A son of the Texas historian Albert Briggs Tucker and Roberta Janeice Tucker, Jeffrey Albert Tucker was born in Fresno, California in 1963. He studied economics as an undergraduate at Texas Tech University and Howard Payne University, where he first encountered the literature of the Austrian School. He later enrolled as a graduate student in economics at George Mason University.
Career
Writer and editor
While studying at George Mason, Tucker attended a journalism program in Washington, D.C., where he became a volunteer at the Washington office of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. In the late 1980s, he went to work for Ron Paul, as an assistant to editor Lew Rockwell, who produced political and investment newsletters on behalf of the former congressman. In 2008, during Paul's campaign for President, those newsletters became the topic of a controversy about racially charged comments some of them contained. From 1997 to 2011 Tucker worked for the Mises Institute, of which Rockwell was a co-founder, as editorial vice president and editor for the institute's website, Mises.org. From 1999 to 2011 he also contributed scholarly efforts and humorous essays to LewRockwell.com. In late 2011 he was hired by Addison Wiggin as publisher and executive editor of Laissez Faire Books, and worked in that capacity until 2016. As of 2017, he remains a contributor to LFB. Tucker was appointed a Distinguished Fellow of the Foundation for Economic Education in 2013, speaking at FEE's seminars and writing for its publication The Freeman. From 2015 to 2017, he was FEE's Director of Content. Tucker became Editorial Director of the American Institute for Economic Research in late 2017.
Bitcoin advocacy
In 2013, Tucker began writing about the information-based cryptocurrency Bitcoin. He has been interviewed on the subject by Reason, Forbes, Fox Business Channel, and RT. Tucker's 2015 book Bit by Bit is devoted to Bitcoin and other products of the "information economy". In 2018 he became a research affiliate of the Blockchain Innovation Hub, a study center at RMIT University.
In 2013, Tucker founded and became the CEO of Liberty.me, a "social network and online publishing platform for the liberty minded", which launched a successful Indiegogofundraising campaign in 2013 and began operation in 2014.
Views
Tucker has referred to war as an "alluring illusion" and has been critical of American interventionist foreign policy. In an interview for California Sunday, Tucker described his "vision of freedom" by recalling a view over São Paulo by night: "As far as my eyes could see, there were lights and buildings and civilization burgeoning — an awesome amount of human knowledge, energy, innovation, creative capacity right in front of me. I began to turn, and it was true over here, and over there, and in every single direction, and I thought, That’s it! This world will never be governed. It cannot be governed. It was beautiful."
Right-Wing Collectivism: The Other Threat to Liberty : Addresses that the threat of collectivism comes from the right as well as the far left
Henry Hazlitt: Giant For Liberty : an annotated bibliography of the works of Henry Hazlitt. A Foundation for Economic Education review described the book, which "includes citations of a novel, works on literary criticism, treatises on economics and moral philosophy, several edited volumes, some 16 other books and many chapters in books, plus articles, commentaries, and reviews," as "an apt eulogy of Henry Hazlitt."
Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo
It's a Jetsons World: Private Miracles and Public Crimes
Hack Your Shower Head: and 10 Other Ways to Get Big Government out of Your Home
A Beautiful Anarchy: How to Create Your Own Civilization in the Digital Age : on the effects of small business regulation
Liberty.me: Freedom Is a Do-It-Yourself Project
Bit by Bit: How P2P is Freeing the World
Advice for Young, Unemployed Workers
In translation
Four of Tucker's books have been published in Spanish translations, including the following:
Milagros del sector privado y crímenes del sector público
Una bella anarquía
In periodicals
He has written for, among others, Journal of Libertarian Studies, The Wall Street Journal, The Journal of Commerce, National Review, The Freeman, Catholic World Report, Crisis, Sacred Music, Newsweek, and Chronicles.
