34 THE  COASE  THEOREM The inability of anyone to make scientifically valid interper- sonal comparisons of subjective utility has once again smashed all the hopes of the free market’s humanist defenders to deal scientifically (i.e.,  without any appeal to either civil justice or morality) with a problem of social policy. The more astute “anarcho-capitalists”   have understood this, and have thereby abandoned the very idea of social utility and social costs. They have also abandoned the idea of civil  government.2a  But they have not been able to demonstrate how people can deal success- fully with the problems created by such technological develop- ments as the internal combustion engine. But at least they are consistent. They do not search for “fools’ gold” intellectual solutions to “scientifically” insoluble problems. They do not search for pseudo-market solutions - “What would the correct market price be in the absence of a market?” - or solutions involving the hypothetical (and scientifically impossible) ability of judges to make scientifically valid social cost-benefit analyses in settling disputes.  There can be no scientifically valid answers to such socizd  problems, given the presuppositions of modern,  subjectivtitic, individualistic  economic  theo~. Yet the approach used by Cease and his academic followers to deal with these questions assumes that there  m-e scientifically valid answers to them. Conclusion Since there are no “neutral, scientific” answers, Cease’s whole essay is an exercise in intellectual gymnastics – an illusion of scientific precision.29 Nevertheless, it is considered a classic 28. “There is no government solution to potlution  or to the common-pool prob- lem because government is the problem.” Gerald  R O’Dnwoll, Jr., “Pollution, Libertarianism, and the Law,” ibid., p. 50. 29. This same illusion of scientific precision is at the heart of virtually every professional journal in eeonomics, every mathematical equation, and every  cdl for scientific  poticy-making issued by members of the economists’ guild. The day an economist admits to himself that no economist can make interpersonal comparisons of subjective utility is the day that his public claims of economics’ objective, scientific preeision make him a charlatan. The day before, he was simply ignorant.