Money and Markets: Essays in Honor of Leland B. Yeager

32 William Breit, Kenneth Elzinga, and Thomas D. Willettwith knowledge of the major languages of Europe, spoken in places that he mightexpect to visit, but he also devoured more exotic tongues. Even this was not enoughto satisfy him. At some point he turned his attention to languages native to nocountry. We are not here referring to dead languages such as Latin but artificiallanguages, languages created for the purpose of supplanting native tongues. Two ofthe most prominent of these are Esperanto and Interlingua. Yeager made himselfan expert in both of these, even rising to the position of President of the InterlinguaInstitute.Yeager’s lust for languages is uncomplicated. Languages and linguistics appealto him for the same reason that the market economy appeals to him. Just as theexistence of markets brings order to the allocation of resources, knowledge oflanguage can bring order to interpersonal communication. 2 Esperanto and Interlinguawere languages invented in the hopes of bringing a worldwide efficiency topeaceful discourse among diverse groups. This is not far afield from what Yeagerwould have hoped for through a social regime of free international trade.Yeager: four decades in the vineyardsThe portrait of Leland Yeager that emerges from the forgoing pages displays anindividual rich in accomplishment, unique in personality, and extraordinary in hisfacility with words. To his students, he was a rare, exotic father-figure, eccentric butfull of care and nurture. In the entrepreneurial academy of today, it is hard toimagine another Leland Yeager coming on the scene.Economists today increasingly work in collaborative endeavors; graduate educationin economics increasingly is done through specialized workshops; researchresults are sent around preliminarily in working paper form; and it is important toan economist’s career to be engaged in networking: giving papers at the workshopsof other institutions and at specialized conferences. Yeager is too much the loner tobe comfortable in such a milieu; and he would not expose his ideas until they were,in his judgment, in final form. Strategic networking would be a foreign concept tohim. In short, he is an individualist.All of which brings us to his flirtation with Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. It is unlikelythat any scholar of comparable reputation and accomplishment has devoted asmuch attention to this philosophical system usually placed in the extremist category.However, Yeager the individualist found much in Ayn Rand that appealed.He referred to himself not as a disciple but as a fellow traveler. It is clear that hewas deeply interested in her writings. One student, whom Yeager knew to be anadherent to Rand’s ideas, told of being approached by Yeager at a departmentalpicnic when other students and faculty were playing softball. Yeager sat downbeside him and said, “Ridpath, explain to me the objectivist position on free will.”After a brief talk, Yeager strolled off, the student surmising that Yeager had accomplishedhis purpose.In his Southern Economic Association presidential address, Yeager refers toRand as a writer “whom I respect.” But the homage he paid to her was inspired inpart by the rationale she provided for acting with simple decency. 3