Jeffrey A. Tucker is Distinguished Fellow of FEE, head of LFB.org, founder of CryptoCurrencyCon.com, and a past editorial VP for Mises.org.

“I had never told this story publicly before so I was unprepared for how it would affect me. I had to do three takes, and the first two were made unusable because I broke down. The third time you see here I had to stop listening to my own story in order to tell it. What doesn’t appear here is this detail: Tad died two years later, and I never reconnected with him. I often think how his last two years of life would have been so much more wonderful if he had a job to affirm his productive value to the world. So, yes, the story makes me sad. And yes, the minimum wage was to blame.”