The following story is part of Walter Block's Autobiography Archive.

Another Path to Libertarianism

by Bruce L. Benson

When Walter Block asked me to contribute my autobiography sketch to a collection from people explaining how they came to be libertarians and/or Austrians, I replied that I would read those that he had already received. Then, if it appeared that I could put something together that might be interesting enough to fit, I would be happy to do so. I probably cannot match the interesting stories he has gathered, but after reading them I was struck by how different most paths to libertarianism appear to be than my own. Many contributors describe early intellectual stimulation after reading Rand in high school or Rothbard in college, and/or early interests in political/philosophical issues. My path was probably more emotional than intellectual, at least initially. Early in my life I developed a strong dislike for discretionary power and an admiration for independent individualism, but I did not recognize that these feelings might be a foundation for a political philosophy until after I discovered economics in college, and then free-market economics and public choice in graduate school. In fact, for the most part I was indifferent to political and philosophical issues until I was in graduate school, and I did not read Rand or Rothbard until after I was out of graduate school.

I spent the first 18 years of my life in Harlem, Montana, a town of about 1,000 people. Despite its size it was a community of considerable contrast. Harlem is located in the Milk River Valley about four miles from the Forth Belknap Indian Reservation. The area north of town was dominated by dry-land wheat farming, while cattle ranching was the primary activity southwest of town, and the valley was irrigated farmland. The Reservation covered a large area southeast of town. So Harlem’s businesses served the needs of farmers, ranchers, Bureau of Indian Affairs employees, and members of the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre Indian Tribes. The population in the area could be roughly categorized as: (1) very independent ranchers and business people, (2) farmers who were increasingly dependent on government farm programs, (3) government bureaucrats, and (4) wards of the state on the reservation. I had friends whose families were in all of these groups, but the adults who were held in high esteem in the community generally were from the first group, those who "took care of their own."

My father was one of those people. His parents had homesteaded on a 160 acre dry-land farm that was not capable of providing for the family, so his father started a freight business, hauling just about anything that could be hauled with a wagon and team of horses. My father, born in 1922, was pretty much on his own at 14, when he went to work for one of the large ranchers in the area. He did manage to finish high school before the U.S. entered World War II and he volunteered for the army. He ended up in the 101 Airborne Division, dropping into Normandy the night before the D-Day Invasion, and was wounded about three weeks later. After returning home and working at various jobs for a while, he bought a used truck and became an independent trucker, hauling freight of all kinds (he also rode saddle broncs in the rodeos that occurred on summer weekends).

You might say that relationships were "hands on" in Montana at that time: bargains were settled with a handshake and disputes were solved with fists. My father quickly built a reputation for hard work, honesty, generosity, and refusing to back down from anyone (he was a "rough hand"). He also hauled cattle, and in the process, got to know a cattle buyer in the area who asked him to go into partnership. They worked together for several years, and then, after his partner retired, my father continued on his own. He lived off his reputation, becoming one of the most successful and long-lasting cattle buyers in the state’s history.

I obviously admired my father in many ways, but at the same time, our relationship was very strained. My father worked hard and partied hard, so he was not home very much. Perhaps more important, while he would never let someone else tell him what to do, he had no qualms about telling me what to do. That is probably when my strong dislike for discretionary authority began. I didn’t like doing the chores I was expected to do, but I understood why I had to do them. I really hated it when he would come home after working and partying and tell me to clean the cow shit off his boots, however. And I resented the fact that he seemed to punish me for every fight that my sisters and I got into because I was "the oldest and should have known better." I suppose that a lot of this resentment is typical of children growing up with a domineering parent, but I never really got over it.

I loved to read when I was young, but I was not reading Rand or Rothbard at the time. I read for escape, not enlightenment. I devoured stores of "rugged individuals" and underdogs who stood up to the bad guys: Zane Grey novels, books about Davy Crocket (I remember reenacting the Disney programs on Davy Crocket with my friends), and later, The Last of the Mohicans, The Three Musketeers, Robinson Crusoe, all of the Sherlock Holmes stories, H.G. Wells books, everything by Jack London, and the Tolkien novels. I also loved the movies for the same reason, and especially "westerns" (still do – Shane may be the best movie ever made).

I managed to get through 18 years at home and I did pretty well in high school (despite problems with one teacher in particular who clearly hated his job and took it out on students, especially if they stood up to him), so I entered the University of Montana in Missoula during the fall of 1967, supported by a small scholarship. I decided to major in pre-law, but I was a very unhappy freshman. Perhaps I did not know how to deal with my new-found independence, because about all I learned was how to party. As a result, I failed to maintain good enough grades to keep the scholarship, and decided to drop out of school in the fall of 68. I called my uncle who was on the draft board and asked if I would be drafted after dropping out of school. He said yes, so I asked when and he replied that it would be about three months. I asked him if he could draft me earlier than that since I did not want to spend three months at home with my father after dropping out of school. He was very understanding: I was on my way to Fort Lewis, Washington, about a month later.

I disliked discretionary authority before I got to Fort Lewis, but thanks to the United States Army, I quickly learned to really hate it. I will never forget the drunk drill sergeant who took me into the supply room and tried to make me mad enough to take a swing at him (I was never sure whether he wanted an excuse to beat me or to charge me with striking a superior). After basic training I was informed that I had done so well on the exams the army had given me that they wanted to see if my congressman would appoint me to West Point. I politely declined. So they offered officer’s candidate school, and a long series of other special programs. All I had to do was sign up for another year or two! What a deal! I turned everything down. Finally, one of the officers got frustrated and said, "If you don’t sign up for more time you’re going to the infantry!" I said OK, and in short order I was moved across the base for advanced infantry training.

I completed my infantry training and spent a month at home on leave before I was off to the Americal Division (D Company, 1st Battalion, 46th Infantry Regiment, 196th Infantry Brigade) in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, where I spent the next year reinforcing my growing hatred for arbitrary authority. Officers, often fresh from ROTC or officer’s candidate school, were assigned to the unit, and after spending two or three months learning that what they needed to do to be effective was different from what they had been taught, they would get reassigned to some job "in the rear," only to be replaced by other green officers. These officers dangled nice jobs "in the rear" (e.g., working in the company’s office or supply room in Chu Lai) in front of me too, if I would "just carry the machine gun for a little longer" or "just serve as squad leader until we can get someone with the rank that a squad leader is supposed to have." I never got those jobs, however, and spent my entire tour in a combat platoon either as a machine gunner or a squad leader.

The company I was in suffered about 40 percent casualties during my 12-month tour, including over 40 killed (others lost limbs, eyes, internal organs, etc. but lived to tell about it) in what I saw as a totally illegitimate war. As a squad leader I learned to avoid dangerous situations when ever we could (by not doing what we were told to do if we could get away with it; e.g., spending our nights well off the trails that we were ordered to set up ambushes on) and to be very aggressive when a situation arose that could not be avoided (in hopes of either surprising the enemy and getting things over with quickly, or quickly running them off). I managed to get home without being injured (at least physically), proud of the fact that my squad suffered very few casualties compared to the rest of the company.

After a bout of malaria (we were ordered to take malaria pills but I never did, hoping to get sick so I could "get out of the field" and spend some hospital time in Vietnam, only to catch it just before leaving so it appeared after I was back in the States), I spent a few months at Fort Carson, Colorado, trying to keep a low profile. I could get an "early out" to start college at the beginning of a term, so that gave me a reason to go back to school. I applied for early release and returned to the University of Montana in January of 1971. I really was not any more motivated as a student than I had been before entering the army, but I had learned how to party hard and still get up in the morning, so I managed to get reasonably respectable grades. I also realized that a pre-law degree might not be worth much if I did not go to law school, so I shopped around for another major in hopes of finding something that could be valuable by itself but also get me into law school if I wanted to go. I tried the introductory courses in several disciplines before I took a microeconomics class. I loved the course and immediately changed majors. This turned out to be an important event along my path to libertarianism, although I did not realize it for several more years. It maintained my position on the path, at any rate. I also became a more serious student, even though I continued to seriously pursue my primary interests – partying and trying to talk to girls (objectives changed if one happened to be willing to talk, of course).

Close to 1,000 of the students out of the roughly 8,000 at the University were veterans, and I fell in with a group of them. Many, including me, were pretty much indifferent to the politics of the day and considered most of what the other students (and a lot of the faculty) were concerned with or excited about to be trivial. Mainly, I guess I just wanted to be left alone. I supported myself financially with part-time and summer jobs to supplement my GI bill benefits, so I was pretty much on my own. I shared a house trailer with two other veterans. We lived in near anarchy I guess, with a diet of wild game, potatoes, canned vegetables and beer, and time allocated between hunting (often illegally), fishing, hiking, rafting the rivers, driving fast (Montana had no day time speed limit and very few highway patrol officers, and I had a Dodge Charger), bar hopping, part time work when money got tight, and attending classes (most of the time).

The University of Montana economics department was probably pretty typical of economics programs at small state universities at the time. Micro courses were neoclassical, macro courses were Keynesian, and most of the applied courses were about how the government could cure market failure. There was even an avowed Marxist on the faculty. I was attracted to the logic of economics more than the uses that various faculty members were putting it to, but I guess I pretty much accepted the "policy prescriptions" that were presented to me. Perhaps I learned to think in a logical way, however, in preparation for the realizations that would follow.

In the winter of 1973 I was also attracted to Terrie Johnson and I was startled to find out that the attraction was mutual. By spring we had decided to get married in August of that year. It was at that point that I came to the disturbing realization that I had to worry about something more than making sure that I had beer money. My father always says that I "became a man" when I was in the army, but the truth is, I was shocked into semi-adulthood by the pending responsibilities of marriage.

I received a B.A. in the Spring of 1973, not knowing what I might be able to do to make a decent living. After looking at my options and deciding that they were not at all attractive to me (they all involved working for someone else, probably while wearing a necktie), I decided to ask my father if I could go to work with him. He said that I could, but my mother took me aside and urged me not to. She pointed out that my father and I are too much alike and that if we tried to work together we would end up fighting. I told her that I did not know what else to do since I did not like the kinds of jobs that appeared to be available to someone with a B.A. in economics. I had some GI Bill benefits left, though, so I suggested that I might try graduate school. She pushed me to do that, so I applied for entry into the Masters program at the University of Montana. I was accepted, and whether she knows it or not, my mother put me back on my path to libertarianism.

My new wife found a job as a secretary, and I got a job driving a school bus in the mornings and afternoon to supplement my GI bill benefits, so I could enroll without an assistantship. I quickly realized that the employment options with an M.A. degree did not look much more attractive than they had been with a B.A., so I decided to try to get into a Ph.D. program. My advisor at the University of Montana, John Wicks, told me that I needed to strengthen my math and statistics skills, however, if I wanted to get into a reputation program. He recommended that I take several additional classes beyond those that I was required to take and helped me get an assistantship for a second year in the Masters program. I applied to a number of Ph.D. programs and decided to go to Texas A&M because it was one of the most reputable programs that offered me an assistantship and John Wicks suggested that I would like the program better than the others (I was also attracted to A&M because I was interested in location theory and M. L. Greenhut was at A&M). This decision had a profound impact on me. Had I gone somewhere else, I might have never moved along the path to libertarianism.

I did not know it at the time, but the economics department at Texas A&M was one of a relatively small number of strong "free-market" programs in the country. People used to say that it was the "southern branch of the University of Chicago." My first-semester macro course systematically destroyed the Keynesian model, for instance, and Greenhut undermined the "market failure" arguments about "oligopoly and imperfect competition." No longer working much on location theory, his courses were on "spatial price theory," and his version of that theory stressed the efficiency of free market competition while simultaneously emphasizing that the model of "perfect competition" is irrelevant as a description of real world markets. The micro sequence was neoclassical price theory, although the second course in particular was taught by a free-market economist (Charles Maurice), and both courses really assisted me in developing an "economic way of thinking." I also got to take "public finance" (actually public choice) courses from Steve Pejovich and Randy Holcombe, a property rights workshop from Eirik Furubotn, and a course on economic regulation from Bob Ekelund. These courses had a profound effect on me. My dislike for arbitrary users of power was finally justified and articulated in the language of public choice and property rights economics! And it was articulated very effectively, not just by some of my professors, but by a group of very good fellow students who were libertarians (e.g., Bobby McCormick, Bill Shughart, and Phil Porter). Long before I completed my Ph.D. I was convinced that markets virtually always worked much better than government, and that people used the discretionary power of government to do a lot of undesirable things. For want of a better term, I guess I would say that I was a "Chicago-style libertarian" (or perhaps more accurately, a Milton-Friedman-style libertarian). I called myself a libertarian and believed that if government would just limit itself to establishing and enforcing the rules of the game, the market could take care of most everything else. Even though I never heard of Hayek, let alone Mises or Rothbard in my Ph.D. program, I moved a long way down my path during the two years and nine months that I spent at Texas A&M. I still had a long way to go, however.

I cannot say that job options were much more attractive with a Ph.D. than they had been with the B.A. and M.A. degrees. I still am not my own boss, but at least academics offers a considerable amount of control over my own time. As long as I meet my classes most of the time and publish a steady stream of papers in the "reputation" journals, I am free to allocate my time pretty much as I want to (and I don’t have to wear a necktie very often). That might provide more independence than about anything else that I am capable of doing, and it has certainly provided me with the opportunity to explore and articulate my beliefs about the state and the economy.

My first academic position out of graduate school was at Pennsylvania State University – not a hotbed of libertarian thought (the only real fellow libertarian on the faculty was probably Mac Ott). I did "spatial price theory," but I also wrote a few public-choice papers. One was a short paper that I titled "A Note on Corruption by Public Officials: The Black Market for Property Rights." I did not know where to send it, however, so I wandered around the library looking at journals. I stumbled onto one called The Journal of Libertarian Studies (JLS) and decided that it looked like a possible outlet for the paper. This was a very fortuitous decision, because a few weeks after submitting the manuscript I got a strange but wonderful letter from the Journal’s editor, Murray Rothbard. The letter was hand typed, full of white out and crossed out words, with hand written words inserted here and there. But it was also full of encouragement and insight. I had never met Murray, and in fact, I knew absolutely nothing about him other than that he was the editor of the JLS, but that letter was, and still is, one of the most thoughtful and helpful that I have ever received from any editor or reviewer. His recommendations and suggested references were tremendously helpful, making the paper much better that it had been. I still have that letter somewhere in a file even though the paper was published in the JLS over 20 years ago. Importantly, I had also learned, for the first time, that there actually was a literature on libertarian thought about issues other than free-markets and bad government (public choice). I read the journal, and learned about the much larger literature by searching for the interesting sounding references cited in its articles.

My contact with Murray turned out to be a very important event that accelerated my movement along the path I was on. I was about to be pushed beyond the Chicago-style libertarian that I had become. Not long after receiving Murray’s letter, I got a call from David Theroux, then President of the Pacific Research Institute. He explained that he was trying to put together a book on gun control that Don Kates was editing for him. Kates, a modern liberal lawyer who also happened to be anti-gun control, had gathered together a lot of other liberals to write papers for the book and David was looking for a libertarian perspective to add into the mix. He told me that he had asked Murray for recommendations, and Murray, who I still did not know other than through our correspondence regarding my paper, had suggested that David contact me. David offered me $1,000 to write a paper and I jumped at the opportunity even though I did not know much about the gun control debate ($1,000 was a lot of money for someone fresh out of graduate school whose wife was a student – she had worked to support us while I went through both my Masters and Ph.D. programs and now it was my turn to support her while she earned her B.A.). My plan was to attack the frequently made claim that "increases in guns cause increases in crime" by contending that growing levels of crime resulting from government failure actually causes gun ownership to increase as people attempt to protect themselves (i.e., correlation does not imply causation). To support this argument, I wanted to stress the failures of the criminal justice system and point out that increasing gun ownership was occurring simultaneously with increasing investments in all sorts of other private-sector crime control and protection activities.

I found so much evidence of private sector crime prevention and protection, and of police misbehavior, that I had to call David to ask what I should do. I remember telling him that I already had about 100 pages typed, and suggesting that I could do one of two things: cut the 100 pages down so it could fit as a book chapter or add even more material to it that I had discovered and write a book. David replied, "Do both" and sent me a contract for a book on private sector involvement in the enforcement of law. I soon learned that I actually knew very little about the topic that I was to address, and that many people (including Murray) had already given the subject a great deal of thought. Nonetheless, several drafts, reviews, and years later The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State was published.

Between the initial contact from David Theroux around 1981 and the publication of The Enterprise of Law in 1990, I moved a long way further down my philosophical path. Chicago-style libertarianism is now a long way behind me. I no longer believe that the state has to provide the rules for free markets (private property, contract law) to function. In fact, I realize, not only that private-sector institutions can provide and enforce such rules, but that the state can not be counted on to provide them, in part because the discretionary power of those who work for the state will actually be used to create rules that prevent free markets (there are many other reasons as well).

There were several valuable reviews of various drafts of The Enterprise of Law that helped me to this realization, but one stands out. Randy Barnett’s review was pretty much a book manuscript by itself. In addition to large numbers of excellent and detailed comments and suggestions to improve the manuscript, he pointed me to several readings that really changed the way I think about law and the state. It may not be surprising that Randy, a lawyer, suggested Lon Fuller and Harold Berman, for instance, but he also urged me to read F. A. Hayek (in particular, the first volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty) and Murray Rothbard. Even though I had been very impressed with Murray’s comments on the paper mentioned above, I did not know that he had written so extensively on the issues I was exploring, and did not discover much of his work until Randy pointed it out to me. My first exposure to Austrian economists resulted from these suggestions from a law professor, then, rather than any of the economists I knew. By adding the Austrian perspective to my public choice background, I found that I had even better intellectual justifications for my long-standing dislike of discretionary power. I also found much stronger justifications for my admiration of individualists.

There were other important influences on my evolving views of the state and law during this same period of discovery. I moved to Montana State University in 1982 where I was able to interact with P. J. Hill, Terry Anderson (although Terry was actually away from the University for much of the three years that I spent there), Ron Johnson, John Baden, Rick Stroup (also away from campus for most of my stay), Jeff Lafrance, and a number of other very good free-market people, several of whom were clearly willing to seriously consider the possibility of law without the state. I also began to correspond with Leonard Liggio when I applied to the Institute for Humane Studies for one of their F. Leroy Hill Faculty Fellowships. Leonard has probably read everything ever written on the topics I was working on for The Enterprise of Law and he was very willing to advise me and steer me in the right directions (in fact, one of my ongoing long-running projects is a book on the evolution of law, which, if I ever finish it, probably should be titled: "What Leonard Liggio has told me About the Evolution of Law"). Thus, I drew freely from many of the paradigms in economics, including the "property-rights" school, "neoinstitutional economics," Chicago-School economics, and Austrian Economics, looking for ways to help me articulate my views.

I continued to correspond with Murray, asking his advice about what to read as I worked on my book. I sent him a few more papers for the JLS too, each of which produced "Murray letters" (totally unique letters like the one described above, that only Murray could write). I finally got to actually meet him in person at a conference that we both attended in the mid 1980s. He was just as gracious and encouraging in person as he had been in his letters. After that we ran into each other at several more conferences. In addition, I went on the job market in a limited and selective way after two and a half very productive years at Montana State with virtually no raises due to tight University budgets. While I ended up accepting an offer from Florida State University, I also had an offer from Auburn, where I met a number of people affiliated with the Mises Institute (after that I decided that I should read Mises as well as Rothbard and Hayek). They have been kind enough to invite me to some of their conferences, where I got to interact with Murray some more.

I do not know if my intellectual journey is complete, but my general economic/political/philosophical views have not changed much over the last fifteen years or so, although my ideas are constantly being refined and clarified (at least in my mind). Some ideas have been fleshed out, and others have been adjusted in light of new insights or information (e.g., as in my book on To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice, also supported by David Theroux, now at the Independent Institute). My growing understanding of the Austrian and neoinstitutional paradigms (which are quite complimentary in many ways) has played a very important part in this process of refinement (and neoclassical economics has largely fallen by the wayside). The more I read about and wrestle with the issues I explored in The Enterprise of Law, and other related issues, the more I am convinced that my general views are valid. There is virtually no chance that I will veer off my path now.

January 18, 2003

Bruce L. Benson [send him mail] is the DeVoe Moore Distinguished Research Professor, Department of Economics, Florida State University, Tallahassee.

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