I don't think we're poor at evaluating externalized costs. I think we're just very damned good at completely ignoring them, attacking anyone who tries to remind us of them, and undermining any kind of political or social solutions that might be brought forward. We are easily lead by the nose by those willing to tell us what to hear. We're cowards.

No, it wasn't useful. Promoting bullshit pseudo-science "cures" is not useful, it's vile and immoral.

HPV Vaccine? Just what is going on at these schools anyway...

The same thing that has always gone on. Kids have sex, and the HPV vaccine means that they are protected from a pretty nasty cancer.

According to the CDC, they are 93% effective http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vp...

That's pretty fucking close to 100%.

,,,rational anti-vaxxers...

What a delightful little oxymoron.

You may find your black and white ideological extremism comforting, but in the real world, where real people live, collisions of liberties means there are no absolutes. In general terms, your freedom of action ends at the tip of my nose, so your liberties are not absolute.

Children have the same fundamental liberties as their parents, but are not deemed to have the emotional or cognitive maturity to exercise those liberties responsibly. The child's guardians is thus given considerable legal and moral authority over the child, but that authority is not absolute, because to make it absolute would essentially render the child's liberties null and void. And thus the courts can force a child to have life-saving procedure like a blood transfusion despite the protestation's of the child's guardian.

Surely quarantine laws must still be on the books.

There is a metric ton worth of court rulings that demonstrate that the courts do not recognize that parents have unlimited power over their children's medical needs. Ask any Jehovah's Witness whose minor child needs a blood transfusion. No liberty is absolute, and certainly not the somewhat nebulous semi-liberty of parents to make medical decisions for their children.

Because not everyone can be vaccinated. Infants can't be vaccinated, along with people with certain kinds of immune problems. Those individuals are kept safe by herd immunity.

Oh fucking hell. It's like you people have no idea who the man was. He was Propaganda Minister, a member of Hitler's inner circle, and most certainly made decisions in his own capacity that lead to the murder of Jews. For instance, when the decision to go ahead with the Final Solution had been made, Goebbels was keen that Berlin Jews be the first to be sent to the camps.

If that is the logic to apply, then none of the senior Nazis were guilty of anything. So far as I know, Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Goering, all the big guys on top, never killed anyone themselves. I doubt Hitler ever directly took another life after WWI.

If nothing else, Goebbels, like his fellow senior members of the Nazi government, were guilty of conspiracy to commit genocide. But even Goebbels, mere marketing guru, had considerably more influence over Nazi racial policy than being a loudspeaker, which all of you morons would know if any of you knew a fucking thing about the Nazi leadership.

Libertarians aren't big on history, or economics, or logic, or much anything else. They are card-carrying members of the Church of the Invisible Hand.

If Washington State is anything like British Columbia (and considering they're right next door to each other, and Washington is south of the 49th), there are looming water problems; an extremely low snow pack which will likely mean water restrictions in some areas. Yes, it's rains a lot in the region, but the way that rain is "captured" is through snowfall.

They're also not knee deep in Libertarian mumbo jumbo.