Bob Murphy

Author Archive

EconLog: And Then There Were Three

There’s a new face on the EconLog masthead: that of David Henderson. Congrats, David. Seeing you magically appear in between Bryan Caplan and Arnold Kling reminded me of a movie scene.

TIME Blogger Digs Himself Deeper

Intrigued by Lew Rockwell’s raised hackles, the TIME econ blogger Justin Fox gives a follow-up post. Now look, I am a relative young pup in the field and have thought all these big schisms in Austrian economics are dumb and counterproductive. But this is just silly. After explaining that Lew Rockwell responded to his earlier […]

TIME Hit Piece on Lew Rockwell

This is hilarious (HT2LRC). If you are new to my blog and are just learning about Austrian economics etc., don’t bother clicking the above link. But if you know the ins, outs, whys, and wherefores, just look at how ignorant the TIME blogger is when discussing the factions in Austrian economics. In particular, he implies […]

Blago Pick: Barack Obama Should Study Game Theory

“Defiant” Governor Blagojevich has named Roland W. Burris as the successor to Obama’s senate seat. Plenty of people, including the President-Elect himself, had said that Blagojevich shouldn’t name anybody, for obvious reasons. But these people went further: Obama foolishly declared that anyone named by Blagojevich should not fill the vacancy. Do you see the problem? […]

Ringing in the New Year With People Who Are At Least 55 Years Young

I spent New Year’s Eve at my parents’ relatively new house in a retirement community in Florida, where new residents must be at least 55 years old. (We had come down for Christmas.) I noticed some huge differences between this party and those that I remember from my youthful days: * Everybody left before 2.* […]

New Energy Blog and Why Governments, Not Human Nature, Foster Mass Warfare

Rob Bradley (disclosure: the guy who hired me for IER) has a new energy blog. Some of the big guns who will be posting are still on vacation, but it looks to be great for daily commentary on energy issues. David Henderson had a great Christmas Eve article discussing the outbreak of peace on the […]

Krugman: You Can’t Prove My Plan Is a Bad Idea

As always, I am stunned by Krugman’s latest blog post (HT2MR). Check this out, and note that this is his entire post: Readers have been correcting me for saying “niggling nabobs of negativism” in this post. Yes, I know the original (written by my former colleague William Safire.) But “niggling” is better for the current […]

Those Fighting for Economic Freedom Need a Good Halftime Speech

I recently wrote a piece for Mises.org (should run soon) saying something to the effect that what more could the SEC do, than its handling of the Madoff Ponzi scheme, to prove that it’s doing an awful job and should be abolished? In other words, if one thinks that all this proves is that some […]