Nearly two thirds of spiral galaxies are either strongly or weakly barred, yet a significant fraction of disc galaxies do not have a bar. Now we understand that there are at least three ways of making bars, i.e., bar instability, tidal interaction, and secular bar growth by orbit trapping of a seed bar. However, the reverse problem of avoiding bar formation in unbarred galaxies may be more challenging than we thought. It is shocking that we still do not understand how the bar instability is avoided in real galaxies such as M33, and this puzzle may be central to the outstanding issue of what determines the distribution of bar strengths in galaxies.