A Personal Journey Through the Market

I thought it would be a good idea to write how I developed as an individual and I how I got to where I am now.

I grew up in an Atlanta suburb and was always inundated with conservative principles and ideas. When I began to develop my own thoughts in my early teen years, I thought I was quite progressive, but looking back on things, I definitely leaned toward the conservative end of the spectrum. However, I was probably less conservative than others with which I spent the majority of my time. I got a job at fifteen bagging groceries for a large grocery store chain part time. It was there where I first started seeing how unions could influence the workplace for the rest of us. I always turned down there invitations to take a cut of my paycheck each week, because I considered the job to be a temporary one, and nothing they could offer ever appealed to me. However, my refusal to accept their invitations did not stop the union representatives from attempting to strong arm me into joining their club. I didn't think much of it at the time because I concerned myself with other pursuits, such as hanging out with friends, earning some gas money, and girls. When I was finishing high school, I was what I consider now to be politically confused, because I believed that US supremacy was paramount to sustain global "peace". I was a big supporter of the war in Iraq.

Things began to change in college. I went to a school in Virginia and was all of the sudden surrounded by people of many different backgrounds. There were students from liberal-minded regions such as Boston and California, as well as some from the more familiar deep South. Mostly, though, there were students from the Washington, DC area, specifically Northern Virginia. A large number of these students were the sons or daughters of parents working for the federal government at some level. This is when I began to see just how ingrained in our lives the federal government is. In my freshman year, a friend of mine bought me Atlas Shrugged. It seemed long and daunting so I shelved it. At the beginning of Sophomore year I went to work for the local grocery store chain doing the same bagging groceries work. Here, I saw the unions at work. They still pushed me into trying to join for a piece of my paycheck each week and I still refused. Because I refused I had to work extra hours to make up for the absence of union members striking for seemingly inane reasons. This made the college students upset. We had more important endeavors in which to engage, such as studying and drinking beer. They swore they were "out to protect us". I felt they just scratched the back of those in the club and strained those of us that didn't want the paltry benefits they could offer.

It was about this time when I found myself wandering through a bookstore where I found a copy of Ayn Rand's Anthem for four dollars. I bought it and read it in one sitting. I loved it. The book highlighted the importance of individualism in an increasingly more society-minded world. I started to read Atlas Shrugged. It was big, and it was daunting. I couldn't read it all in one sitting. But every time I opened that book, it made me think in a way I never had before. I put it down and picked up other books, such as Ron Paul's The Revolution: A Manifesto. I became enthralled in Ron Paul's 2008 presidential campaign. More ideas bloomed. I really began to grow. I started to talk to other people about these new ideas. These talks never went well because I couldn't formulate all of these ideas into coherent arguments, and I would always end up just getting mad. The other people did as well. I finished Atlas Shrugged shortly before I received my undergraduate degree and it changed my life.

Soon after I finished reading Atlas Shrugged I began graduate school. This is where I really started to solidify my thoughts on the free market, liberty, and government. Reading as much as I could on economics and government got me very excited. I started toying with the idea of starting a blog about free market idealology, but I never really had the time until right now.