I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Mark Thornton 355
but that independents, like us, would get forced out. Moments later I was told that I could
not go into pharmacy and would have to choose a new career. As someone who spent most
of my free time playing with toy soldiers or riding my bike, I was unaware that I had chosen
a career. One thing was clear: Medicaid was a bad thing.
One “political” memory I have from the store happened one Saturday when I went to
work with Dad. My first customer picked up something red next to my cash register to
purchase it. It was a bumper sticker—“ANOTHER TAX PAYER IN THE RED.” We
didn’t sell bumper stickers and it didn’t have a price on it, so I asked my Dad how much it
cost. He yelled back, “One dollar,” and added, “no tax!” He later explained that City Hall
already took more from us than they deserved, that it wasted tons of money, and any further
tax increase would kill the city. He was correct, once again. Over the last thirty years the
city has lost business and population, and many of its buildings have decayed—often going
unused for years at a time.
For me, the fight against taxes was a fun thing. I relished selling those bumper stickers
and used some of my pay to buy one for my bike. Long before Geneva, New York had gone
to economic hell, I knew that government was a bad thing and that taxes were destructive.
I also realized at an early age that fighting taxes and fighting city hall was the correct and
moral thing to do, and that it could also be fun and exciting.
Alas, my city did die economically, just as my father predicted. The store was closed
and Dad took a job with a chain drug store. Now forced to pay taxes on my wages, I largely
spent my high school years resisting three government prohibitions against me.
As high school graduation approached, I became increasingly interested in politics and
public policy, and was very frustrated with the state of the world. Jack Kemp’s congressional
office was next door to one of my family’s homesteads, so I became familiar with his politics
and encouraged by his libertarian rhetoric, especially his desire to cut taxes. I had never
heard of Austrian economics, classical liberalism, or libertarianism, but I knew that Kemp
sounded like he was on the right track. In registering to vote that year, I became the first
person on either side of my family to vote Republican.
Fortunately for me, my family didn’t care enough about politics to worry over my
choice of political parties—boy, was I fortunate! Unfortunately for Kemp and the Republicans,
I did care deeply about politics. Republican words rarely turned into libertarian actions or
votes in Congress (I still had never heard the word “libertarian”), so I soon renounced my
alignment with the Republican Party. I set off to college on a journey that would take me
from being a homegrown libertarian to becoming a professional libertarian and life-long
advocate of the individual’s will over the power of the state.
Mark Thornton is an economist who lives in Auburn, Alabama, is a senior fellow with the Ludwig
von Mises Institute, and is book review editor for the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics.