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For more than a century, skeptics of government power have rightly focused on the damage caused by interventions in money. As the market’s classic commodity monies have been displaced by unbacked State-issued paper, libertarians — particularly those versed in Austrian economics — have disparaged fiat currencies and championed commodity-based money, especially gold and silver. Unfortunately, […]
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by Robert Murphy I am a professional economist, not a military strategist or historian. Nonetheless, I think I can offer some perspective on typical arguments for U.S. government military action. Consider the following excerpt from a NYT article by Chris Hedges, titled, “Iran May Be Able to Build an Atomic Bomb in 5 Years, U.S. […]
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On Facebook I follow George Takei (“Lt. Sulu” from the original Star Trek series) because he’s pretty funny, but mostly because I loved that show. Unfortunately Takei applauded the Oregon judge who ruled against the Christian bakers, and put the hashtag #SeparationOfChurchandCake. Upping the ante, one of Takei’s fans posted this in the thread without […]
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On NPR today they were talking about cybersecurity. The host made a throwaway remark along the lines that with private businesses, you couldn’t expect a full-throated response to the threats his expert guests were discussing, because they responded to the profit motive and it “wasn’t like Los Alamos.”Here the host was referring to the famous […]
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The FDA approves very dangerous drugs and then doesn’t respond when later evidence documents the risks. For the rest of my post, let me quote from a 2005 interview of Dr. David Graham, then a 20-year FDA employee. He had led a study showing that Vioxx was extremely dangerous (perhaps causing 60,000 fatalities), and claims […]
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Near the end of his treatise on economics, Ludwig von Mises wrote: There is no means by which anyone can evade his personal responsibility. Whoever neglects to examine to the best of his abilities all the problems involved voluntarily surrenders his birthright to a self-appointed elite of supermen. In such vital matters blind reliance upon […]
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I coined the term “Krugman Kontradiction” to refer to the Nobel laureate’s tendency to lead his readers in one direction on an issue, then do a total about-face when circumstances make that convenient, while whipping up a new set of assumptions and emphases in his economic analysis so as to reconcile the switch. I’ve got […]
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I saw several people denouncing this on social media, and I assumed they were exaggerating. But no, the city of Houston has been subpoenaing local pastors for written copies of their sermons. As the Houston Chronicle explains: Houston’s embattled equal rights ordinance took another legal turn this week when it surfaced that city attorneys, in […]
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In one hour, I was assaulted by two wonderful examples of people misleading their audience while wearing the mantle of objective science. First, I was reading to my son from Max Tegmark’s book, The Mathematical Universe. Tegmark is a physicist at MIT, so he is a smart guy. In the beginning of the book he […]
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The problem with the USD being the world’s reserve currency is that it’s a situation where things could unravel very suddenly. So long as most investors think that the dollar will be OK next week, then it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. But if people start to worry, then there could be a sudden crash […]
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