Your Conversion to Anti-Statism

Economics Political Theory
61

Hi, very nice stories to read.

I am from the other side of the planet, so no Ron Paul stories from me :-).

Before „the enlightement“, I was always strongly anti-communist and a right-winger, supporting a party similar to your Republicans. But anti-communism isn´t anything strange in my generation, I live in Czech Republic, where communists are still despised, because people still have some memory of what it was like – and they of course tell their kids.

I guess I always had some seeds of libertarianism in me, reading Orwell, Remarque, Vonnegut and a lot of sci-fi. Never really interested in economics. Went to study Humanities, because I did not know what else to do with my life. But the true change came while studying for my bachelor´s degree, when I had a class with a teacher who required reading Hazlitt´s Economics in one lesson. Could not believe my eyes – is it really so simple and completely different from what you are being told every day? So I continued with reading M. Friedman, Bastiat, Rothbard, Mises and some local authors writing in the austro-libertarian tradition. I became a minarchist for a few months, then after reading Power and market I became ancap.

In the same time I decided to change school to economics. One faculty on our local economics university is strongly pro free market (some of its members are translators of Mises and Rothbard into Czech). It was quite tough to finish my bachelor´s degree in Humanities, surrounded by people who thought that Milton Friedman was an anarchocapitalist :-). They could not believe their ears when I kept telling them that Friedman is really only a light version of libertarian. Anyway, I closed that chapter of my life and now I will finish the econ school and finaly have some time to study more real economics (yes, there are some great libertarians at the school, but keynesian „economics“ is still part of the curriculum). My big educational dream is to visit the Mises University :-).

I still have a lot to read (the ultimate Human Action still awaits me). I like to translate Mises.org articles and thus try to attract more people to the cause. In the future, I hope to translate some book as well. And who knows, maybe some day I will try to write something on my own. Educating self and other people in what is probably the most significant field of study is, in my opinion, the most exciting and most important thing one can do with his life. Along with providing others with goods and services through cooperative action, i.e. the market.

(Oh, in the end I have one story about Ron Paul. One of the main austro-libertarian character in here, Josef Sima, once invited Ron Paul to Prague. I was not there, but he (Josef Sima) always narrates nicely about the event. Mainly that Ron Paul was excited by his anonymity in here - nobody knew who he was!)

62

Consultant, I’m not sure how it is across the ocean, but on this side top 3 means your quite a genius! Do you think that people really did not have a clue or were they just self serving (ie. if 40% is from financial services why ask for gold standard?)

Also I would really suggest working on the negativity, this should be fun.

I also don’t see why one must live as an absolute anti-statist if that is not possible given the current state of the world?

63

@yessir: Yeah, I think 99.999% of people in finance, economics, etc. really, really don’t get it regarding fiat money versus natural money, and so on, no matter how brilliant or well-educated they are. The financial overlords have been spectacularly successful in scrambling the ability of the public - elite and ordinary alike - to reason about money.

Clayton -

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@consultant

Not to sound like your dad – however I feel the need to reiterate what some others have said… you have the world by its balls… you are young and talented.. already know more than most of the planet on the way things really are.. don’t be a pessimist – use these advantages to do whatever it is that you can do to live the life you want. because the world sucks way more than you had hoped is no reason YOU should suck…..

All the best

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@Kabal

Welcome.. My best employee ever ( and a great guy and friend ) is from the Czeck Republic. too bad the socialists got into his brain before I met him.

congratulations on your soon degree and I expect you will do great things to help liberate europe

66

I had some cognitive dissonance needing to be satisfied. My father was a hard core republican so over there years i shaped republican beliefs (most likely due to confirmation bias).

In election 2008, i was searching for a republican candidate to support. For some reason, the economy was the most important issue to me. I listened to the debates, I liked what ron paul had to say about everything except the war. later, i read a good friend post on facebook that “ron paul and obama are the best candidates for 2008”. then i youtubed ron paul and agreed with mostly everything he said. i went through more cognitive dissonance until i became anti-war. after there were no good ron paul youtube videos, i began surfing ron paul sites. i eventually became a voluntaryist in the summer of 2008.