WEBVTT NOTE Panel: Walter Block and Me 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:11.500 Now that I've become a professor of economics and started lecturing to undergraduates both at Loyola University and in the summer months through a variety of educational outreach programs, 2 00:00:11.500 --> 00:00:21.000 students often assume that I came to Loyola explicitly to study Austrian economics with Walter, but admittedly I didn't know what libertarianism was, 3 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:25.000 I didn't know what Austrian economics was, and I didn't know who Walter Block was. 4 00:00:25.000 --> 00:00:48.000 The only reason why I selected New Orleans and Loyola University to study economics was because, well first I chose the school because upon visiting with my parents, a minivan filled with naked women drove by us on Bourbon Street and I turned to my mother and said, I found where I want to study. 5 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:58.000 And I chose economics as a major after I received a 62% on my midterm grade in principles of microeconomics taught by Bill Barnett, 6 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:03.000 which depressed me greatly until I found out that the average grade was 12. 7 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:17.000 I didn't change majors and fully embrace economics until my junior year when I took both law and economics and economics in the environment with Walter Block. 8 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:26.000 Recently, we had a lecturer come to Loyola to speak to some of our students, a libertarian philosopher by the name of James Stacey Taylor, 9 00:01:26.000 --> 00:01:34.000 and he said that if you're not fully offended by something that one of your professors says in the course of your undergraduate education, 10 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:39.000 that you should demand your money back. Well, that was Walter's class in a nutshell. 11 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:51.280 Here I was a sort of 19 year old with a sort of left of center social consciousness. 12 00:01:51.280 --> 00:01:55.600 I was concerned about inequality, I was concerned about things like racism in society, I was 13 00:01:55.600 --> 00:02:02.040 concerned about the environment, and I was concerned about civil liberties. 14 00:02:02.040 --> 00:02:07.220 I was woefully unsatisfied with the conventional solutions to these sorts of problems that 15 00:02:07.220 --> 00:02:11.980 that I was being taught by other professors in other disciplines. 16 00:02:11.980 --> 00:02:18.420 And rather than sort of tweaking the standard corpus of recommendations, Walter's class 17 00:02:18.420 --> 00:02:24.020 denied their applicability altogether and recommended radical alternatives, things that 18 00:02:24.020 --> 00:02:26.660 I had never heard before. 19 00:02:26.660 --> 00:02:32.980 Rather than things like voting and redistribution and regulation, Walter recommended exactly 20 00:02:32.980 --> 00:02:35.020 the opposite. 21 00:02:35.020 --> 00:02:40.300 He recommended private property rights, free markets, and technological innovation as solutions 22 00:02:40.300 --> 00:02:46.700 to the social problems that seriously plague our world. 23 00:02:46.700 --> 00:02:53.820 His explanations were radical, but they were consistent, and they were fun, and his general 24 00:02:53.820 --> 00:02:58.700 personality was welcoming, supportive, and inviting. 25 00:02:58.700 --> 00:03:04.820 Every day I'd go to class and argue, as Walter mentioned, and then every evening my inbox 26 00:03:04.820 --> 00:03:11.220 would be filled with an email and various attachments of publications that were relevant 27 00:03:11.220 --> 00:03:16.020 to the topics that we argued in class and typically all of them were authored by none 28 00:03:16.020 --> 00:03:19.940 other than Walter Block. 29 00:03:19.940 --> 00:03:26.780 And so repeatedly I found myself saying, who is this guy? 30 00:03:26.780 --> 00:03:33.300 I didn't really realize who is this guy until I attended my first Mises Institute event. 31 00:03:33.300 --> 00:03:37.340 After the invitation of Walter, he took a number of us students to Auburn, Alabama to 32 00:03:37.340 --> 00:03:39.660 attend the Austrian Scholars Conference. 33 00:03:39.660 --> 00:03:46.540 And there was another group of students from Washington University in St. Louis, where 34 00:03:46.540 --> 00:03:50.120 Walter had given an invited lecture the week before. 35 00:03:50.120 --> 00:03:55.220 And once this group of students found out that I studied at Loyola and worked with Walter, 36 00:03:55.220 --> 00:03:58.300 couldn't help but sort of swarm and ask a number of questions. 37 00:03:58.300 --> 00:04:03.300 And they said, wait, wait, wait, so how much time do you actually get to spend with Walter 38 00:04:03.300 --> 00:04:05.060 Block in like the course of a week? 39 00:04:05.060 --> 00:04:12.020 And I was like, well, I have a class with him that meets for like an hour, twice a week. 40 00:04:12.020 --> 00:04:15.380 And then we have econ club that meets like an hour every other week. 41 00:04:15.380 --> 00:04:19.100 And then he keeps office hours where normally I go by to ask him like what would happen 42 00:04:19.100 --> 00:04:24.180 if someone surgically implanted a monkey on you in libertarian theory. 43 00:04:24.180 --> 00:04:31.580 And all of these students, their faces dropped when I mentioned that Walter Block keeps office 44 00:04:31.580 --> 00:04:32.580 hours. 45 00:04:32.580 --> 00:04:38.260 And they literally said that in inquisitive exclamation, Walter Block keeps office hours? 46 00:04:38.260 --> 00:04:41.100 You're so lucky. 47 00:04:41.100 --> 00:04:47.520 And it wasn't until then that I realized that it was a truly lucky and opportunistic experience 48 00:04:47.520 --> 00:04:51.980 is to have studied undergrad economics under Walter Block. 49 00:04:54.760 --> 00:04:58.560 It wasn't necessarily because of the radicalism 50 00:04:58.560 --> 00:05:01.280 or the consistency or even the fun 51 00:05:01.280 --> 00:05:03.200 or the welcoming and supportive nature 52 00:05:03.200 --> 00:05:06.440 of Walter's teaching style that I really think 53 00:05:06.440 --> 00:05:09.460 was most impressive, but rather the fact 54 00:05:09.460 --> 00:05:11.740 that he genuinely believes the ideas 55 00:05:11.740 --> 00:05:13.920 that he professes in the classroom. 56 00:05:13.920 --> 00:05:15.760 It's an incredibly refreshing experience 57 00:05:15.760 --> 00:05:18.280 as an undergraduate to be taught by people 58 00:05:18.280 --> 00:05:21.440 who actually endogenize the theories 59 00:05:21.440 --> 00:05:25.160 that they espouse into their personal world views. 60 00:05:26.120 --> 00:05:29.860 More often than not, faculty distance themselves 61 00:05:29.860 --> 00:05:32.140 from the material that they cover in class 62 00:05:32.140 --> 00:05:34.440 and attempt to appear objective 63 00:05:34.440 --> 00:05:37.000 while failing to actually be so. 64 00:05:38.600 --> 00:05:43.000 I think that in closing, I would like to merely suggest 65 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:48.000 that Walter's model of teaching be considered not only worthy 66 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:52.240 of a lifetime achievement award like the Schlauerbaum Prize, 67 00:05:52.240 --> 00:05:55.380 but rather it set the standard with which 68 00:05:55.380 --> 00:05:58.700 all Austrian scholars and all libertarian academics 69 00:05:58.700 --> 00:06:00.240 judge themselves against. 70 00:06:01.300 --> 00:06:04.620 The fact of the matter is is that if we don't instill 71 00:06:04.620 --> 00:06:08.240 the appreciation and the ideas of liberty in free markets 72 00:06:08.240 --> 00:06:10.580 in future generations of scholars, 73 00:06:10.580 --> 00:06:12.940 if every Schlauerbaum winner in the future 74 00:06:12.940 --> 00:06:17.100 doesn't also have a panel of former students 75 00:06:17.100 --> 00:06:22.100 now dedicated to promoting these ideas like Walter has, 76 00:06:22.740 --> 00:06:25.780 then we won't necessarily be able to influence 77 00:06:25.780 --> 00:06:30.300 the world for social change in the way that we deem fit. 78 00:06:30.300 --> 00:06:34.100 Something far more at stake than a successful 79 00:06:34.100 --> 00:06:37.620 academic career or even a prestigious publication 80 00:06:39.040 --> 00:06:40.220 is held in the balance. 81 00:06:40.220 --> 00:06:49.220 The fate of human civilization itself is what is dependent upon effective teaching and communicating these ideas. 82 00:06:49.220 --> 00:06:55.220 Walter, I really can't think of anyone more deserving than this Lifetime Achievement Award than you. Congratulations. 83 00:06:55.220 --> 00:07:13.380 The next speaker is Jenny Dermeyer, who got her bachelor's at Loyola in 2002 and her PhD 84 00:07:13.380 --> 00:07:18.780 in economics at George Mason in 2009. She is now an assistant professor of economics 85 00:07:18.780 --> 00:07:22.820 at Hampton, Sydney. I forgot to mention that Dan D'Amico is an assistant professor at 86 00:07:22.820 --> 00:07:33.140 at Loyola now. Jenny is a rotten kid. She ruined, absolutely ruined, my initial interview 87 00:07:33.140 --> 00:07:40.500 for a job at Loyola. What I do when I give an, most places when you interview for a job, 88 00:07:40.500 --> 00:07:45.960 they ask you to teach a class and to give a lecture to this fellow professor of a more 89 00:07:45.960 --> 00:07:50.740 substantive nature. So I was giving a class and Jenny was in the class and I was going 90 00:07:50.740 --> 00:07:54.780 to try to work with them asking, well, why are certain countries rich and other countries 91 00:07:54.780 --> 00:07:59.180 poor? And the right answer is some countries have free enterprise, others don't. But the 92 00:07:59.180 --> 00:08:04.820 wrong answer, there are many wrong answers, population, human capital, resources, this, 93 00:08:04.820 --> 00:08:09.220 that and the other. And I can usually get four or five kids to say the wrong things 94 00:08:09.220 --> 00:08:13.660 and then I sort of subtly steer them in the right direction. So I asked this question 95 00:08:13.660 --> 00:08:20.660 and this rotten kid, she ups and says, economic freedom. So she sort of took half of my life 96 00:08:20.740 --> 00:08:50.740 The other story I have to tell you about Jenny is every once in a while I'll invite some guest speaker to my classes and I invited a Jesuit priest, there was a class on economics and religion, and this guy was going off about how the minimum wage law is important, how we need the minimum wage law, how the minimum wage law is social justice, how it's the only thing that stands between us and poverty. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that. 97 00:08:50.740 --> 00:08:56.020 I don't like to ambush people that I invite to speak, unless it's a formal debate, and 98 00:08:56.020 --> 00:09:01.140 I hadn't had a formal debate with him, but fortunately Jenny redeemed herself. She was 99 00:09:01.140 --> 00:09:07.540 like a tiger. She was after him. It was just horrible to see what she did to this poor guy. 100 00:09:07.540 --> 00:09:13.380 She said, well, how about this? How about a $75 minimum wage? She was just after him. 101 00:09:13.380 --> 00:09:16.540 The poor guy after a while said, yes, you're right. I don't know anything about what I'm 102 00:09:16.540 --> 00:09:44.840 Thank you, Walter. After that kind and generous introduction, I really feel like my remarks 103 00:09:44.840 --> 00:09:46.600 are going to be entirely too nice. 104 00:09:48.600 --> 00:09:51.440 So it is a little bit daunting to be asked 105 00:09:51.440 --> 00:09:54.080 to represent someone's legacy, 106 00:09:54.080 --> 00:09:58.160 especially someone as accomplished as Walter Block. 107 00:09:58.160 --> 00:09:59.600 There is a big upside, though. 108 00:09:59.600 --> 00:10:03.040 I was asked, in fact, I was urged to talk about myself 109 00:10:03.040 --> 00:10:05.060 a little bit, which is nice. 110 00:10:05.060 --> 00:10:07.320 So I'll tell you a little bit about what I've been up to 111 00:10:07.320 --> 00:10:09.440 since I left Walter. 112 00:10:09.440 --> 00:10:11.320 I am an assistant professor of economics 113 00:10:11.320 --> 00:10:13.640 and I am the director of the Center for the Study 114 00:10:13.640 --> 00:10:17.000 of Political Economy at Hampton Sydney College. 115 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:21.620 Our mission is to find students who love ideas, 116 00:10:21.620 --> 00:10:24.320 who are interested in ideas, and give them the guidance 117 00:10:24.320 --> 00:10:27.720 and the tools necessary to turn this love of ideas 118 00:10:27.720 --> 00:10:29.520 into a meaningful life. 119 00:10:29.520 --> 00:10:33.660 And in particular, my role is student development. 120 00:10:33.660 --> 00:10:36.000 So I've sort of crafted a career for myself 121 00:10:36.000 --> 00:10:38.220 as little miniature Walter Block, 122 00:10:39.720 --> 00:10:42.320 in which I go out and I try to find 123 00:10:42.320 --> 00:10:50.000 and create this future panel of students for my Lifetime Achievement Award, right? 124 00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:56.940 And I'll tell you that my method has been a very systematic and basically organized 125 00:10:56.940 --> 00:11:01.320 version of what Walter had us do as students. 126 00:11:01.320 --> 00:11:05.260 We have a lecture series where we have six speakers a year come in and give students 127 00:11:05.260 --> 00:11:11.480 an idea of what these concepts look like in different aspects. 128 00:11:11.480 --> 00:11:13.880 We have three reading groups a semester. 129 00:11:13.880 --> 00:11:19.340 We have a blog where both students and faculty contribute using economics to understand the 130 00:11:19.340 --> 00:11:21.320 world and society. 131 00:11:21.320 --> 00:11:22.640 We have a writing workshop. 132 00:11:22.640 --> 00:11:24.720 We have student research grants. 133 00:11:24.720 --> 00:11:29.340 And the results have been pretty much, if I do say so myself, phenomenal. 134 00:11:29.340 --> 00:11:34.000 We have students who are publishing regularly, not only in the student newspaper at Hampton 135 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:37.960 City College, but are getting letters to the editor published in the Richmond Times Dispatch, 136 00:11:37.960 --> 00:11:41.320 which is our local big newspaper. 137 00:11:41.320 --> 00:11:47.600 We have students that are competing in undergraduate research competitions every year and winning 138 00:11:47.600 --> 00:11:52.640 some undergraduate research competitions every year using the ideas of free market economics 139 00:11:52.640 --> 00:11:55.040 and liberty in their research. 140 00:11:55.040 --> 00:12:02.120 We have five students now at Hampton City College on the track to become PhDs in economics. 141 00:12:02.120 --> 00:12:03.720 This is a huge increase. 142 00:12:03.720 --> 00:12:08.200 In the last 15 years at Hampton City College we had five students and now we have five 143 00:12:08.200 --> 00:12:10.920 students in the last two years who are on this track. 144 00:12:10.920 --> 00:12:18.320 So we have in effect basically generated a program that will get students from the point 145 00:12:18.320 --> 00:12:22.440 where they just are interested in this and to the point where they can actually make 146 00:12:22.440 --> 00:12:24.800 this their life. 147 00:12:24.800 --> 00:12:33.400 And my method has been to take three very important lessons that Walter taught me, none 148 00:12:33.400 --> 00:12:37.720 of them about economics, because obviously you heard I already knew all that by the time 149 00:12:37.720 --> 00:12:42.720 All right, I'll tell you the full story in a minute. 150 00:12:43.920 --> 00:12:45.640 So, but three very important lessons, 151 00:12:45.640 --> 00:12:47.640 not about economics, that Walter taught me 152 00:12:47.640 --> 00:12:49.640 about being a mentor. 153 00:12:49.640 --> 00:12:51.940 Number one, what we do matters. 154 00:12:51.940 --> 00:12:54.880 And so this is something that we have to tell ourselves 155 00:12:54.880 --> 00:12:59.880 often because we do operate in a very difficult position 156 00:13:00.240 --> 00:13:04.080 where, as Bob was saying, most people disagree with us. 157 00:13:04.080 --> 00:13:06.240 We're Johnny, walking, and we're the only ones 158 00:13:06.240 --> 00:13:08.240 to think that we're in step, right? 159 00:13:08.240 --> 00:13:11.080 But what we do matters, as Dan so eloquently put, 160 00:13:11.080 --> 00:13:14.120 the fate of civilization is upon our shoulders, right? 161 00:13:15.920 --> 00:13:19.480 It is important that we recognize that ourselves 162 00:13:19.480 --> 00:13:22.200 and that we tell our students this, right? 163 00:13:22.200 --> 00:13:24.400 I always, every time someone writes a paper for me 164 00:13:24.400 --> 00:13:26.600 and I say, why do I care, they look at me like, 165 00:13:26.600 --> 00:13:28.760 because I wrote it, you know? 166 00:13:28.760 --> 00:13:31.160 They say, you know, listen, what we do matters, use that. 167 00:13:31.160 --> 00:13:32.520 I don't want something, this is interesting 168 00:13:32.520 --> 00:13:34.040 because if you have to tell me it's interesting, 169 00:13:34.040 --> 00:13:35.800 it's not interesting, right? 170 00:13:35.800 --> 00:13:41.720 So, you know, we have to, as Walter says, always, in everything that we do, we have 171 00:13:41.720 --> 00:13:47.240 to make sure that it's relevant to the world and to society, and no sort of ivory tower 172 00:13:47.240 --> 00:13:49.840 ruminations are necessary, right? 173 00:13:49.840 --> 00:13:50.840 What we do matters. 174 00:13:50.840 --> 00:13:52.800 Let's actually use it. 175 00:13:52.800 --> 00:13:56.320 Number two, we need to invest in our students. 176 00:13:56.320 --> 00:14:02.080 So I think that before I came to Hampton City College, we had a fantastic faculty, actually, 177 00:14:02.080 --> 00:14:05.920 and they have been extremely supportive and wonderful and there are seven, no less than 178 00:14:05.920 --> 00:14:10.480 seven faculty that are actively engaged in what we're doing at the CSP which is kind 179 00:14:10.480 --> 00:14:11.480 of outstanding. 180 00:14:11.480 --> 00:14:18.920 But at the same time I think that they were not focused in the same way that I was when 181 00:14:18.920 --> 00:14:24.520 I came in on building the student involvement, my army, right? 182 00:14:24.520 --> 00:14:30.320 And I think the reason that I was is because I had this example of Walter to say, listen, 183 00:14:30.320 --> 00:14:33.440 You can invest in students. 184 00:14:33.440 --> 00:14:37.360 You can get students involved in the same kind of things that you are for two reasons. 185 00:14:37.360 --> 00:14:39.620 Number one, this is a great life. 186 00:14:39.620 --> 00:14:41.420 We have great lives. 187 00:14:41.420 --> 00:14:43.080 We do what we love. 188 00:14:43.080 --> 00:14:44.080 We're always passionate. 189 00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:45.560 There's always something new. 190 00:14:45.560 --> 00:14:47.760 And number two, the world needs it. 191 00:14:47.760 --> 00:14:53.800 We need to find the solutions that will actually create a better society. 192 00:14:53.800 --> 00:14:57.960 And if we believe and if we look at our students and we say, you can be part of this and we 193 00:14:57.960 --> 00:15:01.960 and we want you to be part of this, you'll be amazed at the kind of reaction that you get, right? 194 00:15:01.960 --> 00:15:05.960 So, investing in your students is absolutely 195 00:15:05.960 --> 00:15:09.960 foundational to what I do, alright? 196 00:15:09.960 --> 00:15:13.960 For myself, I was sort of like Dan, I was 197 00:15:13.960 --> 00:15:17.960 and actually sort of like Walter when he was a young pup, if you can imagine that. 198 00:15:17.960 --> 00:15:21.960 I was very liberal, I was such a fantastic liberal 199 00:15:21.960 --> 00:15:25.960 actually that I thought about but did not campaign for Al Gore when he was running 200 00:15:25.960 --> 00:15:30.960 for President, and I was very interested in social justice. 201 00:15:30.960 --> 00:15:36.640 I was, you know, all for the minimum wage, as a matter of fact, and solving all the problems 202 00:15:36.640 --> 00:15:37.640 of inequality. 203 00:15:37.640 --> 00:15:43.520 And then I took an intermediate microeconomic course with Deb Walker, who's not here, but 204 00:15:43.520 --> 00:15:48.600 who is a fantastic economics professor, and I discovered, lo and behold, that minimum 205 00:15:48.600 --> 00:15:51.800 wage actually hurts people instead of helping them. 206 00:15:51.800 --> 00:15:59.880 And the next day, I was a libertarian, and then the next month, Walter came for his interview. 207 00:15:59.880 --> 00:16:05.340 So he unfortunately got me right in the middle of some real converter zeal, right? 208 00:16:05.340 --> 00:16:12.200 And so, you know, that was my first little step toward this process, but then he came 209 00:16:12.200 --> 00:16:18.660 in my, Walter came in my junior year, and I was gung-ho economics in the middle of dropping 210 00:16:18.660 --> 00:16:22.620 I was getting my marketing major despite the fact that I only had two courses left because 211 00:16:22.620 --> 00:16:25.940 sunk costs were sunk, right, and marketing sucks. 212 00:16:25.940 --> 00:16:30.660 And then I was going to be a CEO somewhere, I don't know. 213 00:16:30.660 --> 00:16:32.140 I don't come from an academic family. 214 00:16:32.140 --> 00:16:35.520 My mother graduated college the same year I did, and my father graduated the year after 215 00:16:35.520 --> 00:16:36.520 I did. 216 00:16:36.520 --> 00:16:42.060 So this is academics, whatever, I'm going out and making some money, do the world some 217 00:16:42.060 --> 00:16:43.060 good. 218 00:16:43.060 --> 00:16:48.260 And Walter looked at me one day in the hallway, and I can still remember what it was like, 219 00:16:48.260 --> 00:16:50.500 and I was standing there in my college student uniform 220 00:16:50.500 --> 00:16:53.300 of ratty jeans, flip flops and an old t-shirt 221 00:16:53.300 --> 00:16:55.740 and he said, you should go to graduate school. 222 00:16:55.740 --> 00:17:00.740 And I like turned around, who was he talking to, you know? 223 00:17:01.580 --> 00:17:04.180 Yeah, you should go to Harvard, he said. 224 00:17:04.180 --> 00:17:06.140 Well, I did him one better, I went to George Mason, 225 00:17:06.140 --> 00:17:08.300 which is obviously better than Harvard. 226 00:17:08.300 --> 00:17:10.380 But, you know, this was something 227 00:17:10.380 --> 00:17:12.200 that I had never even considered. 228 00:17:12.200 --> 00:17:15.060 And I look at my students and I say, you know, 229 00:17:15.060 --> 00:17:17.500 this might be something you have never even considered, 230 00:17:17.500 --> 00:17:22.020 But if you love ideas, this is a life that could be very fulfilling. 231 00:17:22.020 --> 00:17:26.380 And lastly, I'll tell you the last lesson and the most important lesson that Walter 232 00:17:26.380 --> 00:17:29.340 taught me is to be relentless. 233 00:17:29.340 --> 00:17:34.420 He makes these jokes about what I was like when he first met me, but really this is the 234 00:17:34.420 --> 00:17:39.220 kind of person that I became over the course of two years knowing him. 235 00:17:39.220 --> 00:17:42.660 And be relentless has a corollary, a very important corollary, and it's called don't 236 00:17:42.660 --> 00:17:45.000 take it personally, right? 237 00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:51.480 So my favorite story about this is when I was at Auburn for Mises U. We were at a pizza 238 00:17:51.480 --> 00:17:57.840 shop. There had been a little wine consumed, I believe. And we were arguing about the wage 239 00:17:57.840 --> 00:18:04.840 differential between men and women. And being a 21-year-old woman at the time and extremely 240 00:18:04.860 --> 00:18:11.860 intelligent and very fond of wine, I had really gotten into this sophisticated argument about 241 00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:45.000 about how there was no such thing as perfect competition in the market and wage differentials could in fact be explained by prejudice brought upon by the lack of competition or something, I'm not sure exactly what it was, but it was good, I'll tell you that, and Walter being typically obstinate was claiming that in fact if there was a wage differential that was not brought upon by labor productivity, then some entrepreneur would have found a way to profit from this, 242 00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:50.400 I have in my head, you know, an entrepreneur with this harem of women doing, I'm not sure 243 00:18:50.400 --> 00:18:56.600 what exactly kind of work here, but, you know, we were arguing back and forth and it got 244 00:18:56.600 --> 00:18:58.700 to be very frustrating at some point. 245 00:18:58.700 --> 00:19:09.120 I put my wine down on the table, leaned in and said, Walter, I cannot wait till all you 246 00:19:09.120 --> 00:19:13.880 sexist jerks, I didn't say jerks, die. 247 00:19:13.880 --> 00:19:17.080 And I got up and I stormed off and I went to have a cigarette. 248 00:19:17.080 --> 00:19:19.880 I got my wine, stormed off and went to have a cigarette. 249 00:19:19.880 --> 00:19:26.000 And then, you know, ran away basically and the next day I'm like, oh my God. 250 00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:29.980 I'm looking around the corners, you know, we're at the Mises Institute and I'm like 251 00:19:29.980 --> 00:19:34.360 trying to make sure I don't run into Walter as I just told my mentor that I can't wait 252 00:19:34.360 --> 00:19:38.800 till he dies. 253 00:19:38.800 --> 00:19:44.920 And I'd come out of some seminar and I ran right into him, and I'm standing there, 254 00:19:44.920 --> 00:19:54.800 hi Walter, and he says, Jenny, how come you didn't finish the conversation last night? 255 00:19:54.800 --> 00:19:59.720 And at that moment I said, I didn't have anything to say, but I remembered, I remembered that 256 00:19:59.720 --> 00:20:05.860 forever actually, because one of the most important lessons that we can teach ourselves 257 00:20:05.860 --> 00:20:12.020 on a daily basis, and teach our students as well, is that you can never stop the argument. 258 00:20:12.020 --> 00:20:18.120 You need to be relentless, right? But don't take it personally, because this is not about 259 00:20:18.120 --> 00:20:23.420 my ego or your ego. It's about actually trying to find the truth, right? And Walter taught 260 00:20:23.420 --> 00:20:28.980 me that, and I try on a daily basis to insult my students in order to teach them that you 261 00:20:28.980 --> 00:20:33.940 can't take it personally. It's actually a really nice perk of the job. So I would like 262 00:20:33.940 --> 00:20:44.940 I would like to say thank you, Walter, for teaching me that what we do matters to invest in my students and, above all, to be relentless. 263 00:20:44.940 --> 00:20:50.940 I will tell you that the literature and history departments at Hampton City College are very, very happy that you have done that. 264 00:20:50.940 --> 00:21:00.940 Thank you very much. 265 00:21:00.940 --> 00:21:05.940 Thank you, Jenny. I forgot to mention that she and I are co-authors of an article called 266 00:21:05.940 --> 00:21:10.940 Poverty, Dignity, Economic Development and the Catholic Church, which came out of a term 267 00:21:10.940 --> 00:21:15.420 paper in this course, Economics and Religion, that has appeared in the Journal of Markets 268 00:21:15.420 --> 00:21:21.700 and Morality. The next speaker on this panel is an old friend of mine also, Andy Young, 269 00:21:21.700 --> 00:21:27.700 of an earlier cohort. He was not a student of mine at Loyola, where I've been at since 270 00:21:27.700 --> 00:21:33.800 2001, rather he was a student of mine at Holy Cross. He graduated from Holy Cross with 271 00:21:33.800 --> 00:21:40.220 a bachelor's degree in 1997 and he got his PhD at Emory University. I remember when he 272 00:21:40.220 --> 00:21:43.460 was a student he was very straight-laced, sort of the opposite of Dan D'Amico and now 273 00:21:43.460 --> 00:21:47.860 look at him, I mean, ponytail, of course he's got gray hair which is a little different 274 00:21:47.860 --> 00:21:53.340 than those days. He is perhaps the most accomplished of all of my students because he's the only 275 00:21:53.340 --> 00:21:57.340 Andy, former student of mine who has taught at a research university, and teaching at 276 00:21:57.340 --> 00:22:02.180 a research university is sort of the apex of an academic. He used to teach at Ole Miss 277 00:22:02.180 --> 00:22:08.680 and now he's an associate professor with tenure at West Virginia, University of West Virginia. 278 00:22:08.680 --> 00:22:13.660 He and I are also co-authors of a piece called Enterprising Education, Doing Away with the 279 00:22:13.660 --> 00:22:18.660 Public School System, which appeared in the International Journal of Value-Based Management. 280 00:22:18.660 --> 00:22:32.980 Well, thank you very much, Walter, and it's truly a pleasure to be here, to have you win 281 00:22:32.980 --> 00:22:39.740 this award, which is so deserved, and to be able to talk about your influence on myself 282 00:22:39.740 --> 00:22:46.140 and my career, and through me, hopefully on my students as well. I am a professor at West 283 00:22:46.140 --> 00:23:16.140 at Virginia University. We have an up and coming class, a few classes of great free market oriented students there in a Ph.D. program. And so hopefully, thanks to Walter, who have two economists at Holy Cross, I can say that those two made me an economist and of those two, Walter made me the type of economist that I am today. When I first experienced Walter, and that's the only way to say it is that you experience 284 00:23:16.140 --> 00:23:22.740 Walter. I think the only way I can sum it up is to basically use at least paraphrasing 285 00:23:22.740 --> 00:23:28.020 Milton Friedman's words in a correspondence with Walter. These are not the arguments of 286 00:23:28.020 --> 00:23:39.020 a sane man. These are the rantings of a fanatic. F. A. Hayek in his classic article, The Usetalk 287 00:23:39.020 --> 00:23:44.260 of the Use of Knowledge of Society, says to the reader, I'm using the word Marvel here 288 00:23:44.260 --> 00:23:58.660 Walter is the ultimate master of shocking students out of their complacency. Most free-market-oriented 289 00:23:58.660 --> 00:24:02.180 economists will talk about something like pollution, and they'll say it's all really 290 00:24:02.180 --> 00:24:06.340 about when it's a problem, it's when property rights aren't well-defined and enforced, 291 00:24:06.340 --> 00:24:10.860 and maybe they'll use the example of the ocean, for example. Walter, on the other hand, would 292 00:24:10.860 --> 00:24:16.420 to look right into the eyes of environmentalist-leaning students and retell a tale about an in-law, 293 00:24:16.420 --> 00:24:21.300 I believe, on a fishing trip when Walter basically threw an empty can of Pepsi into the water 294 00:24:21.300 --> 00:24:25.960 and basically challenged him to see, is anyone going to pick this up? No, because property 295 00:24:25.960 --> 00:24:32.300 rights are not well-defined or enforced. When we talk to our students about taking 296 00:24:32.300 --> 00:24:36.540 into account the relevant opportunity costs, not the opportunity costs that you or I might 297 00:24:36.540 --> 00:24:59.540 Walter would use that example, but he would also try to talk to his students about situations where a parent might reasonably prostitute their child, because of the relevant opportunity costs. 298 00:24:59.540 --> 00:25:13.500 Class, not the arguments of a sane man, the rantings of a fanatic. 299 00:25:13.500 --> 00:25:19.780 I will say that while I'm not sure if I crossed certain lines, he has certainly molded the 300 00:25:19.780 --> 00:25:24.060 way I try to teach, especially with undergraduates, especially with undergraduates. 301 00:25:24.060 --> 00:25:29.540 I teach a 111 class which is basically an intro for non-majors and hopefully to get 302 00:25:29.540 --> 00:25:35.680 some of them excited and become majors at WVU. And I assign to them what I term defending 303 00:25:35.680 --> 00:25:42.680 the undefendable essays, which of course is an homage to Walter's book. And the idea is 304 00:25:42.680 --> 00:25:47.980 to get them to use positive economic analysis to at least to force themselves to justify 305 00:25:47.980 --> 00:25:54.360 by some characters in our economy who might not be entirely savory. 306 00:25:54.360 --> 00:26:00.500 Just last week, because it was Halloween, I assigned them to watch the movie, and tell 307 00:26:00.500 --> 00:26:05.980 me if you've seen this one, Repo the Genetic Opera. Now, Repo the Genetic Opera is made 308 00:26:05.980 --> 00:26:10.820 by the same people who make Saw, yeah, that type of movie. And being a big horror movie 309 00:26:10.820 --> 00:26:17.200 buff, the entire premise of this film is that in some distant dystopian future, there is 310 00:26:17.200 --> 00:26:24.480 There's a company which basically sells poor people in an age where health has declined 311 00:26:24.480 --> 00:26:33.480 significantly organs. But poor people being, well, poor, they have to finance them, okay? 312 00:26:33.480 --> 00:26:38.780 That's when you have a repo man, okay? And if you don't, of course, pay for the organ 313 00:26:38.780 --> 00:26:45.060 in time, the repo man will show up. And by the way, it's a musical. It is an opera. So 314 00:26:45.060 --> 00:26:52.300 So just imagine, people sing opera in it, so just imagine a repo man on film basically 315 00:26:52.300 --> 00:27:00.820 repossessing an organ while singing opera. And as my students came up to me after viewing 316 00:27:00.820 --> 00:27:10.940 this in class and questioning my sanity, I said to myself, Walter would be proud. Walter 317 00:27:10.940 --> 00:27:18.060 I would be proud that I said, no, this is a character that's good for society. 318 00:27:18.060 --> 00:27:24.140 Now I used to also admire Walter just simply for the amount of time he put in with his 319 00:27:24.140 --> 00:27:30.660 students and I always felt like he gave each and every one of us who wanted it, okay, all 320 00:27:30.660 --> 00:27:36.460 the attention, all the resources, all the time that he could, until one day I realized 321 00:27:36.460 --> 00:27:43.460 Walter says that really what he was just running was a very self-interested paper mill, with 322 00:27:43.500 --> 00:27:50.500 entirely unregulated labor, some of which was legally child labor. And I said, wait 323 00:27:52.060 --> 00:27:59.060 a minute, this is a good gravy train. I have also tried to emulate you in that. 324 00:27:59.060 --> 00:28:03.060 I have also tried to emulate you in that. 325 00:28:05.060 --> 00:28:12.060 Walter is the only man with a straight face that has ever called me a commie. 326 00:28:16.060 --> 00:28:22.060 And I have a witness, Bob Subrick, JMU, from GMU, will attest to this. 327 00:28:22.060 --> 00:28:26.060 Because Bob looked at me and said, did he just call you a commie? 328 00:28:26.060 --> 00:28:33.060 And I said, I believe so. I didn't know I was that type of anarchist. 329 00:28:34.020 --> 00:28:38.580 But Walter, all the time I have known him, has also managed to call Friedrich Hayek and 330 00:28:38.580 --> 00:28:45.580 Milton Friedman both commies. So I do feel like I'm in good company. 331 00:28:48.540 --> 00:28:52.820 I'd just like to end quickly and say that, you know, my only wish going forward as an 332 00:28:52.820 --> 00:29:03.820 is that I can inspire as many students as Walter has. When I just sort of try to tabulate 333 00:29:03.820 --> 00:29:11.360 in my head how many students that he's basically urged on to graduate school and who have become 334 00:29:11.360 --> 00:29:17.800 defenders of free markets at a different level, it's hard for me to count that high and granted 335 00:29:17.800 --> 00:29:27.800 But I have a fairly weak mind. That comes from Walter who once told me, see, Austrians do use numbers. This paper has page numbers on every single sheet. 336 00:29:27.800 --> 00:29:40.800 But I just hope that I can inspire students half or even a quarter as well as you inspired me. And I'm just so very glad that you're getting this award, Walter. Thank you very much. 337 00:29:40.800 --> 00:29:55.960 Thank you Andy Young. The last speaker on this panel is another friend of mine and former 338 00:29:55.960 --> 00:30:03.400 student of mine, Vedran Vuk. Vedran got his undergraduate degree at Loyola in 2007 and 339 00:30:03.400 --> 00:30:08.400 will soon receive his Masters in Finance from Johns Hopkins. 340 00:30:09.920 --> 00:30:13.400 Every time Bedrin came to my office, 341 00:30:13.400 --> 00:30:17.320 he invariably said, I have three ideas for articles. 342 00:30:17.320 --> 00:30:18.900 And we would talk about three ideas. 343 00:30:18.900 --> 00:30:21.980 And he wasn't one that would have ideas for articles 344 00:30:21.980 --> 00:30:24.880 and didn't write them, he would write them too. 345 00:30:24.880 --> 00:30:28.800 One time we drove up together, just the two of us, 346 00:30:28.800 --> 00:30:33.220 from New Orleans to Auburn for an Austrian Scholars Conference 347 00:30:33.220 --> 00:30:40.540 or one of the events, I forget what it was, and we came out with 55 articles, 55 ideas 348 00:30:40.540 --> 00:30:45.740 for articles, many of which we subsequently wrote. I'm co-authored with him of Victory 349 00:30:45.740 --> 00:30:54.740 in Iraq and another article, A Car Trip to Auburn, where we mention all 55 of these articles 350 00:30:54.740 --> 00:31:02.400 and hopefully other people could pick up from that. Vedrin is a senior author for Doug Casey 351 00:31:02.400 --> 00:31:07.400 in his finance newsletters. 352 00:31:07.400 --> 00:31:10.320 And it's my great pleasure to introduce my colleague 353 00:31:10.320 --> 00:31:12.320 and friend, Vedran Vuk. 354 00:31:12.320 --> 00:31:21.320 As Walter just said, I took a slightly different route 355 00:31:21.320 --> 00:31:27.000 than Andy and Jenny and Dan by becoming a financial writer. 356 00:31:27.000 --> 00:31:30.520 And like Walter said, currently I'm 357 00:31:30.520 --> 00:31:42.520 I'm the editor of Casey's Daily Dispatch for Casey Research, and I write about four or five articles a week, so this year I've done close to 200 articles. 358 00:31:42.520 --> 00:31:52.520 Every day I essentially have to come up with a new idea, and Walter helped me kind of build that foundation of ideas currently to keep them coming. 359 00:31:52.520 --> 00:31:59.520 Even I recount things that we talked about over the years, even today for the publication. 360 00:31:59.520 --> 00:32:07.000 But like Dan, I came to Loyola and had no idea that I wanted to do Austrian economics 361 00:32:07.000 --> 00:32:11.800 until I literally ran into Walter by accident. 362 00:32:11.800 --> 00:32:18.040 I was studying for a final exam for one of the only Keynesian professors at Loyola and 363 00:32:18.040 --> 00:32:21.960 I studied the night before and I had one last question to ask her. 364 00:32:21.960 --> 00:32:30.000 So I was looking for her office like 15 minutes before the test and I finally get there and 365 00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:31.000 she's not there. 366 00:32:31.000 --> 00:32:36.100 So I have to find another economics professor quickly. 367 00:32:36.100 --> 00:32:40.720 And I see that Walter's door is open and I was like, oh, he's an economics professor. 368 00:32:40.720 --> 00:32:48.060 So perhaps you'll know the answer to my question. 369 00:32:48.060 --> 00:32:53.620 So I go on this long rambling question, which just happens to be about the velocity of money 370 00:32:53.620 --> 00:33:00.020 and whether a new banking law would increase it or decrease it. 371 00:33:00.020 --> 00:33:04.940 And after this long rambling question, there's a bit of a pause and Walter says, I don't 372 00:33:04.940 --> 00:33:10.580 believe in Cajun economics. 373 00:33:10.580 --> 00:33:15.580 So I didn't know what to say at first, you know, this is not the answer I was expecting. 374 00:33:15.580 --> 00:33:24.660 So, I caught my wits for a second and said, well, suppose you did believe in economics. 375 00:33:24.660 --> 00:33:28.340 I have a test in five minutes and I have to figure this out. 376 00:33:28.340 --> 00:33:34.860 So, Walter told me the correct answer and went on with the test and this kind of really 377 00:33:34.860 --> 00:33:40.940 set the tone for knowing Walter over the years because he's so passionate about what he does 378 00:33:40.940 --> 00:33:41.940 at all times. 379 00:33:41.940 --> 00:33:46.740 all times. If this was any other professor, they would have just told me the correct answer 380 00:33:46.740 --> 00:33:52.240 regardless of what they believed and not made any comment or not try to teach me anything 381 00:33:52.240 --> 00:33:59.240 in the spot. And this passion has led him to publish 400 academic journals, thousands 382 00:33:59.700 --> 00:34:06.700 of FOPED articles, and he just works absolutely non-stop. I remember another final exam time. 383 00:34:06.700 --> 00:34:36.700 I went outside just to get some fresh air after a few hours of studying, and I believe it was actually a Friday night, about 10 o'clock, and I look over at the business school, and there's only one light on, and it's Walter's office light. I thought, no, he's not seriously there at 10 o'clock on a Friday night. But I knew that the business school was open, and so I went in, and surely enough, Walter was there. 384 00:34:36.700 --> 00:34:42.500 Walter was there, and I asked him a few article ideas that I was thinking of at the time, 385 00:34:42.500 --> 00:34:45.860 and so he held office hours at 10 o'clock at night. 386 00:34:45.860 --> 00:34:53.980 I've met dedicated professors before, but 10 hour o'clock office hours is really going 387 00:34:53.980 --> 00:34:57.060 beyond the call of duty. 388 00:34:57.060 --> 00:35:01.780 And Walter's caring is what really made me become a writer. 389 00:35:01.780 --> 00:35:09.240 As I got to know more, I started attending economics clubs at Loyola and read Defending 390 00:35:09.240 --> 00:35:16.440 the Undefendable and one day I had an idea for just about actually the economics of restaurant 391 00:35:16.440 --> 00:35:22.780 tipping and I wrote this two or three page letter to Walter about this idea and now that 392 00:35:22.780 --> 00:35:30.420 I'm a writer, it's the exact sort of email that I don't like to get because maybe you 393 00:35:30.420 --> 00:36:00.420 Walter, you wrote a page long article and somebody gave you a three page response and you want to respond but you can't write an article for every response but Walter responded at length and told me my ideas were good and the fact that my writing was pretty good and that I should consider publishing the article and at Loyola some of the students here know it's a very writing intensive school pretty much any class you take you're writing essays and nobody had really told me before 394 00:36:00.420 --> 00:36:19.700 Walter's passion is one of the big reasons that I'm here and all of us are here, but 395 00:36:19.700 --> 00:36:26.420 another reason is that he's what I would say like an intellectual weapon of mass destruction. 396 00:36:26.420 --> 00:36:34.420 But I'd like you to think about how that term is used also. What if he was in the wrong hands? 397 00:36:41.420 --> 00:36:54.420 In the sense of opportunity cost, think about if there was somebody like Walter who was keeping office hours till 10 o'clock at night, writing every day, had 400 mainstream journal articles, 398 00:36:54.420 --> 00:37:04.140 He would be on a short list for the Nobel Prize for that sort of effort. 399 00:37:04.140 --> 00:37:09.620 He'd probably be offered posts at the Fed, at the White House, if he had really put that 400 00:37:09.620 --> 00:37:10.620 much effort into. 401 00:37:10.620 --> 00:37:15.580 And he probably wouldn't be teaching at Loyola, but Harvard and those sorts of places. 402 00:37:15.580 --> 00:37:24.700 And that's one of the last things that helped me later on in my career was this example 403 00:37:24.700 --> 00:37:29.620 from Walter that, you know, it's always an uphill battle when you're an Austrian economist 404 00:37:29.620 --> 00:37:34.660 or doing these things, and he got me started on writing, but then later on in my career 405 00:37:34.660 --> 00:37:41.300 I worked in D.C. and you start seeing these opportunity costs become very real when you 406 00:37:41.300 --> 00:37:48.900 You see people who bend under principles a little bit or maybe they read Hayek but they 407 00:37:48.900 --> 00:37:56.900 support the warfare state and you see that that's a very easy way to improve your career 408 00:37:56.900 --> 00:38:01.660 and even you can look at articles on like Huffington Post, some of these things are 409 00:38:01.660 --> 00:38:05.300 amazingly badly written or have logical inconsistencies. 410 00:38:05.300 --> 00:38:10.020 Things are a lot easier if you bend in your principles and that's one thing that Walter 411 00:38:10.020 --> 00:38:18.180 Walter always reminded me, it might be an uphill battle, but you can stick with it and 412 00:38:18.180 --> 00:38:22.260 they can't keep a good man down, essentially. 413 00:38:22.260 --> 00:38:27.620 So I'd like to thank Walter for starting me in this career and keeping me in the right 414 00:38:27.620 --> 00:38:35.040 path as an example where I've seen others stray and I wouldn't even say that he's partially 415 00:38:35.040 --> 00:38:42.040 I couldn't be responsible for my career as a writer, but 100% and I couldn't think of a better person to receive the award tonight. 416 00:38:42.040 --> 00:38:57.040 I just want to say a word about my present students. There may be a half dozen or a dozen of them in the room now. 417 00:38:57.040 --> 00:39:03.040 And every class I have, I ask them to give a speech. And when they first start giving a speech, they're very nervous 418 00:39:03.040 --> 00:39:19.040 I'm very nervous and I give them hints on how to give a better speech and I could see in my present students my former students or when my present students give a speech I can see my former students giving speeches poorly when they started but look at them now, aren't they beautiful?