Re: Tyler Condescends to Hayek

I was also at the Hayek lecture at George Mason in the early ’80s and remember young student Tyler Cowen in the audience asking The Great Man a question.  Tyler wasn’t condescending, as he is in his blog post here courtesy of David Gordon.  He was quite worshipful.  The elderly Hayek had been traveling, so we let him take a short nap in a seminar room with a couch.  I remember Tyler’s nose seemingly glued to the small window in the door to the room where Hayek napped, perhaps hoping that if he stared at him long enough there would be an osmosis effect.

I also remember that we took Hayek to lunch at a very hoity toity French restaurant in Fairfax and invited Tyler to come along.   Tyler asked the waiter if they served hamburgers.  You can take the boy out of New Jersey . . . . .  (I was surprised to hear that he now fancies himself to be somewhat of a food critic).   I’m afraid that was more memorable to me than the question that Tyler asked Hayek during the seminar.  As I recall, Hayek didn’t really care to answer a question about the intracacies of capital theory at an open seminar where the entire university faculty and student body was invited since it was obviously not an economics department inside-baseball seminar attended only by economics faculty and Ph.D. students desperately seeking dissertation topics.  I doubt that university president George Johnson, a former English professor who was in the audience, would have been enlightened by any comments on capital theory revisionism.  Hayek was probably a better judge of his audience than young, star-struck Tyler was.

Below is a picture that was taken during Hayek’s visit to GMU.  Hayek pointed out to me that we happened to be wearing the same Adam Smith ties!  To my left is James Bennett and to my right is Jack High, two GMU economics department colleagues.  Hayek signed the book that is in my hand which of course I still have.

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