Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Understanding Bitcoin

[UPDATE: The link below now goes to version 1.1, which fixes a slight mistake in a footnote and some typos.] You guys think I spend my time at the karaoke bar and trolling Scott Sumner. Well, I do spend my time doing those things, but I also co-authored this guide to Bitcoin with Silas Barta. […]

Awkward

Obviously these politicians like to posture, but Gruber really served up a softball on this one.

I’m Surrounded by Pacifists!

I think it started with David R. Henderson, but I’ve seen plenty of people on “my side” favorably cite Stephen Carter’s take on the Eric Garner case, in which he argues that you shouldn’t favor any laws that you aren’t willing to see police kill people over. (That’s a horrible sentence, I know. Don’t kill […]

Potpourri

==> The econosphere is hotly debating this new paper, which uses a clever “natural experiment” method to conclude that if the government passes a law making something more expensive, then (a) the thing becomes more expensive but (b) people buy less of it. ==> In terms not just of shocking police behavior but then the […]

The Anti-Rand

On Facebook someone had a post that started with the premise, “If someone were to write the opposite of an Ayn Rand novel…” So I started to make a joke, since I realized that Nya Dnar (backwards) sounded like some kind of African name. I was going to say that under that pen name, I […]

Scott Sumner Can’t Stand When People Use Interest Rates to Gauge the Stance of Monetary Policy

He hits a familiar theme in the opening sentence from a recent post: “There are days where everything seems hopeless. I still find that 98% of the pundits I read don’t even understand that low rates don’t mean easy money.” But wait, there is at least one other man who gets it. Sumner explains that […]

Am I Really This Unclear?

Imagine Andy Kaufman on Twitter. It would be a disaster.

NYPD = Teachers’ Union + Guns

My column at Rare analyzes the police from a Public Choice perspective. “Reform” through conventional channels is not going to happen. Now the NYPD officers involved in [the Abner Louima torture] case did get into serious trouble. In December 1999, Volpe was sentenced to 30 years in prison without the possibility of parole. In March 2000 three other […]