Dr. Schweitzer asks, "When did economists first equal government intervention with the use of force?" Weber defined the state as the institution in society that claims the right to use "legitimate" force in its dealings with other members of society. I use a version of this idea and state that the state is the institution that "authorizes" the "legitimate" use of force. The reason I emphasize "authorize" is because I want to allow for the Nozick argument (originally taken from Rothbard et. al.) that private defense agencies are possible. In my opinion Nozick's private defense agencies would still require some process in which it is decided when the use of coercion is legitimate and that process or set of institutions would be the state. Hence, the anarachism discussed by these particular libertarians is a pseudo-anarchism since the main question of moral legitimacy still must be bridged. Prior Weber I would pick Hobbes as the "economist" (and I do consider Hobbes an economist in the sense of Mandeville and Smith) who first saw the state as prohibiting absolute liberty by the use of the threat and exercise of coercion. I am sure that careful research might turn up non-Western sources of earlier vintage (I suspect Chinese philosophers would have recognized what was so obvious about the state power under which they lived). A more interesting question is when an option placed before a rational utility maximizing action can be described as "coercive." If I promise to give you a job that pays you 10 x your next-best opportunity but only on the condition that you first commit some outrageous act, am I coercing you to commit that act? Best wishes L. Moss