I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

172 I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians
athletic and worshipped our math-teacher/basketball coach Mr. Nickel. I hated Nickel.
One of these friends and I disputed the matter, and from nowhere Tyler the brainy nerd
interjected with a knowing smile: “Nickel’s a douche.”
In 8th grade I started listening to music and discovered that Tyler and I had similar
tastes. The Beatles were primary and we branched out widely, with Tyler scouting and
blazing the trails. We were becoming quite friendly at school, but we didn’t hang out outside
of school much, probably because our circles didn’t mesh. Neither one of us would have
been a natural addition to the other’s circle. Also, we didn’t live that close to each other.
Tyler was very intellectually advanced. He was a bona fide chess champion. Even more
remarkable was his voracious reading and broad knowledge. I knew from remarks he made
that his political views weren’t the standard stuff, but I was pre-political. My superficial
prejudices, from my parents and grand-parents (New Deal Democrats), were against Nixon,
etc., as were the prejudices of Mad magazine, which was about the only thing I read before
I was 16 or so.
I was at Tyler’s house, probably in 9th grade, and we were playing ping pong in his
basement. He asked: “Have you ever thought about why school sucks?” “The teachers are
assholes, they treat you like children, it’s boring . . .” “No, no, I mean why it sucks?” “No,
what do you mean?” It had never occurred to me that school could possibly not suck.
He said it sucked because it isn’t privately owned, it gets its money from politics not
the voluntary choice of customers, and so on.
I immediately saw the truth in this. It made perfect sense.
My contempt of school was a major passion in my life. Suddenly I had a powerful
theory of why the experience was so disagreeable.
In 9th and 10th grades my general pubescent indirection continued. My main social
activities were hanging out with a very cynical neighbor friend and playing poker with a
regular group of guys. The first time I took the SAT my verbal score was 490.
Tyler and I continued a friendship based mainly on music (Harry Nilsson was a special
favorite), but still we didn’t really hang out together. My disgust with school led me to go
away in 11th grade to a boarding prep school in Connecticut. I became more serious about
my coursework. I had a science fiction course and I recall Tyler and I corresponding about
Arthur C. Clarke and the Overlords coming and establishing Big A. I think Tyler put Economics
in One Lesson or Defending the Undefendable in my hands. These were among the first libertarian
books I read. I liked them immediately. I began to get very interested.
That summer I spent 6 weeks in France. I was supposed to be learning French and
diddling French girls, but all I actually accomplished was reading For a New Liberty. I
received a letter from Tyler about his going to an economics seminar at Oxford and that I
should travel from France to meet him. I did. I didn’t know where the seminar was meeting.
I just went to Oxford and asked the Tourist Centre where an economics seminar was taking
place. I actually found it and Tyler and I got to hang out together for about two days. We
totally talked libertarianism. He had finished high school a year accelerated and was enrolling
at Rutgers Newark in an Austrian program directed by Rich Fink. He suggested that
I join him. But I still had another year of high school. Rich got me accepted for the semester
starting January, so I started college as a high school dropout.