[gjm11]

That itself seems like a straw man. "Anti-statists" is your term -- neither "statist" nor "anti-statist" appears anywhere in the article. And it doesn't say anything at all about a "state-directed economy"; I'm not sure precisely what you mean by that but on the face of it it sounds like a Soviet-style command economy, which scarcely anyone wants (including, I think, Richard Murphy) and certainly isn't the only alternative to the sort of small-government right-libertarianism he seems to be complaining about.

But let's suppose that what Murphy really wants is a "state-directed economy", and that he's concerned that opponents of that are making bad arguments about inflation to oppose it. In that case, why shouldn't he write an article explaining why he disagrees with the key premise of those arguments, namely that there's a real danger of problematically high inflation?

It seems like the principle you're appealing to ("why not just ... and dispense with the charade?") is that if you want X, you should always just argue for X rather than addressing bad arguments against X. I think that principle is very wrong. People are often persuaded by bad arguments, and if someone has been persuaded by a bad argument against X then they will likely not listen willingly when you present your arguments for X. (Because they already know X is bad.) But if you write something about the specific argument they've been convinced by, they might pay attention, and you might convince them.