The Great Burt Blumert
February 11 would have been the 96th birthday of Burt Blumert, one of my greatest friends and a great champion of Rothbardian libertarianism. (He actually died in 2009.) Some of my readers, especially the younger generation, might not recognize his name, because Burt was a quiet man who worked to do good behind the scenes. In this week’s column, I’m going to tell you about Burt—both what he did and what he was like as a person.
Burt is an example of what Mises and Rothbard hoped for, an entrepreneur dedicated to the intellectual cause of freedom and free enterprise. That cause started to become clear for Burt when he enlisted in the Air Force to avoid being drafted into Truman’s slave army during his war on North Korea. As a member of a socialist organization, Burt saw that a society organized in that fashion would be catastrophic for humanity. After the war and NYU, Burt began his private sector experience and learned that this sector is the one and only key to social progress. It was also in this period that Burt was exposed to the writings of Ayn Rand, Mises, and Rothbard. In fact, he knew Mises, and he was later Murray’s closest friend. After managing a chain of millinery shops in the South—he has loved the region ever since for its manners and traditions— Burt was transferred to California, and then entered the coin and precious metals business, eventually establishing the Camino Coin Company and running it for almost fifty years. Burt always felt blessed to be dealing in collector coins, a hobby he had enjoyed his whole life. Camino, while always important, was central to monetary affairs in the 1960s and 1970s, decades of dramatic changes in the precious metals market. The US had abandoned the domestic gold standard and then the coinage of silver. Ever since FDR, it had been illegal for Americans to own gold. That finally changed, and people needed a reliable business to make that ownership real. Camino became the most respected name in the industry. Burt’s buy-sell spreads consistently beat the competition, his attention to the consumer was famous—his long-term customers became his friends—and he fought against unethical practices, as recognized by various industry groups. Burt was also a Silicon Valley pioneer: in 1970, he founded the first computerized price and news network that knit together dealers all over the country and made the coin market more efficient. Xerox recognized Burt’s entrepreneurial achievement when it bought the network. As a co
Article from LewRockwell
LewRockwell.com is a libertarian website that publishes articles, essays, and blog posts advocating for minimal government, free markets, and individual liberty. The site was founded by Lew Rockwell, an American libertarian political commentator, activist, and former congressional staffer. The website often features content that is critical of mainstream politics, state intervention, and foreign policy, among other topics. It is a platform frequently used to disseminate Austrian economics, a school of economic thought that is popular among some libertarians.
