I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

154 I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians
causing them domestic strife and that their spouses or parents didn’t want to talk to them
anymore. Applying these techniques to political matters is a prescription for alienation, not
merely from the members of your immediate family, but from all of polite society.
So, how did I become a libertarian? How does anyone? Libertarianism is what happens
to you if you are willing to question assumptions and undertake a truly open-minded quest
for the truth. But one should embark on such a quest aware of the potential consequences.
It is immensely satisfying to discover a political philosophy that both integrates one’s experience
into an intellectually consistent conceptual whole and provides an accurate account
of how the world actually works. But such knowledge does not come without cost. With it
comes the scorn and derision of those who chose not to undertake the quest; those who do
not wish to see that the emperor has no clothes. So tread the path with care, for the price
of knowledge can be loneliness.
John Hasnas is associate professor of law at George Mason University.
35
RANDALL G. HOLCOMBE
WHY I AM AN ECONOMIST, A LIBERTARIAN,
AND A SUPPORTER OF THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL
Walter Block asked me to relate the events that led them to libertarian and Austrian
ideas. Several others began their stories in high school, but I was completely unaware of
these ideas until I was a graduate student. I was always a good student, but when I entered
college I saw it as a way to make myself more employable, and also as a place to have a good
time with my friends. I wanted to do well in my classes, but I was not seeking out ideas. I
worked my way through college playing guitar in a series of rock and roll bands, and I
would have kept that as a career, but apparently I lacked the talent, or the luck, or whatever
it took to earn a decent income. But hey, it was the ’60s, and it seemed like a good thing
to do. My point is that I did not enter college planning a career in the world of ideas.
I took my first economics course as a college freshman and was immediately attracted
to it. One thing that appealed to me was that a few simple models seemed to explain almost
everything that happened in the world. Rather than learning a large collection of facts,
economics presented a few simple theories that explained nearly every fact! The power of