@ismurray

British-American expat, author, political economist of the free market variety. Former classicist. Economic Freedom at @ceidotorg. Commanders and SAFC fan.

Washington, DC
Joined July 2008
Iain Murray retweeted
It's difficult to have a productive, honest conversation about the "Groyper problem" in the Republican Party. But there's evidence that it's real, and something to worry about. My latest in @WSJFreeEx:
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Iain Murray retweeted
Replying to @ceidotorg
@ceidotorg is doing a book forum with @DrSamuelGregg on November 4. Join us! And, if you cannot be there in person for the conversation, be sure to catch it online.
I cannot recommend a book in 2026 - and maybe not for the entire 2020’s - more than @DrSamuelGregg brand new book, The Civilization of Commerce. It is a tour de force, and simply vital in the current moment. Buy it today!! amazon.com/Civilization-Comm…
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Iain Murray retweeted
Read this very good contribution by @RichardMorrison to an excellent symposium hosted by @CivitasOutlook on the vital reading in a new book by @sladesr. Then buy two copies of the book. One to read and one to give to a friend who really needs it. civitasoutlook.com/symposium…
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If more people pay attention to the planned surrender to EU regulations on November 20, perhaps it can be thwarted...
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I cannot recommend a book in 2026 - and maybe not for the entire 2020’s - more than @DrSamuelGregg brand new book, The Civilization of Commerce. It is a tour de force, and simply vital in the current moment. Buy it today!! amazon.com/Civilization-Comm…
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Iain Murray retweeted
On Wednesday, you can catch me on the Capitol Hill panel "More Than a Game: The Economic Promise of Prediction Markets." Look forward to presenting the perspective of @ceidotorg on prediction markets & their promising innovations in a discussion with @MichaelMandel of @ppi & Dartmouth economist Eric Zitzewitz. You can register here! eventbrite.com/e/more-than-a…
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Iain Murray retweeted
“The Dissident Right, Ms. Slade persuasively shows, believes that our system of checks and balances and limited government is rotten and must give way to a ‘Caesarist’ approach to executive power.” From a new review of FUSIONISM in @WSJ today: wsj.com/arts-culture/books/f…
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1/4 With Election Day still weeks away, we cannot say for sure what American voters will do in the 2026 midterms. Dozens of key federal, state, and local races remain too close to call. Still, Democrats appear likely to take the U.S. House as well as several state governorships and legislative chambers. Republican control of the U.S. Senate is also endangered. Among the hundreds of signatories to the Freedom Conservatism Statement of Principles are campaign professionals, political activists, and former elected officials — including mayors, school-board members, state and federal lawmakers, governors, and even a former vice president. Most have a rooting interest in partisan politics. Some remain personally involved in campaigns. But the @FreeConTalk project itself is nonpartisan. Our goals extend far beyond one election cycle or the fate of any particular candidate. We believe that unless there is a healthy, vibrant American Right committed to individual liberty, federalism, free enterprise, free speech, free trade, civic virtue, equal opportunity, and the rule of law, any hard-won electoral victories will prove fleeting. And if our movement tolerates cranks, bigots, and other reactionaries, fewer such victories will occur in the first place. Unless conservatives offer real solutions to the problems voters care about most — such as affordability, fiscal responsibility, family formation, and broad access to the American Dream — voters will seek them elsewhere. That voters are destined to be disappointed by populists, progressives, and socialists is true but beside the point. You can’t beat something with nothing. And American greatness is impossible without American freedom. That will be one of the themes explored at three post-election events in battleground states: FreeCon Phoenix on November 16, FreeCon Philadelphia on November 17, and FreeCon Raleigh on November 18. At each summit, #FreeCon signatories and allies will discuss the lessons of the midterms, the challenges and opportunities we will face in 2027 and beyond, and how a rejuvenated American Right can meet those challenges and seize those opportunities. Please join us! RSVP links to follow in the thread.
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🚨 2026 Nobel Prize in Economics goes to Robert E. Hall and Michael Woodford 🚨 "for microfoundations of macroeconomic stabilisation" Such a good macro prize. So happy to see Robert Hall, not mentioned as much as Woodford in this discourse
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Still nonplussed at that ending. In sudden death in OT, when you get into easy FG range you kick it. Game over unless you somehow miss. No point in trying to manage the clock. Just bizarre.
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Iain Murray retweeted
Why did they take the clock all the way down when it doesn’t matter!?
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Iain Murray retweeted
The Washington @Commanders should be banished from the @NFL on principle after the botched ending to that game. One of the worst non-losses ever.
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That was the worst piece of time management I have ever seen at the end of a game from Washington. Literally incredible.
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I have always said this was likely, and why it's therefore that the government will reach for things like constitutional vandalism and EU alignment to show its radicalism. Sigh.
Becoming more and more convinced that Burnham will be the Prime Minister forced to deliver a level of austerity we've not seen in this country for a long time. Something that will make the years post-GFC look like a teddy bear's picnic. The minds of many will explode when they see that come from a Labour government.
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Iain Murray retweeted
The name rarely mentioned is Adam Smith (I sometimes wonder: is that 'cos he was a Scot with a rather negative view of the Oxford University of his time). Sowell's Basic Economics is a book addressed to a general audience (the first edition's subtitle was 'A Citizen's Guide to the Economy'), but go back to his prior academic work and you will find a preoccupation with the classical economists -- Smith, Say, Ricardo, Mill, et al., of whom the greatest is Smith. These, together with his own observational, empiricist take on economic realities (something, unlike Hayek, he shares with Smith), comprise the foundations of Sowell's thinking. Sowell is also like Smith in his broad range of interests, which extend far beyond the narrowly economic. In reading Sowell, @KemiBadenoch will have developed a better understanding of the main mechanisms of the economic system than her opponents, and her interest in Sowell is not surprising. What is more surprising to me is the abandonment by Labour and the Lib Dems of a large part of their own intellectual traditions. Has there ever been another great political economist who was so intensely interested in both the liberties and the material wellbeing of 'the day labourer' (his terminology) than Smith? Indeed, the latter was his metric for assessing the relative 'Wealth of Nations'. See my pinned tweet.
The ideas of Hayek and Friedman powered Thatcherism. But most influential thinker behind today's Tories is Thomas Sowell. He has as much to say about race, culture and elites as about economics. My essay on the emerging battle of ideas:- times-comment.com/sowell1
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Iain Murray retweeted
And yet it failed to predict inflation when tried in the Biden years. Stephanie Kelton adamantly insisted it was transitory and inconsequential.
Replying to @EWErickson
MMT definitely predicts the inflation...this is just uninformed propaganda
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"Official curriculum [...] guidance states that the British Empire should be presented solely as an ‘invading and exploiting force’, treated on a par with ‘other powers that committed atrocities, eg Nazi Germany’."
Multiple councils in England want to jail residents who attach England flags to lampposts. The Bank of England is replacing Churchill with a hedgehog, and the government thinks the countryside is too ‘white’. This national self-loathing is relentless, says Hugo Timms buff.ly/707dL6b
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RIP the Platonic Form of an American Football coach. Although I was a Redskins fan already by then, I loved the Bears' 1985 run (even though I watched the Superbowl with my Amherst grad Patriots fan tutorial partner in Wadham MCR - he was not happy...)
NFL legend Mike Ditka, who revolutionized the tight end position before becoming the head coach of the world champion 1985 Bears and a towering figure in the city of Chicago, has passed away, his family announced. He was 86.
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This is nonsense, of course, especially regarding the Sasanian state. The same peoples, cultures, and religions were found on either side of the frontier, and the Sasanian government was eager to appropriate the customs and patrimony of Rome. The reverse is also true, but I will leave that for later. The Persian kings held church synods, spread rumours that they had converted, and sent Christian missionaries to the nomads of Inner Asia. Mutual adoptions were proposed between ruling families and cabals. Kings and emperors were deposed and installed with Roman or Persian help. Sasanian kings frequented and patronised saints' shrines, took Roman wives, and installed bishops. At least one Roman pretender was crowned in Ctesiphon. And, finally, despite periods of mutual hostility, Iran and Rome together managed to regulate mutual trade, warfare, exchange of prisoners, construction of fortresses, protection of religious minorities, inter alia, through a series of treaties approximating what we would now call international law. And there is also the famous story of Khusro I welcoming the professors of the shuttered Athenian Neoplatonic academy at Ctesiphon. QED!
Iran was the original "Oriental other" in history. Long before Communist China, Soviet Russia, or today's Islamic Republic, there were the Sassanids who were "the Great Other" to Rome and "the civilizing Occident." Rejecting the West is as Iranian as pistachios & ghormeh sabzi.
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Iain Murray retweeted
The dirty secret about the European Union: it’s not much of a union at all. The political differences between Paris and Berlin, not to mention Warsaw, Prague, Vilnius, and Stockholm are too great. There’s a facade of a common, united front, but ultimately regional or national interests override the supranational. Paris and Berlin are the most powerful instigators. There is no EU “demos” as most national populations have no clue what happens in the EU capital and don’t feel attached to the “Union” apart from free travel and maybe a common currency. The only journalists who cover it and shed some light are pretty captured by the institutions themselves. There’s a an isolated clique based in Brussels that trains down to Strasbourg once a month (to satisfy France) and live in the same multicultural Brussels bubble, figuratively and literally, mostly talking to themselves. There’s an army of highly educated and cosmopolitan bureaucrats and policy staff who run the show and about 200-300 smart consultants who lobby for companies or NGOs and can get most of the meetings. MEPs, without much power apart from large per-diem budgets, are left to do performative work the national capitals mostly ignore. The politicians and EU Commissioners who rise to the top in Brussels are usually those who’ve been pushed out from their own national politics while domestic leaders do most of the work at home. Externally, through its large population, unifying symbolism and central budget, the EU looks like a behemoth. But it remains divided from the real power centers in the national capitals, where leaders must face citizens, accountability, and the wrath of elections.
europe finally has a strong frontier llm with mistral - and what does germany's number one and government endorsed search engine ecosia do? shut it off because it runs on french nuclear power instead it'll pick chinese models i've seen german nuclear psychosis over the last decades - but this one sets a new bar. wtf
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