Wlliams holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from California State University at Los Angeles (1965) and a master’s degree (1967). He also received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1972. Since being a graduate student at UCLA, he has been a friend of economist and columnist Thomas Sowell. Correspondence between Sowell and Williams appears in the 2007 “A Man of Letters” by Sowell. Williams has been a Professor of Economics at George Mason University since 1980, and chairman of that University’s Economics department from 1995 to 2001.
He has previously been on the faculty of Los Angeles City College, California State University – Los Angeles, Temple University, and Grove City College.
As an economist, Williams often speaks and writes in favor of free market economics and against socialist systems and government intervention. He has said “That’s a challenge I love: making economics fun and understandable.”
Williams supports legalization of organ trafficking to increase the supply of organs for transplant, stating that the true proof of whether or not an individual owns something is whether or not they have the right to sell it. If selling organs is illegal, he says, then subsequently individuals do not own their own bodies.
Williams is an outspoken champion of black education, frequently indicting the educational systems of inner city schools for perpetuating, in his words, “a fraud against African-American students and families by lowered standards.”[citation needed] He is also a critic of the minimum wage and affirmative action, believing that both practices are detrimental to both blacks and liberty. Williams especially emphasizes his belief that racism and the legacy of slavery in the United States are overemphasized as problems faced by the black community and do not adequately explain the situation blacks face today.
Holding libertarian viewpoints, Williams criticizes gun control as endangering the innocent and failing to reduce crime. Williams holds conservative viewpoints on economics.
Williams praises lassez-faire capitalism as being the most moral and most productive system man has ever devised. “Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.”
He has gone on record as advocating the Free State Project in at least two columns and once on television. The Williams endorsement correlated with the largest single membership jump in the first 5000 phase of the project, a jump even higher than the results of the project being Slashdotted. He also believes in the right of U.S. states to secede from the union as several states attempted to do during the Civil War. Williams has supported or been sympathetic toward various secessionist ideas in his writings.
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