . 
