Discussion Thread

Former Austrian who almost went full ancap. I started out indifferent to politics gong into high school, but listening to conservative talk radio every morning in my dad's car made me hate the government. Junior year I took AP econ, but due to my teacher dealing with personal issues at the time, I only learned micro. That confirmed all the priors I had at the time, so I became a classic case of 101ism. I also joined the politics club, which was run by an Austrian. He pointed me to all the classic badecon places like mises. He did tell me about Lord Milton, and seeing that he advocated NIT on his Wikipedia page was probably the first step on my road to recovery (I thought "how could a beloved libertarian icon promote the government giving people people money!?). I went to college and majored in econ. First year macro did a decent job pulling me back in the right direction (no longer hated the Fed). Intermediate micro set me back because the teacher was Austrian. Public sector econ did the most damage. And finally, discovering badecon in combination with taking labor economics fully converted me to neoliberalism. I had the same professor for economic history that I had for intermediate micro, and I got into an argument with him about the consensus among economists about minimum wage. I might be a special case, though. I accepted that I was wrong pretty easily. I know a few people on both side of the spectrum who refused to accept what the professors would teach. They would just think the professor was a hack. I never had that problem, if what I was taught differed from what I believed I was happy to admit I was wrong and change my opinions.

/r/neoliberal Thread Parent