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What's an example of the German constitution being "worth less than toilet paper these days"?

There's none yet until there suddenly is.

Cold war didn't happen (yes, USSR, not Russia)?

If it were to get closer to war (i.e., Spannungsfall, let alone the Verteidigungsfall) a set of laws would unlock that allow control of various areas of life and the economy anyway.

Interestingly, the travel permit requirement already existed in law before, but it was tied to the Spannungsfall/Verteidigungsfall conditions.

This new law removed this condition and preemptively "activated" the requirement even before the Spannungsfall was declared.


Germany participated how there?

Germany participated in the NATO military campaign/occupation of Afghanistan, including ground forces, naval activities and special operations units. Its seems a total of 150,000 German soldiers (and police officers?) were deployed overall (not at the same time of course); of them, 62 were killed and 249 wounded:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Armed_Forces_casualties...

Germany was also directly involved in the NATO campaign against (former) Yugoslavia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

and finally, Germany hosts large contigents of US forces, including air forces likely involved in the current illegal war against Iran.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramstein_Air_Base


To put the number of 150000 total deployes soldiers into perspective, the Bundeswehr contingent in the end had a ceiling of 5350 troops.

5350 troops supposed to defend Germany, were instead waging a useless war in Afghanistan. 5350 troops too many.

Iran, Iraq, Syria, Vietnam? Hosting US forces in Germany is participating?

yes it is, how is that not obvious?

The Army of the United States has also not been used in over 50 years,but does that mean it couldn't be used again?

Can I move to whichever dimension it is you live in?

? The United States Army is something different...

Struggling to see the relevance, but, thank you for teaching me this:

The U.S. Army is the permanent, professional standing land force (Regular Army, Reserves, National Guard),

while the Army of the United States (AUS) was a temporary, authorized component used primarily during major wars to rapidly expand forces through draftees and volunteers.


Central planning of some sort is pretty standard in corporations, I'd say.

There’s multiple corporations. When you have state level central planning there’s no adversarial check or feedback mechanism. Nothing challenges it to see if it’s actually doing a good job.

Of course this is also a strong argument for antitrust. In some markets today there is basically one corporation or a few that seem more interlocked than competing. That starts to be indistinguishable from Soviet bureaus.


There are multiple nations and states with feedback mechanism between them (see the cold war, for example).

Nuclear reactors make awful targets in a conflict, not sure having many around is generally a good idea if conflict is a risk and there are alternatives.

Exactly right. Who wants to live any where near a nuclear reactor in a conflict between countries or general war. Despite a country not having nuclear weapons, targeting the nuclear reactors of other countries, is almost as good.

It's very clear now that infrastructure of all kinds are increasingly fair game. Nuclear reactors, data centers, water processing plants, hospitals... Both sad and ridiculous, but that's the level of insanity reached.


> and there are alternatives

That's a big if, though. Solar and batteries require globalisation, based on fossil fuels.

I feel like nuclear reactors are a better choice.

> in a conflict, not sure having many around is generally a good idea

On the other hand, blowing nuclear reactors could be considered a big escalation. We see with Iran and Ukraine that it's not exactly the first thing one wants to target.


For shipping?

Wind, Tidal or geothermal are also around, for example.


My point was that photovoltaic is "an alternative" to nuclear reactors, but an alternative that relies on globalisation. Nuclear reactors... much less.

For many nations that is really not the primary reason to choose infrastructure. And even if that is your goal. Then building a 500MW reactor you can drop in the ground is likely a pretty decent solution.

Need to drop it really deep - which 500MW reactor is available for that?

I think that is too little credit to previous humans: people objecting to slavery were around four hundred and more years ago. Similarly, concerns about environmental destruction are also old.

For example, running very large trials in a short time is very high effort.


Worth it


It's a trade-off: better info versus handling an immediate crisis. If it's not an immediate crisis, you can take more time.

Engineering is trade-offs.


People are dying of these diseases every day


And killing them with an insufficiently tested treatment is not optimal.


For patients. But maybe not to the companies which would have to pay for these large expedited trials


Where can I see the DOE having a stake in Cymer?


Department of ENERGY not the DoD.

The EUV IP which Cymer owns was originally part of EUV LLC, which was an LLNL [0], Sandia [1], and Intel [2] initiative as part of a CRADA. Cymer eventually began working on EUV as well building on EUV LLC and SEMATECH's work, and was eventually purchased by ASML after the Dept of Commerce and DoE backed their acquisition in 2013 [4], but included Cymer in additional CRADAs [3], ongoing projects [5], and maintain Cymer as a separate operating unit [6] within ASML.

It is these CRADAs that allow the DoE to exert its muscle on IP ownership and knowhow, as they are essentially a license of IP and personnel on US DoE terms [7] while also allowing for private partners to commercialize.

[0] - https://www.llnl.gov/article/27641/euvl-partnership-makes-it...

[1] - https://newsreleases.sandia.gov/partners-unveil-first-extrem...

[2] - https://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/speeches/EUV91197.HT...

[3] - https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1413999

[4] - https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2013/asml-comple...

[5] - https://www.llnl.gov/article/52226/llnl-selected-lead-next-g...

[6] - https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021...

[7] - https://www.directives.doe.gov/directives-documents/400-seri...


I don't see a stake by the DOE?


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