Jeff Tucker, Pioneer
I have noticed more and more that Mises.org is gaining real street cred (and even Street cred). I think it’s partly the general resurgence in interest in the Austrian School, but I also think it’s that the Internet is becoming a more accepted source of information. (It used to be a derogatory thing to say, “I read this on the Internet,” but that is quickly becoming analogous to saying, “I read this in a book…”)
So Jeff Tucker is a great pioneer and visionary. For years he has been making Mises.org awesome. Jeff is always ahead of the curve. He was making Mises.org accessible to blog readers when I wasn’t sure what a blog was.
People often ask me, “What’s the deal with Jeff Tucker? Does he actually do anything besides approve articles?” And I explain that Jeff knows enough about computers and the Internet to be able to hire really great, technical people to do all the behind-the-scenes stuff that you take for granted. You just expect that every day, there will be 3 or so new articles up at Mises.org, and that if you want to see the shopping list that JoAnn Rothbard gave to Murray in 1983, that you can find the scanned PDF at Mises.org. (It is my understanding that Mises.org gets attacked by Marxist hackers almost as much as WhiteHouse.gov.)
So let us give thanks to Jeff Tucker, who decided to plant the Austro-libertarian flag in a fertile crescent in the blogosphere. For years, non-Austrians could scoff and dismiss us as “people who have to publish their rants on the Internet,” but that is now coming to a close.
Someone should write a song, “Internet killed the TV star.”
He’s terrific. We’re so lucky to have him..
Yup. Jeff is great. Plus there is the sartorial splendour, which is not to be dismissed in these barbaric times.
Mises.org is a big deal. The anti-IP bent of it they’ve taken in the past few years has made it even bigger. The terabytes of books, audio and video are all over the place now, and have inspired a dozen international versions of the site. Trying to maintain a non-commercial site that is that massive and with that much reach is very, very hard.
In my opinion, Jeff is one of the more interesting personalities in libertarian circles. Just listening to him talk for a few seconds and it’s immediately obvious he’s very enthusiastic about the ideas. It’s unreal, I can think of no other person that bubbles over with happiness over the ideas like he does. Jeff’s a good interviewer as well. I admit he fawns a bit sometimes, but overall his interviews are very informative and intelligent. His entertaining critiques of government, IP, culture, and especially dress always make me chuckle. Yeah, I’m a Jeff Tucker fan. I’m happy he’s around, without him we’d all be worse off.
Anyone find that 1983 shopping list pdf?
I again nominate Jeff for the Friedman Prize.
At some point it will be an embarrassment that the CATO people don’t give Jeff the prize.