Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Calling People "Illegals"

That practice has bothered me for a while now. It’s true, I definitely fall into the “open borders libertarian” camp, but that’s not really the point in this post. If someone says, “I am concerned that there are so many immigrants coming in, and I think that wouldn’t happen if the border lands and roads […]

Now They’ve Got Me Pegged

An unanticipated drawback to writing this unorthodox book review is that Amazon now suggests some very childish books when I visit the site. (When I wrote the review, I had to get the picture of the Smash! Crash! cover from Amazon.)

The Lord Never Wastes a Crisis

Picture this: An Iranian man finds himself washed ashore a California beach. He stands up, dusts himself off, and starts announcing to people that they are going to die because of their fornication. He delivers the message with such conviction and lack of sympathy that it just clicks and people actually believe him. He’s not […]

The Government Has Paralyzed the Credit Markets

The government (including the Federal Reserve) has paralyzed the credit markets. It has attacked the markets in many ways, but one particularly insidious move was the inject a massive amount of new reserves, and then pay interest to keep them bottled up. This is one of the most perverse outcomes of the Fed’s combination of […]

Two Kinds of People

There is one group of people in America who truly care about social injustice, but they don’t consider the violation of property rights to be high on the list. That’s why they approve government programs that involve redistribution. On the other hand, there are Americans who take property rights seriously; they get tingles when they […]

Why Discounting Matters in the Climate Change Policy Debate

Someone who is working on these matters emailed me in regard to this article. Here is a self-explanatory portion of my response. I’m trying to show the problems of “treating our grandchildren as just as entitled to happiness as we are.” In other words, I’m trying to show why you need to use market interest […]

Three Strikes Against "Three Strikes"

As Oprah-esque as it sounds to say this, I think there were really just a handful of teachers who really influenced the way I now view the world. And one of them was Gary Wolfram, in his Public Choice class at Hillsdale College. I am still amazed at Wolfram’s abilities. If my memory serves, he […]

Science or Not? CRU Admits It No Longer Has Original Temperature Records

This is a great example of where suspicion of the other side’s motives can really juice up a conflict. The global warming debate is chock full of this tendency. Check out this story, which is based on true facts (as I understand them): The world’s source for global temperature record admits it’s lost or destroyed […]