Henderson at the South Royalton Austrian Conference

Later this month marks the 50th anniversary of the Austrian Economics Conference in South Royalton, Vermont. Liberty Fund asked Richard Ebeling, one of the attendees, to write the long essay, and then two people who attended (Mario Rizzo and I) and one person who did not (Geoffrey Lea) wrote responses.

Here’s an excerpt from my response:

Like Richard Ebeling, I was excited to attend the first Austrian Economics Conference in South Royalton, Vermont. My motivation was different from Richard’s. I didn’t consider myself an Austrian economist, but I did Friedrich Hayek‘s work on the socialist calculation debate, and Ludwig von Mises‘ work more generally, deeply insightful and important. I was also a big fan of Hayek The road to serfdom, the first thing I read by Hayek. I had read Hayek and Mises in the late 1960s, when I was a young mathematics student at the University of Winnipeg. I never took a course in Austrian economics: I did all my reading myself. In the fall of 1971, when I applied for the Ph.D. program at UCLA, I knew a lot about UCLA’s strong free-market orientation and looked forward to taking classes from Armen Alchian, Harold Demsetz, and Sam Peltzman, the three UCLA economists whose work I had read. Although I knew that none of them were Austrian economists, I hoped that some of them would be sympathetic. So I took a chance on my cover letter and wrote, “I would like to attend a graduate program where, when I refer to Mises, people won’t assume I’m mispronouncing the name of a childhood disease.” It worked, if you look at the outcome: I was offered full tuition plus a two-year job as a teaching assistant, paying $440 per month for a nine-month year. That was more than this boy from rural Manitoba thought he could get, and, more relevantly, more than I was offered at my second choice, the University of Chicago.

The person who had motivated me to study economics was Harold Demsetz, whom I had met in January 1970, when he gave three lectures at the University of Winnipeg. I was addicted to economics. Although I almost always followed Demsetz’s advice—he was my dissertation advisor and my mentor—in this case I went against his advice. I told him that I had received an offer to attend the conference in South Royalton at someone else’s expense, and that the program looked interesting. The three main speakers were Murray RothbardIsrael Kirzner, and Ludwig Lachmann. I had read many of Rothbard’s books and was impressed by them People, economy and state. Demsetz’s friend and colleague Ben Klein had assigned Israel Kirzner Competition and entrepreneurship in his industrial organization class earlier that year. Although I don’t remember Klein saying why he liked the book, I think one reason was that Kirzner rejected the idea that perfect competition had anything to do with perfection. I remember Ben liking the idea of ​​dynamically evolving competition, which Kirzner, and the Austrians in general, refreshingly brought to the economic discussion.

So I was surprised that Demsetz discouraged me from going to the South Royalton event. He told me that now that my coursework was done, I should immediately dive into my dissertation. But I needed a break after two intense years, and this “busman’s vacation” seemed just like what the doctor ordered. I’ve probably struck a thousand on Demsetz’s advice: I’ve adopted it on every other issue and rejected it on this one. The conference was definitely worth it.

Don’t miss the section in my essay on Frances Hazlitt’s comment to Milton Friedman.

The people in the photo are, from left to right, Harry Watson, Milton Friedman, Jerry O’Driscoll, Jack High and Richard Ebeling.

Personal note: I had a major medical test yesterday. The results were negative; I never like the word “negative” more than when I hear it from doctors. I sweated during the test on Monday and Tuesday mornings and took the test on Tuesday afternoon. Hence the absence of blog posts on Mondays and Tuesdays.