19. My Road to Libertarianism

19

JIM COX

MY ROAD TO LIBERTARIANISM

I WAS EITHER BORN A libertarian or became one because of my mother’s emphasis on honesty and respect for others’ property. The first political thought I remember was hearing that “your right to swing your arm ends at the tip of my nose.” This was in the 6th grade, and it sounded right to me! The other comment I heard was from our 6th grade teacher who quoted Nathan Hale’s famous, “My country right or wrong, but my country.” That struck me as misguided; loyalty to one’s country does not trump right and wrong! It all seemed so clear to me.

From there into my teenage years, I don’t recall any particular political thoughts. By my late teens, I would identify my political position as that of a confused conservative, alternating between getting the government out of such activities as delivering the mail while maintaining that if the naysayers would just allow president Nixon enough power he could fix existing problems.

Then my older brother started talking about Ayn Rand. I would argue against him and her, saying “large businesses will just jack up prices at will,” etc. Then in 1973 I got interested enough to read Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. The book took the logic of free markets further than I could ever have imagined. It was very convincing to me. After a few months of both my brother and I thinking Rand was the only advocate of such things, he discovered Murray Rothbard. I liked the fact that there was a name for our political views: libertarianism. Sounded better, more marketable than something like devotee of Ayn Rand or such.

With my interest whetted, I read other Rand nonfiction, Rothbard’s For a New Liberty, David Friedman’s The Machinery of Freedom, and John Hosper’s Libertarianism. I made the leap from limited government advocate to a pure market advocate. But I’ve since lost much enthusiasm for the distinction in the intervening years.

I may have been the youngest delegate at 21 and representing Georgia at the Libertarian Party national convention in New York City in 1975. I had the pleasure of meeting and having my photo taken with Murray Rothbard, Roger MacBride, and Robert Nozick. I left a job as a bookstore manager in the spring of 1976 and became a traveling petitioner for MacBride, visiting, I think, at least eight states that year. This was under the supervision of Ed Crane and Bob Meier.

I had majored in marketing in undergraduate school at the University of Georgia, never intending to go to graduate school (I used to say, “I’ve done my time!”). In college I knew I enjoyed economics classes and took them as electives when possible. I did a few book reviews for UGA’s Red and Black newspaper, including those of Harry Browne, Jerome Tuccille, and Noam Chomsky. Then in 1979 a friend just happened to say to me, “You ought to be teaching economics.” I liked the idea and so went to graduate school at Georgia State University. During that time I attended the first ever Cato Summer Institute in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in 1978 and have subsequently spent a week at FEE and attended several Mises Institute gatherings. Since 1980, I’ve been full-time at a two-year college and have published a number of opinion pieces on economics issues and a book, The Concise Guide to Economics, always from the perspective of Austrian-libertarianism.

Jim Cox is associate professor of economics and political science at Georgia Perimeter College, Clarkston campus.