Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Voting “Strategically” Is Nonsense

If this doesn’t start a bunch of fights, I don’t know what will. An excerpt: Immanuel Kant famously posited the Categorical Imperative, which says that you ought to obey rules that you can consistently wish others to obey. Even more famously, Jesus posited the golden rule. I have no problem with any of this. Indeed, as […]

Ask Me Anything

Hey kids, on Friday, May 6, 2016, starting at 3pm Eastern, I’ll be doing a Reddit “Ask Me Anything.” If you are a Reddit person and want to spread the word on relevant subreddits (like Austrian econ, an-cap, bald icons, etc.), I’d appreciate it.

Timeless Profits

(That’s a clever title once you realize the true purpose of my exercise.) In two previous posts (one and two), I claimed that there is something really fishy in how economists typically solve “the firm’s problem.” Namely, they have the firm maximize the absolute amount of money earnings, but don’t take into account the implicit […]

Soul-Eating Dementor

Do you understand what this kind of thing does to me? (BTW normally I black out people’s identities but I can’t find the right program on my office computer.)

Potpourri

==> On the latest Lara-Murphy Show, I interview Carlos about his decades of experience in keeping business owners out of bankruptcy. ==> Tom Woods brought to my attention this great article by Jeff Deist. I saw Jeff give the lunch keynote at the recent Texas LP convention and it blew me away. ==> BTW, if […]

An Essay for Single Christian Men

I am an economist, and so this essay may seem totally out of the blue. However, I have noticed certain patterns in the dating arena over the years, and I think some of my observations may enlighten. I am targeting this essay to single, heterosexual Christian men, especially those who are frustrated with the opposite […]

Tom Woods and I Take on Alexander Hamilton via Krugman

The latest episode of Contra Krugman.

Are Economists Wrong When They Solve the “Firm’s Problem”?

Thanks to those who chimed in for my test question in a previous post (which you will need to review if you want to understand the present post). So, people agreed with me that in the question I reproduced, the “correct” answer was to have each type of firm maximize profit, meaning the actual amount […]