Regarding the idea of government intervention and coercion as terms that economists should avoid, I think that the issue is really one of method and not ideology, as many imply. The economic method, which developed around the end of the 19th century, limited economics. Economists henceforth (at least those who bought into neoclassical economics) had to begin their studies with the pure market economy. We begin by conceiving of an image of an economy in which property rights are fully defined and there are no goods with those embarrassing public goods characteristics. After we study the way in which real people would act under these unreal circumstances, we are prepared to deal with the more complex cases of less than fully defined property rights and public goods. I don't know any other way to distinguish economics from history than to follow this neoclassical method. The problem arises when scholars forget that the image of the pure market economy is a tool to help us understand the effects of using force for some other reason than the enforcement of property rights. When they go on to argue, without first fully working through the logic of the economic method, that the use of force is justified or unjustified, they make an error in method. Of course, many "professional economists" see no use for the economic method, as described here. Many others seem to have never learned neoclassical economics, as described here. Pat Gunning National Chung Hsing University Taiwan