Be Our Guest

Be Our Guest: “Providing healthcare isn’t practicing medicine”

Brandon Christensen Current Events, History , , , , ,

Jack Curtis has a new Guest Post up. An excerpt:

It was expected that doctors would have some charity patients from those less well off. You also expected that he would do everything possible for your care because that reputation was the reason you wouldn’t call someone else next time. That was reinforced by the priceless value set on human life by the prevailing Judeo-Christian ethos. No, this is not fiction; such was medical practice in Los Angeles in my youth. A simplification certainly, but it conveys the essential: Human ills and injuries were serviced by medical doctors whose state licensing and professional organizations approximated medieval guilds.

Please, read the rest.

On a different note, Jack’s excellent thoughts will be the last installment of NOL‘s experimental “Be Our Guest” feature. I just couldn’t find the time to get a decent turnaround. If you still want to have your say, and nowhere to say it, jump on in the ‘comments’ threads.

Be Our Guest (Sunday Poetry): “The Tyrant’s Burden”

Brandon Christensen Culture, Current Events , , , , ,

Our latest Be Our Guest post comes from poet N.D.Y. Romanfort, and it’s great. So great, in fact, that I’m taking liberties in regards to Alex’s “Sunday Poetry” series and sharing Romanfort’s poem today. An excerpt:

Shoulder the Tyrant’s Burden-
Yield to “expert” decree-
3 Lettered Health Institutes
Control mind and body-
Free thinking doctors? They’re called
Medical Heretics-
Big Tech will silence their noise,
Thus, public thought is fixed.

Please, read the rest. And if you’ve got something to say and no place to say it, Be Our Guest.

Be Our Guest: “Rights and Government Confiscation During COVID-19”

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Philosophy , , ,

John A Lancaster has a new guest post up. Peep an excerpt of his definition of rights:

When extended into the realm of human contact, rights must be expressed through voluntary exchange. Any exchange that is not the product of consent necessarily entails an entity seizing use of facilities outside the entity’s personal vessel, which they have no right to do (theft).

Click here to read the thought-provoking rest. And don’t forget: if you’ve got something to say, and nowhere to say it, Be Our Guest!

Be Our Guest: “Those Astonishing Reversals on the Political Left”

Brandon Christensen Politics , , ,

Jack Curtis is back:

The Democrats stood firm for Catholics and Jews while the Protestants who ran things tended to minimize or exclude them; today their Obamacare forces the Catholic Little Sisters of the Poor to fund abortions while Barack Obama was called the most anti–Israel president in America’s history. Regardless, a substantial majority of Catholics and Jews reliably continue to vote for Democratic candidates. Perhaps that’s a clue to the historically temporary nature of democracy?

Read the rest of his “Be Our Guest” article. I’ll be waiting patiently for someone (including Jack, if he;s up for it), to give the same treatment to Republicans. By all means, Be Our Guest.

Be Our Guest: “What’s the Voter’s Value?”

Brandon Christensen Politics , , ,

John Lancaster has a new guest post up. Here’s an excerpt:

Even if one cannot verbally clarify the reasoning behind an action, evidence from said action can be gathered and formulated into a coherent reason. Whatever an individual chooses to do, it provides discernible information about the person behind the action.

This phenomenon of voluntary choice extends to abstention. 

Read the rest, and if you’ve got something to say, be our guest and say it!

Be Our Guest: “Sailing a Catholic Ship on Modern Seas”

Brandon Christensen Culture, Current Events , , , ,

Jack Curtis is back with another excellent guest post, this time on Catholicism and it’s place within the modern world. An excerpt:

The Church is losing ground among the powerful while it is gaining among lesser folk; how will the Church’s captain plot its course among such shoals?

Its Cardinals are obviously concerned; they have violated a heretofore unbroken rule by electing the Church’s first Jesuit pope. Jorge Mario Bergoglio is also the first Pope from the Americas, the first from the southern hemisphere and the first from outside Europe since the 8th century.

And, a little further down:

To date, he seems to have succeeded in scandalizing the conservatives and progressives equally without actually altering his Church very much, which must be doubly frustrating for an intended savior.

Read the rest.

Wanna get something off your chest? Be our guest and do it.

Be Our Guest: “Suing Juul Won’t Solve Anything”

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Liberty , , , , ,

NOL‘s “Be Our Guest” feature is as popular as ever this year. Here’s John Lancaster with the latest:

Peer driven rumors, videos of experimentation, forums, news, and entertainment sources provide nigh infinite opportunities for young ones to pick up on vices. The appeal of vaping would’ve caused widespread exposure through said channels anyway. The most marketing does at that point is convince the willing participants to choose a particular brand rather than take on the act itself.

Juul is a company that sells vapes, which are those cigarette replacements that have been so popular lately. Please, read the rest, and shoot us an email if you want your voice heard!

Be Our Guest: “The U.S. Economy: A Fading Illusion?”

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics , , , ,

This essay, by longtime NOL reader and CPA Jack Curtis, is the first essay of 2020’s “Be Our Guest” feature. Here is a snippet:

This widespread financial vulnerability seems a natural result of government policies that minimize interest rates and support monetary inflation as the Federal Reserve and other central banks have continued to do in recent decades. There is little incentive to save money when it offers no significant return and its value is inflated away. Governments that cling to such policies are imposing dependence upon their citizens, forcing them in essence to live hand to mouth, deprived of the ability to provide for their own futures.

Jack paints a pretty gloom picture of the U.S. economy. Does this square with what economists have been telling us about the state of the world? Please, read the whole essay, and if you have been thinking about writing for the public in 2020, give us a holler. We’d be happy to put your thoughts up for the whole world to read.

Be Our Guest: “Liberty, Government, and Technology: 2019”

Brandon Christensen Current Events , , , , , , ,

Jack Curtis is the latest to submit a piece for NOL‘s “Be Our Guest” feature. A slice:

We will compare China, Russia and the United States. China is a post-communist police state that has never experienced democracy. Russia is a post-communist, quasi democratic republic devolving back into a police state. And the United States is a traditionally democratic republic. Excepting the vagaries of disparate cultures, their three governments seem increasingly similar, revising themselves to adopt the new technology. However, these revisions have not originated only within governments; they also reflect the gradual confluence of the underlying societies.

Do read the rest, and I must point out that Jack has been a long time reader of NOL. For that I am personally grateful. It’s nice to be able to link up and collaborate like this.

Submit your own thoughts to us. Be our guest. Tell your friends, too.

Be Our Guest: “How to make Brexit Really Worthwhile – Example: Financial Regulation”

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Economics , , , , , ,

Be Our Guest is an open invitation to NOL‘s readers to participate with us. Pretty much anything is on the table. The latest article comes from the Freeconomist, who is following up on his earlier piece about making Brexit worthwhile via information asymmetries. His new piece is on financial regulation through the prism of Brexit. Check out this excerpt:

I do not want to write a lengthy discussion on the question of which alternative is the least costly in dealing with the incentive problems arising from the implicit subsidy by the taxpayer. There are good reasons to believe an incremental, decentralized and evolutionary system of market-based regulation to be superior to centrally designed government regulation. (4)

But even if this is the case, private regulation arising as a response to the incentive problems resulting from explicit and/or implicit government guarantees is still costly. Indeed, the evolved system of private regulation in the UK banking industry was giving the appearance of a restrictive cartel. If my analysis is correct, this “cartel” served a useful social function, namely to deal with the incentive problems created by the implicit government guarantee. Nevertheless, it also involved costs.

At the root of the problem are the taxpayer guarantees.

Please, read the rest. It’s another excellent piece of work.

And don’t be afraid to submit your thoughts to us.

Be Our Guest: “How to make Brexit Really Worthwhile – Example: Regulation dealing with Information Asymmetries”

Brandon Christensen Economics , , , , ,

Here is the latest installment of NOL‘s new “Be Our Guest” series, this one by the pseudonymous Freeconomist. An excerpt:

Third-party certification provides assurance to consumers that a product or a supplier of professional services meets certain quality standards.

Private suppliers of third-party certification include organisations such as Consumer Reports, the American Automobile Association (AAA), which rates motels, or A.M. Best, rating insurance companies. Examples of third-party certification provided by the government are product safety regulation, food standards regulation or occupational licensure.

Private suppliers of third-party certification can only exist because the product they offer is valued enough by market participants to justify the cost of providing it. And their profits are determined by their credibility.

The same cannot be said for third-party certification provided by the government.

Please, read the rest and do keep submitting your thoughts to us.

Introducing “Be Our Guest,” a new component of NOL

Brandon Christensen Comments, Current Events , , , , ,

Check out NOL‘s newest feature, a place where you can have your thoughts and arguments published in a house of decency and legitimacy. The first guest essay comes from Ben Sharvy, a teacher in Portland, on, among other things, vaccines and the lack thereof:

What’s the damage done? Cancer patients who forego conventional treatment and exclusively choose alternative medicine are 2.5 times more likely to die. Women with breast cancer fare the worst — with a 5.7 times higher death rate among those who choose only alternative therapies. Multiple studies agree, including a 2017 report from the National Cancer Institute: Alternative medicine kills.

Read the rest, and by all means, submit your own thoughts to us. Tell your friends about this project, too.

Why this feature? Mostly because of the rather high volume of submissions I have been getting lately. Many of these pieces don’t really fit in with NOL‘s overall vibe, but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth reading or putting out into the world. So, be our guest.