I read a Mark Twain book at around 11 years old titled “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” which has a chapter titled “A 6th Century Political Economy”. That chapter sparked a lifelong interest in economics, through which I eventually discovered the Mises Institute (though I was already a libertarian by that point).

I think I was always a Voluntaryist though. Certainly, I’ve never really considered myself a “citizen” of any nation and always thought the idea of allegiance to man-made “countries” was a bit nonsense. (I started refusing to say – or stand for – the Pledge of Allegiance in 2nd grade because the idea of blindly pledging myself to fallible entities irked the hell out of me.)

I know… weird kid.

But yeah, my father’s parents were both stateless at one point or another in their lives and Jews in general have had a long history of statelessness, so I honestly never felt like a bunch of assholes telling me how to live my life was something I needed.

–Yaakov Markel, Stateless Jew