As a newcomer to the Mises Community I would like first of all say “hello” to all of you. Secondly, I would like to share with you my story of becoming an Austrian and, consequently, libertarian.
Reading in last August comments on an article on The Economist which, as I now realize, contained a fundamental disagreement between keinesians and austrians - on the role of savings in economy, I was attracted by a post suggesting reading Henry Hazlitt’s “Failure of the New Economics” as a brilliant rebuttal of keynesism as well as other works on “Austrian theory of business cycle”. As an undegraduate with major in economics I was intrigued by such an expression unknown to me (even though I’ve already attended course on macroeconomics), so I started searching for details. Wikipedia provided me with basic information on the Austrian school and its main scholars. After half an hour or so I visited for the first time Ludwig von Mises Institute site and was at once impressed by the availability of free resouces and studying materials on the subject.
During the following months I’ ve been constantly reading articles (particularly enjoing Robert P. Murphy’s ones) published there and looking through Literature and Media sections of the site. I also downloaded some works on ATBC and listened to the audios in Beginner’s Guide in order to get some idea of the Austrian school…
Well, that’s enough I think. All I wanted to say is that purely by accidence I found out about Mises, Hayek, Rothboard, and their great heritage which has been abandoned for a long time and which is maintained by this great source of knowledge.
Well, to be more detailed, I was always an Austrian, I just did not know it yet. Everything about the Austrian approach appeals to my cognitive processes.
Sometimes we are filled up with so much nonsense and lies, we just need one glimpse of truth, to find a way out of that dark place.
The crisis in 2008 woke me up. I thought all the things that are happening do absolutely make no sense, and it made me worry about my future. I had the feeling that I completely lost the ability to prepare for the oncoming future accordingly. So I started looking for answers.
All the people who said things which actually made sense to me, mentioned all once in a while the Austrian School, Vienna School, Mises and Hayek etc.. (People like Marc Faber, Peter Schiff, Claus Vogt, Reinhard Deutsch, Alexander Hahn..).
So I ordered a book of Mises at Amazon. It was Theory of Money and Credit. I had no idea of economics, and the expression marginal utility confused me heavily at the beginning…
Well, to be more detailed, I was always an Austrian, I just did not know it yet. Everything about the Austrian approach appeals to my cognitive processes.
As for me, I have not been sure about my views until recently. Undoubtly, I was not a communist but I used to support government social programs until I read Hayek’s “Road To Serfdom”. This book had a great influence on me.
Me too. It is number one (chronologically) in my list of Ten Books That Influenced Me. I am an Austrian basically because I liked the sound of what Ron Paul was saying, and wanted to find out more about his views on the Fed, inflation and the business cycle. So I followed his lead, found mises.org, and was hooked.
So I can draw a conclusion that there are at least two ways leading to Austrian school: from the side of politics and economics. You and liberty student started with Ron Paul (I have not heard of him before but according to Wikipedia he is a congressman), and I was attracted by a much more plausible (comparing with mainstream economics) explanation of business cycles.
Andre Marrrou => Thomas Sowell => Jacob Hornberger => Lew Rockwell => Mises.org
Took me more than 40 years and 9/11 to chance upon mises.org. I had never heard of Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, or Rand before that.
I was an economics major back in the early '80s (punch-card computers and pac-man) but felt that there was something wrong with what they were trying to teach me. I understood that different economic theories existed (no mention of Mises or Austrianism) and they all sounded like they were just different approaches to a mathmatical quandry. I wasn’t much interested in pursuing the math required so I left school for an opportunity to be productive. I’ve never regretted that decision to leave shool but wish I had come across Mises much earlier in life.
Glad you showed up here, Anton, though I don’t believe you being here is by accident - probably had something to do with just a little bit of rational consideration on your part somewhere along the line …
It seems Ron Paul has an amazing power of getting people to AE. One of the first things I saw of him was his “What if” speech on YouTube. I especially like the Remastered version with Metallica’s To Live is to Die as background music.
Thomas Sowell => PoliticsForum => Libertarianism => mises.org
Took me about 4 years.
I think the Austrian school, and to some extent the Chicago school is very intuitive, very clear. This is so far from Keynesians with their complex formulas and graphs. The Austrians are very clear, basically you don’t need to know anything beside the law of supply and demand. It is much more appealing than most other schools.
I’d considered myself a classical liberal of sorts in the past, but I was economically illiterate. After the financial crisis in 2008 I went digging for answers and by chance stumbled upon Peter Schiff and then the Mises Institute, I think. The rest is history.
Hazlitt’s ‘Failure’ was also my first real Austrian experience. At about the same time that I discovered Ron Paul, early 2008. Had been of the ‘Capitalist: The unknown ideal’ school of economics prior to that, since 2005.
I know my journey goes back several years- it involved/started with Ron Paul’s book on the need for a 100% gold dollar, into the recommended books/references, into Haziltt’s both “Economics in One Lesson” and “The Failure of the ‘New’ Economics” to other books to eventually a book that referenced mises.org, and its has continually snowballed- must the the distain of my AP Econ teacher, as according to him, if I took this to heart, I would fail my AP exams.
Thankfully, I could write the opposite of what should be done or think through and explain why this would occur and write the right fluff to get a 4 on macro, and micro is the same so I could get a 5.
