Bob Murphy

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This Is What It Looks Like When Scientists Don’t Understand Something

Tyler Cowen linked to this Nature article, which I find unintentionally hilarious. The first sentence alone is magnificent: “Physicists are growing ever more frustrated in their hunt for dark matter — the massive but hard-to-detect substance that is thought to comprise 85% of the material Universe.” I beseech you, please do not lecture me in […]

National vs. Individual Consequences of Sin

The book of Leviticus lists a string of punishments or curses that will befall the nation of Israel, if they violate the covenant they’ve made with God. (On the flip side, it also lists a string of blessings if they obey God’s laws.) I was talking with my study partner about the subtle relationship between […]

A Machine Puzzle (3 of 3)

Earlier I asked how it could be possible that one cryptocurrency appreciated at 10% a year while another appreciated at 20%, and several people in the comments correctly said that the dollar-price of a coin could adjust accordingly. So the rate of return *measured in dollars* for the two different cryptocoins could be equal, even […]

A Sovereign Bond Puzzle (2 of 3)

Don’t worry kids, I’ll give you the punchline after this one. But I can see in the comments here that you people still aren’t getting what this has to do with Krugman on Kapital. So, not a trick question: The 5-year Treasury yield right now is about 2%. The 5-year Japanese government bond yield is […]

Tom Woods Interviews Me About My New Liberty Classroom Course

Interview here. And if you want to order the course, use this link to stick it to The Man. (The Man being Tom.)

A Crypto Puzzle

Developers come up with a new cryptocurrency that doesn’t involve “mining.” Instead, holders of the coins enjoy the creation of more coins, at the rate of 10% per year. (So you can use it to buy things, but if you just hold it, the number of coins you hold grows at 10% per year. The […]

Two Approaches to Criticizing Krugman on Kapital

Nick Rowe and I have both known that something was unsettling in Krugman’s recent posts involving capital theory and the corporate income tax. (BTW this isn’t ideological: I would’ve written the same thing about Steve Landsburg’s diagram except he had too much extra stuff going on, and it would have distracted from my point.) So […]

Saving’s For Suckers

I was trying to find more recent data for the items I dug up in this post, and stumbled across the following fairly ominous FRED chart. There might be something going on with capital gains that arguably distorts things (which a Chicago School person would no doubt argue), but for what it’s worth here is […]