Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Scott Sumner and I Have a Failure to Communicate

This is really freaky. It’s like with the “top income tax rate in 2013” debacle. Can somebody read the exchanges between Sumner and me in this post–responding to a Sheldon Richman article–and tell me what the heck is going on? As best I can tell, Scott position is the following: “You Austrians are nutty for […]

One More on Epistemic Closure and Conservatives

Last post on this and I will move on to greener pastures… There are two remaining ironies I would like to point out, in Krugman’s high-fiving of Bruce Bartlett for being so open-minded in his denunciation of those close-minded conservatives. (BTW a funny and apropos aside: I pass the Scott Sumner Turing Test.) (1) Look […]

Tom Woods Says Secession Is as American as Star Wars

A lot of people have been pooh-poohing the role of secession in the American political/legal framework. Tom Woods certainly argues that the states retained the ability to leave the Union. (He also picked up on my John Wilkes Booth line.) Discuss.

Quick Thoughts on “Pure Reason” vs. Empiricism

I am going to be brief, but there is still much confusion on this grand philosophical dispute, which started when Brad DeLong, as is his wont, said innocently enough about a renowned philosopher: “Thomas Nagel is not smarter than we are–in fact, he seems to me to be distinctly dumber than anybody who is running […]

Was Jesus Funny?

I have been reading–and adoring–a collection of essays by G.K. Chesterton (Heretics). In “On Mr. McCabe and a Divine Frivolity” he writes: Mr. McCabe thinks that I am not serious but only funny, because Mr. McCabe thinks that funny is the opposite of serious. Funny is the opposite of not funny, and of nothing else….Whether […]

Scott Sumner Devastates Paul Krugman on the Liquidity Trap

[UPDATE below.] Whoa, Bob Wenzel tipped me off to this one… Sumner absolutely destroys Krugman in this post. (Also, I have street cred for making such a call–when Scott ignored Krugman’s writings on Japan in order to score a blog point, I called a foul.) I had never seen these passages that Scott dug up […]

Epistemic Closure: The Pot Calling the Kettle Krugman

Paul Krugman November 30, 2012: I gather that philosophers are upset over the use of the term “epistemic closure” to refer to the closing of the movement conservative mind – that’s not what they mean by the term. Never mind: that’s the term everyone is using. And recent reports are a reminder of just how […]

David Friedman on Anarcho-Capitalism

A neat little interview (HT2 David R. Henderson). The interviewer asked him what Milton Friedman thought about it. I would never have had the courage to do that, thinking that he might be sick of people asking him about his dad.