You seem to misunderstand me. This isn't a question of right or wrong so much as a question of if google wants to operate in France, they have to make their worldwide operations acceptable to the French.
"Google" isn't operating in France. Google has a French subsidiary in France. That's a separate company from Google in the US. The French government doing things to Google France because they don't like what Google USA does would set a disastrous precedent for anybody doing business in France.
And while google has a presence in the country they can enforce their demands on the portion of google residing in France.
If they tried to do that, it would be a legal and economic disaster. Think about what that means.
If you run a company in France and you sell shares in your company to a foreign owner, and the foreign owner does something the French government doesn't like, you end up getting punished for it.
Conversely, if you are not French but invest in a French company, you are now subject to French law and jurisdiction, even though nothing you do has anything to do with France.
France could take that position if they chose to. It would be economic suicide for France, however.
The only reason in this case that google is subject to the laws is becaus they're operating where the laws apply. That gives the jurisdiction in question power because they can ultimately seize assets, arrest people and so on.
Google has a French subsidiary, and they are complying with French laws.
The US version of Google is not subject to French jurisdiction. Trying to make it subject to French jurisdiction would be highly problematic for France, because it would imply that if you own anything in France at all, everything you do worldwide becomes subject to French law.
France might take that position, but they'd be shooting themselves in the foot (and then in the head) with that view.
More to the point: how do I get to be a multinational corporation so I can tell local authorities to fuck off too?
It works the same way for individuals as for corporations.
You can tell any country to fuck off, as long as you are willing to deal with the consequences. If you don't own anything in the country in question, there are few consequences. If you do own stuff in some country, they can seize it.
It is a worry that there is a fight between a company and the people of several countries and that it is even contemplated that the company and not the people, has some rights. If it is between the people and anybody else, some countries even pretend to talk about "We, the people..." and they should ALWAYS be priority number one.
Yes, it is about the rights of the people, namely the rights of the American people to speak and conduct business as we see fit, without dictates or interference from Europeans. French government officials can go f*ck themselves.
I didn't claim that measles would kill 3 million people.
No, you didn't claim anything of substance. But you made up and mentioend the number of "killing 3 million people" because it sounds scary. You're dishonest and a fear monger.
Having vaccination required for schools keeps the number of vaccinated people up
Vaccination is already not required for schools because there is an easy opt-out, yet vaccination numbers are high and there are few measles cases and no fatalities. Yet, despite these facts, people are arguing for removing the opt-out provisions.
Aside from those people, vaccines are not 100% effective.
That is included in the phrase of "those who cannot get vaccinated".
In both of these cases, you can say, "it's a small percentage of the population." Small percentages of the population, however, can still represent a lot of people. If something kills 1% of the US population, that's still about 3 million people.
Measles isn't Ebola, it is very rarely fatal, and pretty much never fatal unless there are other conditions present. Even pre-vaccination, there were about 500 fatalities per year in the US. That's a fraction of the number of deaths due to flu after flu vaccination. Today, with effectively voluntary vaccination, there are no measles deaths at all.
Measles vaccination is a non-issue and non-risk. Using it to advance the principle that government can force people to inject stuff against their objections by exaggerating and fabricating numbers like "killing 3 million people" as if they had anything to do with measles is outrageously dishonest and deceptive.
Right, because the only place that people interact is at school.
That's the only place vaccine requirements are currently being considered. Furthermore, most other places are already private and could impose vaccination requirements if they wanted to.
Why do you keep talking about immunocompromised people?
Because I was responding to DarkSabreLord, who raised that point.
If immunity drops below about 93% for measles, then the population no longer benefits from herd immunity.
That's wrong. Figures such as "93%" come from simplistic models that treat the population as some big pool with random mixing. That's not what real populations look like or how diseases get transmitted in the real world.
The measles vaccine, for example, only works in about 95% of cases,
That's wrong. After the usual course of vaccinations, 99% of people are immune. And even those that are not fully immune are still protected to some degree.
This means that anyone who is not immune (including those 5% who were vaccinated but didn't receive the benefit) is at a much higher risk of being infected.
Even people who are not protected but otherwise healthy are at risk only of contracting a febrile illness that is less serious than a flu, one among hundreds of such illnesses that we can't vaccinate against anyway. So, that's pretty much irrelevant.
People who are infected then have compromised immune systems and so are likely to suffer from other infections, which can then spread to the rest of the population.
You reason about science with a combination of misconceptions. half truths, exaggerations, and invalid inferences. You're just like the people who said that we should sterilize "imbeciles" and "euthanize the disabled" in order to prevent a drain on society's resources and keep the race clean.
I have access to history and I know what happens when you give government that power: forced sterilization, eugenics, forced euthanasia; all of those state actions were justified by the same reasoning as forced vaccinations. That's not my hypothesis, it's the reasoning SCOTUS used:
We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.
I'm sure there are still psychopaths who think that those things are good ideas, but to most people, it is self-evident that forced sterilizations were wrong, and since they were sustained "by the same principle" as compulsory vaccination, that principle itself must be wrong.
Okay, let's remove the coercion then and have a proper libertarian solution. No one has to get vaccinated, but anyone who is not vaccinated is liable for and harm done by anyone that they infected with a disease
No, that is not a libertarian solution at all. The libertarian solution is to let people choose whether to get vaccinated or not, and whether to associate with people who are vaccinated or not. When it comes to vaccinations, that means nothing more than privatizing schools, a good idea for many reasons. Private schools can impose whatever vaccination requirements they want as a condition of attendance. Almost all schools would impose strict vaccination requirements, far stricter than our public schools currently do.
It's not morally justifiable, but the laws that are in place make coercion necessary from a financial point of view.
That's the same kind of arguments used for forced sterilization, segregation, and forced euthanasia, both in the US and in Nazi Germany. You are an evil fuck.
And you aren't even consistent. A few hundred measles cases under our current (effectively voluntary) vaccination system cost very little. One of the biggest financial drains on our medical system is obesity; so, by your reasoning, government should coerce obese people to lose weight, by any means necessary: stiff penalties, forced diets, forced surgeries, internment in weight loss camps.
Which are still the results of mass vaccinations of previous generations, and nothing else.
What's your point? Of course, people should get vaccinated. But the current system where anybody can opt out is obviously working fine. The current statistics show that it is working.
Flu vaccination is voluntary, and polio vaccination is effectively voluntary as well. So, the argument that government coercion is needed falls apart.
Vaccinations are a good thing. Most people understand that. That's why it is unnecessary to give government the power to force people to get vaccinated.
Most vaccines are not 100% effective. You need a certain percentage of the population to be immune for herd immunity to mean that they have little chance of contracting the disease
As I was saying: If your kids are immunocompromised, they have a lot more to worry about than measles. That is, there are many other diseases they have to worry about besides the few we can vaccinate against.
It only takes a few percent opting out of the vaccine to eliminate the herd immunity and make the entire population more vulnerable.
Almost everybody in "the entire population" who is vaccinated is protected by the vaccine and hence not "vulnerable". So "the entire population" doesn't become more vulnerable.
It's not just a personal choice - if you choose not to get yourself or your kids vaccinated, you are potentially putting my kids at risk by doing so.
If your kids are immunocompromised, they have a lot more to worry about than measles, and letting them live "normal lives" in hopes that universal vaccination is going to protect them is utterly irresponsible on your part.
Furthermore, even if the policy you suggest weren't so ludicrously ineffective, I see no reason why your desire to have your kids run around in the general population should override everybody else's right to control what stuff gets injected into their bodies.
That means your refusal to vaccinate your child or yourself might condemn people to death who currently have no choice to avoid interacting with you, and no idea if you're someone they should stay away from.
People keep making that argument, but it is bullshit. First of all, the vaccinations we're talking about here are for diseases that are rarely fatal and that almost everybody can protect themselves against by getting vaccinated.
The only group that is really helped by other people's vaccinations is a small percentage of the population that cannot get vaccinated. But those people have far more to worry about than measles; they have to live careful and sheltered lives anyway because there are so many viruses in the population that we simply cannot vaccinate against. Furthermore, unfortunate as their situation may be, I see no compelling reason why their convenience should outweigh the fundamental right of people to control what goes into their bodies.
Past outbreaks of diseases currently vaccinated against have probably killed billions of children in the past
That is pure fear mongering. In reality, even before vaccination, the annual death toll in the US was around 500, with around 500000 cases. That is a mortality rate of 1:1000 and a fraction of the number of flu deaths every year today (with flu vaccinations!). Today, the measles mortality rate would likely be even lower. Again, that is with no vaccination.
I am not certain what philosophical view, other than some sort of odd Darwinism, would make a return to that scenario attractive.
More FUD. Vaccinations are effectively voluntary today (since anybody can opt out) and we still only have around 200 cases per year and no deaths. There is no rational justification for strengthening vaccination requirements.
I don't care to debate you about "morally justified" but you're definitely wrong about "effective in achieving high vaccination rates". It's pretty clear that states with more stringent vaccination requirements have higher vaccination rates:
Does this really need to be spelled out? Obviously, in order to achieve higher vaccination rates without coerced vaccinations, you can't just drop the vaccination requirement, you need to change other things about the school system.
This is not an anti-vaxxer argument, as those fools think that the vaccine causes problems unrelated to what it is supposed to be preventing.
Indeed, the "anti-vaxxer" argument has nothing to do with the science of vaccines. It has to do with the fundamental right to determine what happens to your own body. It also has to do with the question of what the best policy is for achieving high vaccination rates. The idea that government coercion is either morally justified or effective in achieving high vaccination rates is wrong.
"American Exceptionalism" basically means we allow ourselves to commit war crimes with impunity.
Targeted killings are nothing new and have been going on pretty much for as long as there have been governments. The US didn't start it, whether the US considers it OK is irrelevant, and nothing we can do will cause other nations to stop. There are usually much simpler and more effective ways of doing it than drones.
The only thing that would constitute "American exceptionalism" is if we unilaterally stopped doing it. I wish we would, not just for moral reasons, but also because I think it is unwise politically and gives us bad press. But given that neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to take the risk of the public beating that would ensue, there is little chance we will.
You can't "ban" something that consists of little more than putting together some guns, some standard AI, and some standard robotics platforms. There is no way to detect violations of this ban. It's like trying to ban the use of electric motors in offensive weapons. Good luck with that.
The main purpose of such a ban is to make a bunch of people feel good about themselves and to let them demonstrate to the world what wonderful and important humanitarians they are.
I don't think that the fraction of voters that work in the oil and gas industry is very significant.
But the fraction of voters who care about the price at the pump is very significant, and attempts to lower gas prices is where these subsidies actually come from.
The benefit to the oil and gas industry is less direct than Democrats like to pretend: it's not that $x billion in subsidies turns into $x billion in extra profits; rather, subsidies simply make the subsidized product more competitive with other products and expand its market share.
Slashdot Mirror
"Google" isn't operating in France. Google has a French subsidiary in France. That's a separate company from Google in the US. The French government doing things to Google France because they don't like what Google USA does would set a disastrous precedent for anybody doing business in France.
If they tried to do that, it would be a legal and economic disaster. Think about what that means.
If you run a company in France and you sell shares in your company to a foreign owner, and the foreign owner does something the French government doesn't like, you end up getting punished for it.
Conversely, if you are not French but invest in a French company, you are now subject to French law and jurisdiction, even though nothing you do has anything to do with France.
France could take that position if they chose to. It would be economic suicide for France, however.
Google has a French subsidiary, and they are complying with French laws.
The US version of Google is not subject to French jurisdiction. Trying to make it subject to French jurisdiction would be highly problematic for France, because it would imply that if you own anything in France at all, everything you do worldwide becomes subject to French law.
France might take that position, but they'd be shooting themselves in the foot (and then in the head) with that view.
It works the same way for individuals as for corporations.
You can tell any country to fuck off, as long as you are willing to deal with the consequences. If you don't own anything in the country in question, there are few consequences. If you do own stuff in some country, they can seize it.
Yes, it is about the rights of the people, namely the rights of the American people to speak and conduct business as we see fit, without dictates or interference from Europeans. French government officials can go f*ck themselves.
With the widespread availability of cheap electric power tools, now everybody can build bridges and sky scrapers!
No, you didn't claim anything of substance. But you made up and mentioend the number of "killing 3 million people" because it sounds scary. You're dishonest and a fear monger.
Vaccination is already not required for schools because there is an easy opt-out, yet vaccination numbers are high and there are few measles cases and no fatalities. Yet, despite these facts, people are arguing for removing the opt-out provisions.
That is included in the phrase of "those who cannot get vaccinated".
Measles isn't Ebola, it is very rarely fatal, and pretty much never fatal unless there are other conditions present. Even pre-vaccination, there were about 500 fatalities per year in the US. That's a fraction of the number of deaths due to flu after flu vaccination. Today, with effectively voluntary vaccination, there are no measles deaths at all.
Measles vaccination is a non-issue and non-risk. Using it to advance the principle that government can force people to inject stuff against their objections by exaggerating and fabricating numbers like "killing 3 million people" as if they had anything to do with measles is outrageously dishonest and deceptive.
That's the only place vaccine requirements are currently being considered. Furthermore, most other places are already private and could impose vaccination requirements if they wanted to.
Because I was responding to DarkSabreLord, who raised that point.
That's wrong. Figures such as "93%" come from simplistic models that treat the population as some big pool with random mixing. That's not what real populations look like or how diseases get transmitted in the real world.
That's wrong. After the usual course of vaccinations, 99% of people are immune. And even those that are not fully immune are still protected to some degree.
Even people who are not protected but otherwise healthy are at risk only of contracting a febrile illness that is less serious than a flu, one among hundreds of such illnesses that we can't vaccinate against anyway. So, that's pretty much irrelevant.
You reason about science with a combination of misconceptions. half truths, exaggerations, and invalid inferences. You're just like the people who said that we should sterilize "imbeciles" and "euthanize the disabled" in order to prevent a drain on society's resources and keep the race clean.
Yes, and the common flu has higher mortality rates than measles even in the unvaccinated.
I have access to history and I know what happens when you give government that power: forced sterilization, eugenics, forced euthanasia; all of those state actions were justified by the same reasoning as forced vaccinations. That's not my hypothesis, it's the reasoning SCOTUS used:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I'm sure there are still psychopaths who think that those things are good ideas, but to most people, it is self-evident that forced sterilizations were wrong, and since they were sustained "by the same principle" as compulsory vaccination, that principle itself must be wrong.
No, that is not a libertarian solution at all. The libertarian solution is to let people choose whether to get vaccinated or not, and whether to associate with people who are vaccinated or not. When it comes to vaccinations, that means nothing more than privatizing schools, a good idea for many reasons. Private schools can impose whatever vaccination requirements they want as a condition of attendance. Almost all schools would impose strict vaccination requirements, far stricter than our public schools currently do.
That's the same kind of arguments used for forced sterilization, segregation, and forced euthanasia, both in the US and in Nazi Germany. You are an evil fuck.
And you aren't even consistent. A few hundred measles cases under our current (effectively voluntary) vaccination system cost very little. One of the biggest financial drains on our medical system is obesity; so, by your reasoning, government should coerce obese people to lose weight, by any means necessary: stiff penalties, forced diets, forced surgeries, internment in weight loss camps.
What's your point? Of course, people should get vaccinated. But the current system where anybody can opt out is obviously working fine. The current statistics show that it is working.
Flu vaccination is voluntary, and polio vaccination is effectively voluntary as well. So, the argument that government coercion is needed falls apart.
Vaccinations are a good thing. Most people understand that. That's why it is unnecessary to give government the power to force people to get vaccinated.
As I was saying: If your kids are immunocompromised, they have a lot more to worry about than measles. That is, there are many other diseases they have to worry about besides the few we can vaccinate against.
Almost everybody in "the entire population" who is vaccinated is protected by the vaccine and hence not "vulnerable". So "the entire population" doesn't become more vulnerable.
If your kids are immunocompromised, they have a lot more to worry about than measles, and letting them live "normal lives" in hopes that universal vaccination is going to protect them is utterly irresponsible on your part.
Furthermore, even if the policy you suggest weren't so ludicrously ineffective, I see no reason why your desire to have your kids run around in the general population should override everybody else's right to control what stuff gets injected into their bodies.
People keep making that argument, but it is bullshit. First of all, the vaccinations we're talking about here are for diseases that are rarely fatal and that almost everybody can protect themselves against by getting vaccinated.
The only group that is really helped by other people's vaccinations is a small percentage of the population that cannot get vaccinated. But those people have far more to worry about than measles; they have to live careful and sheltered lives anyway because there are so many viruses in the population that we simply cannot vaccinate against. Furthermore, unfortunate as their situation may be, I see no compelling reason why their convenience should outweigh the fundamental right of people to control what goes into their bodies.
That is pure fear mongering. In reality, even before vaccination, the annual death toll in the US was around 500, with around 500000 cases. That is a mortality rate of 1:1000 and a fraction of the number of flu deaths every year today (with flu vaccinations!). Today, the measles mortality rate would likely be even lower. Again, that is with no vaccination.
More FUD. Vaccinations are effectively voluntary today (since anybody can opt out) and we still only have around 200 cases per year and no deaths. There is no rational justification for strengthening vaccination requirements.
Does this really need to be spelled out? Obviously, in order to achieve higher vaccination rates without coerced vaccinations, you can't just drop the vaccination requirement, you need to change other things about the school system.
Indeed, the "anti-vaxxer" argument has nothing to do with the science of vaccines. It has to do with the fundamental right to determine what happens to your own body. It also has to do with the question of what the best policy is for achieving high vaccination rates. The idea that government coercion is either morally justified or effective in achieving high vaccination rates is wrong.
Targeted killings are nothing new and have been going on pretty much for as long as there have been governments. The US didn't start it, whether the US considers it OK is irrelevant, and nothing we can do will cause other nations to stop. There are usually much simpler and more effective ways of doing it than drones.
The only thing that would constitute "American exceptionalism" is if we unilaterally stopped doing it. I wish we would, not just for moral reasons, but also because I think it is unwise politically and gives us bad press. But given that neither Republicans nor Democrats are willing to take the risk of the public beating that would ensue, there is little chance we will.
You can't "ban" something that consists of little more than putting together some guns, some standard AI, and some standard robotics platforms. There is no way to detect violations of this ban. It's like trying to ban the use of electric motors in offensive weapons. Good luck with that.
The main purpose of such a ban is to make a bunch of people feel good about themselves and to let them demonstrate to the world what wonderful and important humanitarians they are.
But the fraction of voters who care about the price at the pump is very significant, and attempts to lower gas prices is where these subsidies actually come from.
The benefit to the oil and gas industry is less direct than Democrats like to pretend: it's not that $x billion in subsidies turns into $x billion in extra profits; rather, subsidies simply make the subsidized product more competitive with other products and expand its market share.