> I think that Steven's position is a perfect example of a contestable  
> account of the "essence" of government (or the state) that is assumed to  
> be universal or "the way things simply are" but one that is in fact  
> peculiar to a very specific period of time (as a description of  
> legitimate government authority, it would not, for example,  
> sit well with the communitarian elements of Anti-Federalism) and even at  
> that point more common to some people than others.  The claim that the  
> essence  
> of government is law and that law is coercive simply wouldn't be  
> accepted by a number of accounts of the origin/basis/justification for  
> legitimate authority (many consent theorists, for example).  Steven's  
> statement also suggests that those  
> responding to Mary's comments who have suggested she is misconstruing  
> what economists think need to qualify their denial.   
 
I would point out that I am not trying to account for the use of an idea,  
but simply to describe how coercion is inevitably operative within the  
economic system, since law (and thus rights) have an essential coercive  
element (in allowing certain things and disallowing others).  I will  
continue this thought with the comment below. 
 
> I would also dispute the claim that coercion is simply a value neutral  
> term.  I would suggest that it is a term that is developed, in part, from  
> a normative point of view, that there are a number of terms in our  
> discourse shaped from the normative point of view, and that to try to  
> deny that or to purge that normative dimension is to do violence to tha  
> lnaguage in such a way that it hampers our ability to explain the world  
> rather than helps. 
 
You see, this gets to the heart of the matter about which Mary is  
concerned, particularly when combined with my statement above and in the  
previous message.  The term coercion is sometimes (perhaps even often)  
USED in a pejorative, non-neutral way.  This lends rhetorical force to  
certain arguments, not unlike "more v. less government" (another  
irrelevant distinction, generally, since the question is usually rights  
for A v. rights for B, government being "present" in either case).  I  
would bet that an in-depth study of the use of the term "coercion" in  
economic analysis would reveal a multiplicity of uses, right, left, and  
neutral. 
 
I might also add that the converse of Mike's last sentence is also true:   
the tendency to attach normative connotations to certain elements of our  
language hampers our ability to explain the world.  But enough for now.