I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

156 I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians
might emerge with the market, and then assume that an omniscient and benevolent government
would do what was required to solve those problems, the public choice approach
looks at the information available to those in government and analyzes the incentives they
face to determine how they will act. I found this approach to the economics of government
very revealing.
One of the books we used in my special topics class was The Calculus of Consent by
James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. Buchanan and Tullock had recently established a
Center for the Study of Public Choice at Virginia Tech, and I went to graduate school at
Virginia Tech specifically because I wanted to study under them. I was not alone. A number
of my classmates went to Virginia Tech to study under Buchanan and Tullock, and as a
graduate student I was introduced to the ideas of Austrian economics and libertarian politics
by my fellow graduate students.
The two classmates who had the biggest influence on me were John Metcalf (who is
now an attorney in Jacksonville, Florida) and Jack High, who subsequently earned a Ph.D.
in economics from UCLA and has been a leading figure in the resurgence of the Austrian
school. Jack had the largest influence on me because he took a lot of time to introduce me
to ideas, suggest reading material to me, and he was willing to endlessly discuss those ideas
with me. On the recommendation of Jack and other classmates, I read Mises, Hayek,
Rothbard, Rand, and others, and my eyes were opened.
The ideas of each of those writers had substantial appeal, but the whole was more than
the sum of its parts. Thanks to Jack and John and a few other classmates, I discovered that
there was a substantial and long-standing intellectual foundation underlying free-market
economics and libertarian politics. I had thought my anti-socialist views to be anti-intellectual
because I was completely unaware of the substantial intellectual output of libertarian writers
and the Austrian school. I was never introduced to it as an undergraduate, and it was certainly
not a part of the graduate curriculum. But my classmates in graduate school were
very interested in the Austrian school, and I did a lot of outside reading. More than once
I recall annoying my professors by arguing the ideas of the Austrian business cycle in
macroeconomics, or arguing the merits of privatizing government activities in public finance
class. And I remember as if it was yesterday Gordon Tullock telling me that I would never
be able to find a job because of my extreme libertarian views. (I can smile about this now,
because I am a tenured professor.) I had entered graduate school as an economist, wanting
to learn more, but thanks to the education I got from my classmates, I left as a libertarian
with a good Austrian background.
Jack High, John Metcalf, and I attended the now-legendary Austrian economics conference
in South Royalton, Vermont, in 1974. The faculty at that conference was composed
of Murray Rothbard, Israel Kirzner, and Ludwig Lachmann. I had read Rothbard’s and
Kirzner’s work before, and meeting them was wonderful. Meeting Murray was especially
memorable. From reading his work, I pictured him as a serious and bitter man, but in person
he was as jolly as Santa Claus! He loved to stay up late telling wonderful stories, and anybody
who knew him will tell you he was very a funny man. Listening to Murray was always a
delight. Israel was more the serious scholar, but very warm and generous. Over the years I
sent him some of my work hoping for comments, and he was always kind and helpful.