It seems a lot of people came to AE because of Ron Paul. I confess I’m no different. Sometimes I’ve found the truth just grabs you with its simplicity and consistency, and I’ve found this with my study of mathematics and the natural sciences as well, although I’m cautious enough not use it as a ground for verification, I’ve found it to be a good guiding light and it helped lead me to AE.
I was somewhat free market in the past, but I feel I was still very much uneducated. What really sparked things off for me was after hearing Ron Paul mention it a few times and then hearing an excellent interview Israel Kirzner gave about AE. It’s still on youtube actrually:
I never liked the government. Never voted. Knew it was stupid and a sham when I was around 15 or 16. I love the wilderness so I knew life is more than just about Statism. Politics was easily seen as being redundant and full of broken promises. Never saw why I needed to pay attention to politics in the first place. What does it have to do with life? Nothing other than what they mess up and intervene upon that’s what. You can actually walk around in the wilderness, use your wits, and survive without a State ever being in your life. I’ve thought about voting from time to time, but I succeeded a long time ago but can only leave on my own only so far. I could have left further, thought about it during some years I dropped out of society and camped and backpacked a lot. But I decided I wanted a wife more than I wanted to totally drop out into the wilderness.
I knew something was messed up with the government, but couldn’t put it into a more detailed picture other than I knew I couldn’t live a self-reliant lifestyle without the government stepping in and wanting taxes. Can’t pay those with corn and beans. Then for some reason with this bailout stuff last autumn I honed in and saw where much of the problems and power of this government centered around. I realized the President might as well be a CEO a long time ago, but I didn’t know enough about the government to see the Federal Reserves role in such detail. Paulson was going on about possible great depression, and I started preparing for hard times ever since. The government creates so much uncertainty and just screws things up.
While I was on the internet trying to learn more about the Federal Reserve I came across the EndtheFed protests. I went to the one nearby last November I believe it was. I met somebody at the protest that was going to do a write up for Restore the Republic radio and so when I came back from the protest I tuned into that internet radio. They were playing live streams from different endthefed protest sites across the country. I then heard more about Ron Paul. I heard of him before on TV and from friends at work, but as I said I wasn’t interested in politics so blew it off. I ended up learning about Austrian Economics and the Mises Institute from Ron Paul.
Basically I still just want a simple self-reliant lifestyle and desire the State to just go away and let us use our brains without the State fumbling it all up.
I was always an Austrian really - even when I ostensibly accepted Keynesianism I couldn’t really countenance all the internal contradictions.
Then I discovered this site when I was researching Frederic Bastiat. I was always extremely liberal [traditional definition], but then I became an Austrian, and eventually and inevitably moved to spider-capitalism.
I am majoring in economics and political science, and the classical view has always made an impression on me. To that extent, I’ve always been a free-market capitalist, although I never really understood the relationship between the government and the economy (in regards to the business cycle) until I read Meltdown. So, Thomas Woods’ book is what probably brought me towards the Austrian School of Economics. Although, even after reading that book I wasn’t completely a “fellow traveller”, since I read New Deal or Raw Deal? which does cover the New Deal accurately, but attributes the depression to the credit contraction as a result of the Fed’s actions (in other words, the book asserts that the Fed contracted credit and caused the pression). So, I read Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression next and that was what probably immersed me into the world of Austrian Economics.
My “Austrian book” binge (where I’ve read about a book every three days, except for de Soto’s Money, Bank Credit and Economic Cycles, which is probably going to take me a couple of weeks to read and then several years of re-reading to really get it all) is a result of my term paper for economics, which deals with the Great Depression, the New Deal and how we’re headed down a similar path currently.
But, it’s really turned into a drug. Before Austrian Economics took up all of my spare time, I used to actually write for Wikipedia; I wrote mostly on tanks and battles of the Second World War (I managed to get fourteen articles promoted to “featured article status”). And so, this is really a radical shift in my interests. My library has grown rather quickly (ten books in about a month or two, although admittedly one of them is Alan Greenspan’s The Age of Turbelence), and I just can’t stop reading.
Fortunately, most of my university education is Keynesian, so it gives me an opportunity to study both schools; otherwise, I’d be focusing on the Austrian school, and I think that in order to become the best possible economist I must have an understanding of all schools and understand why other school of thoughts are incorrect.
I was always interested in economics. When I was about ten I became obsessed with inflation. It was the late 1970’s and inflation was all over the news but nobody was able to explaine what caused it. I asked everyone and no one had an answer, so I gave up asking and forgot about it. When I got to college I decidedd to major in economics but I found it to be a waste of time. I learned all kinds of forumlas, yet still had no idea of how the economy functioned or what caused inflation . I found the entire major a waste of time. Then about 10 years ago my brother told me about this book he was reading called “Human Action”. I picked up a copy read it and have been addicted to AE. ever sense.
In year two of college, I was researching a paper on non-interventionism, a topic selected purely on an impulse. I came across a piece by Laurence Vance on LRC. I checked the site, noticed an article by some yokel Congressman named Ron Paul, shook my head, and concluded that you were all bat shit insane. If I were to be honest with myself, I would compare my own political inclinations at that time to those of a fascist- or, at least, to those of some pig-headed rampaging militarist. This changed in college, when I began studying political science and US foreign policy- and when I found out what a bunch of lying, hypocritical bastards politicians could be. I also began to see how Democrats and Republicans were so… similar.
Fast forward a few months, and I’m watching CNN (which I always did, in those days), and I’m gazing at this bloviating ass named Lou Dobbs babble about how the prices of lettuce and vegetables should be raised so as to stem illegal immigration. My instincts told me he was full of shit, but I didn’t know why. I searched for a rebuttal, and amid all of the screaming idiots accusing him of racism, another LRC piece appeared- discussing the nature and effects of price controls.
Light bulb went off. I started reading the site regularly. I knew beforehand the dollar was a fiat-currency, and I knew of fractional-reserve banking. It all clicked. I encountered arachno-capitalist articles by Joshua Katz, Walter Block, and some portly dead guy named Murray Rothbard. Soon, I was making visits to Antiwar.com and Mises.org regular staples of my daily internet diet. A lot of AE filtered in through those daily pieces, and it wasn’t until several months later that I began to take up serious reading on such matters as economics, foreign policy, banking, ‘political correctness’, and individual liberty.
Honestly, this did not go on “too long”. I like to hear personal stories such as this. it’s very interesting how people realize. I especially liked how you knew it was significant to state, “My instincts told me he was full of shit…”
That is a very astute point on why the free market makes sense. It’s common sense. It’s natural reasoning. A simple gardener like me can figure out this crap, and meanwhile Greenspan goes around to Jon Stewart and talks about how he still can’t figure this stuff out. They live in a mathematical bubble fantasy. They need to go and get their hands dirty once in awhile and just clear their minds. Let the inner light bulb turn on once in awhile and just freely think.
It’s funny, Stephan Molyneux says that Ron Paul hurt the liberty movement. Saying that seems to me to be a little like saying that firemen make fires worse, or that cars hurt transportation.
I just think it’s very encouraging to see how Ron Paul’s campaign and presence in the media has revealed the truth to so many people. If this many people on here came to AE through hearing Dr. Paul in some fashion…it really can only mean that there are many others out there who have the same story!
Ron Paul and Tom Woods’ 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask turned me from not caring about politics (hence, never voting in my life. btw, i’m 22) and towards a Constitutionalist. Then came Tom Woods’ The PIG to American History, Bob Murphy’s The PIG to Capitalism, Dominick T. Armentano’s Antitrust: The Case for Repeal and Rothbard’s The Case Against the Fed. But Walter Block and LRC turned me into a libertarian/an-cap. Mises.org. Don’t ask me for specific dates.
