The story was NOT apocryphal.
An e-mail from Marjorie Oi, the widow of the late economist Walter Oi, prompted this submit.
I had written an appreciative piece in Regulation in 2014, shortly after Walter Oi died in December 2013. I typically don’t just like the titles that editors select; I normally choose my very own. However I couldn’t have executed higher than the title that the Regulation editors selected: “The Moral Vision of a Blind Economist.” It emphasizes Walter’s work in serving to finish the draft and retaining the draft proponents at bay once they needed to reintroduce it.
By the best way, studying it now after not having not executed so for years, I believe that it’s in my high 20 of the over 400 common items I’ve written.
I wish to quote one passage earlier than I get to the passage that Marjorie emailed me about.
One instance of Walter’s persistence in his skilled work is his function in serving to stop the reintroduction of the draft. On occasion because the draft ended, there have been requires renewing it. One occurred within the late Nineteen Seventies, after just a few years by which the U.S. navy was not recruiting the variety of high-quality individuals it needed. Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) led the cost. Walter, like Meckling, the Hoover establishment’s Martin Anderson, and Milton Friedman, realized that the all-volunteer pressure wanted defend- ing, and he did so. He attended the Hoover-Rochester Convention on the All-Volunteer Power in December 1979, the primary convention on the draft to be held because the 1966 Chicago convention. The papers and proceedings of that convention have been printed within the 1982 ebook Registration and the Draft. Walter, who beloved pithy strains, gave an ideal illustration in response to the declare {that a} draft would conscript from the highly effective in addition to the weak. Mentioned Walter: “The Commonwealth of Massachusetts gave [draft] deferments to all members of the legislature and to the fellows of Harvard College.”
Now to the passage in my article that Marjorie referred to.
I first met Walter after I was a graduate scholar at UCLA and he got here to present a paper on workmen’s compensation in our Legislation and Economics seminar, run on the time by my
mentor, Harold Demsetz. Walter was properly alongside in his presentation and had truly put some numbers on the board and, if I recall appropriately, an equation or two. i used to be sitting beside a scholar named Ed Rappaport. Ed needed to ask Walter a query and so he raised his hand. He saved his hand within the air and I whispered, “Ed, he’s not going to call on you. He’s blind.” “Really?” responded Ed. “Yes,” I replied, “that’s why that dog is sitting in the corner.” That’s how good Walter was at presenting.
This subsequent story could also be apocryphal, however I believe it’s true. Walter was at a convention the place one other economist was writing an extended equation on the board. I’m guessing
the economist needed to have been saying the phrases out loud as he wrote. Walter raised his hand. “Yes?” the economist mentioned. Walter: “That third term in the equation. Shouldn’t that be a minus sign, not a plus sign?” The economist turned and appeared on the equation. After a pause, he mentioned, “Oh, yes. Thank you.”
It seems that the story is true. Right here’s how I do know. In a September 18 e-mail, Marjorie wrote:
I used to be wanting up some info for my daughter [Eleanor] to make use of in a presentation about Walter’s work in ending the draft and one of many articles I despatched her is your Cato piece about Walter. In it, you point out the story of Walter noting an incorrect equation in a seminar at Rochester. I can now verify that the story is true. A former scholar of Walter’s, [X–Marjorie doesn’t have permission to quote him by name], simply moved into my retirement group. He was a graduate scholar and on the seminar the place Walter identified the error. I’ve heard the story many occasions from many individuals, however by no means from a main supply. [Franco] Modigliani was giving the seminar. Hope you might be retaining properly.
