Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Potpourri

==> Richard Ebeling on the “inequality trap.” ==> A NYT article about some of the wacky freedom fighters in New Hampshire. This is my target audience for the Bob Murphy Variety Show at Porcfest (happening again this June, by the way!). ==> Joe Stromberg on the semantics of the term “laissez-faire.” ==> A project to […]

Politics vs. Science at the IPCC

In this post for IER I quote from two of the Lead Authors of the latest IPCC report. It confirms what some of us have been saying for years. The intro: Those pushing for aggressive government intervention in the name of fighting climate change often claim that “the science is settled” and dismiss any dissenters […]

A Question on Debating Tactics

OK let’s try it this way: Suppose you encountered an economist who argued like this: [HYPOTHETICAL ECONOMIST HOLDING A STRANGE VIEW:] In a market economy, in competitive equilibrium wages are equal to the marginal product of capital. I can prove this to you mathematically in a simple model where physical machines can do all the […]

The Importance of Capital in Economic Theory

This is my EconLib article this month. I told the editor that this isn’t my personal favorite piece, and it’s not my “best” piece in some objective sense. But if I had to pick a single article (word for word) to represent my contribution to professional economics, it would be this one. It summarizes some […]

Killing for God

Last week I made an offhand remark to the way I try to explain why it’s not murder when God orders the Israelites to kill people in the Old Testament. Someone in the comments asked: “if God gave you the same orders as he gave to those Hebrews, would you go ahead with them?” I […]

Piketty on the Marginal Product of Capital

I’m not going to comment on this right now; I have a big article on capital theory coming out next week, and you guys should read that first as foundation. So I’ll wait. In the meantime, however, let me go ahead and type out the following excerpt from pp. 212-213 of Thomas Piketty’s blockbuster Capital […]

“Fresh Air” Really Grinds My Gears

My inaugural article at LibertyChat, where I’ll be contributing weekly. An excerpt: Earlier this week I was listening to an interesting episode of the NPR show “Fresh Air.” The host, Terry Gross, was interviewing the New Yorker’s Dexter Filkins, who was recounting his experience in Iraq while he was researching his latest article. Filkins gave […]

Libertarian Battles

OK kids let’s remain civilized in the comments. But here’s some red meat for you: ==> Lew Rockwell once again affirms that libertarianism as a political philosophy is about the non-aggression principle, period. ==> Tom Woods and Gary Chartier discuss “thick” vs “thin” libertarianism.