I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Bryan Caplan 73
history book ever?” Well, the red and brown socialisms erased the liberal tradition in
Germany very effectively.
Influenced by Radnitzky, I never saw a convincing argument in favour of natural rights,
and believing in Hume’s is/ought distinction, I cannot imagine what such an argument—per
impossibile—should look like. However, through Anthony de Jasay’s thesis that contracts
breed rights rather than the other way round, I realised that libertarianism can operate
without the assumption of natural rights. What I also realised is that such a libertarian
approach is yet not fully developed and needs to be carefully stated. Nevertheless, the
cornerstones are there: individual contracting as expression of individual liberties; a model
of a free society resting on a net of individual contracts that lead to a system of multilateral
insurances of private property and individual freedom; finally, a coherent definition of
individual freedom and private property.
Hardy Bouillon is head of academic affairs for the Centre for the New Europe in Brussels, professor
of economics at the Swiss Management Center University, and professor of philosophy at the University
of Trier.
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BRYAN CAPLAN
AN INTELLECTUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY
It all began with Ayn Rand, as it proverbially does. I was in eleventh-grade journalism
class with Matt Mayers, my friend since the age of six. The course was the most notoriously
undemanding in Granada Hills High School, leaving ample time for free reading. While
I devoured Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra—and got through The Brothers Karamazov
and Faust with less youthful exuberance—Matt read Atlas Shrugged. One day he turned
around in his chair and told me, “Read this part. You’ll like it.” It was Francisco d’Anconia’s
speech on money, and I rushed through it in fifteen exciting minutes. But for unclear
reasons, I didn’t begin reading Atlas until the last week of summer before my senior year.
If memory serves me, I raced through its thousand-plus pages in three largely sleepless days.
I would not call myself an instant convert. But I did start what I call “trying on her
ideas for size.” When opportunity presented itself—or when I cornered my parents or
friends or teachers or random fellow students—I played devil’s advocate for Rand’s