One does not have to resort to radical critiques for discussions of the problem that Hunt discusses under the title "the invisible foot." Coase has referred to this as blackmail. "Coase himself has been well aware of specific problems which arise from the problem of extortion. In his original article, Coase [1960] rather briefly touched upon the question. primarily arguing that extortion may arise in either liability regime. In Coase [1988], he has discussed the problem in more detail, identifying extortion as a threat to do something which the extortioner has no other interest in doing than to extract money from the victim." (Buchholz and Haslbeck (1997: 639). The substance of the problem is that the assumption that a person has a legal right to control the behavior A, which causes harm to another, does not necessarily imply that she also has the legal right to perform the behavior B, which has a different externally harmful effect. Behavior A might be "to produce a good for profit from sales which, in the process, causes pollution" while behavior B could be "to produce pollution in order to extort a bribe." The key to understanding Coase in this matter as in many others is that he defines a resource as a legal right to control a behavior that has an external effect. In this case, polluting behavior has the capacity of generating two different types of external effects. So Coase would analyze the problem by conceiving of two separate resources. [Polluting aimed at extorting a bribe might be called a negative resource, like the concept of a "bad"] A number of questions are raised by this approach but I do not believe the one discussed in earlier emails on "Coase's deficiencies is among them." Buchholz, W. and C. Haslbeck. (1997)?Strategic Manipulation of Property Rights in Coasean Bargaining.? Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics. 153 (4): 630-640. Coase, R. H.(1988) Blackmail, Virginia Law Review. 7 (4): 655-76) Pat Gunning