So this is my first semester at Northern Illinois University 3rd year in college and I haven’t really met a lot of people yet but I joined libertarian club and there was a Rothbardian econ major there, another guy in my game theory class was into Peter Schiff and another guy in my monetary theory class I saw he had a copy of “What Has Government Done To Our Money?” on his backpack.
So anecdotally it seems like it’s popular among econ majors who actually read economics outside of class (the smart ones). I’ll have to talk to more people in my major but I’m surprised so far.
There seems to be a pretty sharp divide amongst economist types. There are either those who are Friedmanites/Austrian school libertarians or calculating-crazed Keynesians who support central planning. There’s not a lot of middle ground; this divide lends itself towards libertarian/Euro-socialist instead of liberal/conservative.
Computer programming is another field that has a ton of libertarians.
I am in my last year of school as a finance major. I am not part of any libertarian clubs where I can freely socialize with other libertarians to hear their thoughts, but sitting in a couple of classes there have been people who seem to be waking up to the problems brought about by fiat currency. Are they Austrians or even libertarian? I dunno, but at least they recognize a problem. One step at a time. I think it is important for us to recognize these people and point them in the direction of Austrian economic theory without coming across as a bunch of heavy handed proselytizers.