Bob Murphy

Author Archive

A Bit of Silliness

Something is really screwy with all of this cryptocurrency discussion. I feel as if a bunch of academics are “proving” that spaceflight is impossible. To take but one example, Tyler Cowen has a long post saying that Bitcoin will collapse in price, where his argument seems to rely on one (or both) of the following […]

Paul Krugman Wants to Make Sense of Humor the Criterion

As Seinfeld would say, “I’m offended as a comedian.” Krugman now writes: Matt O’Brien makes a funny about BitCoin — and the faithful are furious. But then, they do seem to be a humor-impaired bunch. I’ve been getting rage-filled missives about the title of my last post on the subject. Folks, there’s this concept you […]

Is UPS Just as Bad as Healthcare.gov?

My latest at Mises Canada. An excerpt: Paul Krugman is no stranger to silly statements that come back to haunt him, but it has been particularly amusing to watch him twist and turn with the debacles of Healthcare.gov, the website devoted to “ObamaCare.” Krugman’s latest analogy is nothing short of hilarious, but first let’s review […]

A Brief Note on Christians and Homosexuality

[UPDATE: I edited some of the below to clarify my own position, separating it from some of the Christians whom I am criticizing.] Especially with a certain television show’s antics, there have been recent flare-ups again in the culture wars, with some atheists (and unfortunately, some Christians) saying that Jesus wants His followers to use […]

Yes Virginia, the God of the Christian Bible Is Omniscient

In the comments of my last religious post, some people stated matter-of-factly that the Bible provides different views of God, and that anyone claiming God is omniscient is ignoring the text in favor of a preconceived philosophical notion of God. No, that’s not correct. If you want to say, “God does some crazy sick stuff […]

Introduction to the TPP

My cousin has been asking me if I’m up to speed on the dangers of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). I explained to him that Paul Krugman had just declared that the TPP was no big deal, so I assumed it must be awful, but no–I didn’t really know much about it. After reading some of […]

God’s Character

On the Sunday posts lately there has been a lot of sarcastic commentary about the supposedly awful character of God. Among other things, He is accused of murder, since (after all) if human rulers did some of the things He does, they would be murderers. I have said this before, and don’t recall anyone even […]

The Greatest Challenge to Pacifism

It’s not anything involving US foreign policy, since it’s easy to come up with plausible objections/alternatives to mass bombing, regardless of the horrors allegedly being rectified. Nope, for me the greatest challenge comes from something like this: I certainly don’t want my son thinking that the way to deal with bullies is to beat the […]