Philosophy and Methodology

Taleb maintains he’s a statistically-oriented orthodox economist. But I don’t think he understands what people mean by “orthodoxy.”

John Rawls claimed "justice" demands governments use their power to benefit the least well off in a given society. But then he arbitrarily restricts the scope of these programs to particular nation-states. This betrays a fundamental problem with his idea of inequality.

Jeff Deist pithily describes Taleb’s prose as “Rothbard meets Hayek.” But Taleb shares some ideas in common with Ludwig von Mises as well.

Bob Murphy and Stephan Kinsella debate Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s famous "argumentation ethics" case for libertarianism.

Behavioral economists are masters of comparing apples to oranges and dressing up incorrect statements in fancy language and mathematics.

Today's neoconservatives have found common cause with the Left in destroying those who disagree with them. In fact, this habit of denying a forum to any and all dissenters has a long tradition in the conservative movement.

Marxist G.A. Cohen is troubled by the freedom libertarians grant to property owners. But artificial limits are unnecessary when practical realities have so often intervened to limit property ownership by any one person.

Peter Klein discusses “evidence-based economics” and the relative place of randomized trials in economics and medicine.

Bob Murphy and Titus Gebel discuss how "Free Private Cities" differ from other types of abstract libertarian theorizing.

"It may well be, that is, that the Bolsheviks had never had the slightest idea of what their aims would mean concretely for the economic life of Russia, how those aims would of necessity have to be implemented, or what the consequences would be."