Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Two Sumner Predictions: One Specific, One General

In a recent post at his blog, Scott gave the title, “Please, do buy. You won’t regret it.” He first linked to a post about bubble theories that were promulgated in 2009-11, and said they had recently been refuted. Then he talked about property values in Dubai. My question: Is Scott just saying “buy a […]

At Some Point It Would Be Nice If Rothbard’s Critics Actually Read His Article on Legal Theory

Gene Callahan doesn’t like my article in which I said that Rothbard had given a prima facie plausible response to critics like Steve Landsburg and David Friedman, who argued that the libertarian approach to property rights would mean that (say) your neighbor could force you to not use any electronic devices. Here’s Gene: This argument […]

Music City Friends of Liberty Performs “Come Together”

Not sure if you guys here at the blog know about this, but I’m part of the Music City Friends of Liberty (here’s our Facebook page). Last night we unveiled this ditty at The 5 Spot in Nashville:

At This Point Steve Landsburg Must Classify Me as a “Nuisance”

I wanted to push back against Steve Landsburg casually saying that libertarian property rights theory doesn’t work. I thought Rothbard probably handled this type of thing, but I was pleasantly surprised to see just how specific it was. Here’s Rothbard: Consider the case of radio waves, which is a crossing of other people’s boundaries that […]

On the Minimum Wage “Experiments”

I wonder if minimum wage workers feel comfortable reading Noah Smith. An excerpt: The early evidence said that minimum wage laws reduce employment growth–just as the textbooks and intro classes taught students for decades. Then, there was a wave of studies in the 1990s that challenged this orthodoxy, including the famous Card-Krueger paper in 1994. […]

Larry Summers Wants TPP Because of What It Represents

This is a bit freaky. Tyler Cowen points to Larry Summers who writes: The Senate’s rejection of President Woodrow Wilson’s commitment of the United States to the League of Nations was the greatest setback to U.S. global leadership of the last century. While not remotely as consequential, the votes in the House last week that, […]

Potpourri

==> Dan Sanchez has a great post on ISIS and its debt to Washington, DC. ==> David R. Henderson on two recent cases of government working badly. ==> Bryan Caplan talks about Frances Wooley’s good critique of how economists teach public goods. ==> Also, on my last post I linked to my Mises CA post […]

Krugman and Yglesias Get Tough on Bankers–After It Doesn’t Matter

Matt Yglesias recently posed as brave battler of bank bailouts (referring to the case of Iceland), and Krugman high-fived him. Yglesias literally wrote an article titled, “In Praise of TARP.” Here’s an excerpt of my latest at Mises CA: It’s ironic that they now strike this pose, given their behavior since 2008. There was a […]