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Pop quiz: which GMU economist just dropped this galaxy-brain take: "It's a good thing so many Americans died of COVID because now Chinese military strategists will know we don't value human life". Hanson, Caplan or Cowen? (answer in link) (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2020-11-16/u-s-china-and-the-covid-19-vaccine-race)
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The U.S., in contrast, just conducted a very peaceful and orderly election

Would a rational mind really call this an orderly election? The election itself went fine, I suppose, but the loser is still proclaiming loudly that he won, and fighting any number of legal challenges to prove it, and the governing party is still going along with it. Seems weird to completely ignore that in your “but America is still better than these other, less ‘orderly’ countries” take.

(and maybe this is me being too pessimistic, but I also can’t help but feel like we’re a little early to call it a “peaceful” election. Let’s see if Biden gets peacefully inaugurated before we start taking credit for that.)

Very late to the party, but I imagine you take no joy in having basically called January 6. 😐

This is your brain on libertarianism

I feel like China might instead come up with the take “america is a failing state run by absolute morons”, which is entirely accurate.

That’s a really, really, really dumb take.

The most depressing aspect of it all is the reflexive framing of “how can we best assert dominance over China?”.

Just mainlining Trumpist/Rightwing obsessions, like a normal professor. Give him another year and he’ll be calling it the “China Virus”.

“I can take a beating” is a bit different from “Getting concussions is good for your health”.

If you were a Chinese war game planner, might you now reconsider that assumption?

lol, if I was a Chinese war game planner, I think I wouldn’t care that much about ‘US is willing to sacrifice it’s own population’ which has always been true. I would be more interested in the US inability to learn from past mistakes on the internal political (both the weakness of the 2 parties (and the inability to learn from the tea party/occupy), and the weakness (as in prone to cause disruption) of the electoral system), militarily (See these wargames + the fact that Iran now uses these tactics to not insignificant effect), the weakness of the financial system and the unwillingness to regulate it, the weird desire to get stuck in forever wars (see the US still trying to start shit with Iran). The US is only betting on the ‘we have the lead on ideas’, which considering China does not care about intellectual property, it isn’t a great bet (esp as chinas cyberwarefare, which the US military considers a great threat, Tyler seems to ignore this (E: Which is weird btw, as bloomberg has published fake stories (propaganda?) about how infiltrated the US telecom was by china, of which they had 0 proof (if you take anything away from my post, let it be ‘don’t trust bloombergs tech reporting’ they keep publishing fake articles and then not retracting them when the tech industry goes ‘wtf the fuck, this is alex jones level stuff’).

When it comes to the ideas and the people that matter, America and the West are not losing the lead.

lol, imagine thinking ‘we are willing to let your (grand)parents die because they don’t contribute enough high level ideas’ is a strength. Sure that is a place that will attract immigrants who want to start a family. (also nice motte/bailey with the focus shifts between ‘america’ to ‘america an the west’.

Disclaimer, I don’t speak Chinese nor do I know Chinese people, so I don’t even have the minimum requirements to say what the Chinese are thinking.

E: I’m leaving out so much negatives about the US btw. anyway TL:DR;

Chinese military guys already figured out how to make America implode. Get America into very costly forever-wars that drain their attention, manpower and money. It really is that simple. Wars between technologically advanced nations will almost always be fought behind the scenes and with subterfuge.
**[Millennium Challenge 2002](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium Challenge 2002)** Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02) was a major war game exercise conducted by the United States Armed Forces in mid-2002. The exercise, which ran from 24 July to 15 August and cost US$250 million (equivalent to about $355M in 2019), involved both live exercises and computer simulations. MC02 was meant to be a test of future military "transformation"—a transition toward new technologies that enable network-centric warfare and provide more effective command and control of current and future weaponry and tactics. The simulated combatants were the United States, referred to as "Blue", and a fictitious state in the Persian Gulf, "Red", often characterized as Iran or Iraq. [About Me](https://www.reddit.com/user/wikipedia_text_bot/comments/jrn2mj/about_me/) - [Opt out](https://www.reddit.com/user/wikipedia_text_bot/comments/jrti43/opt_out_here/) - OP can reply !delete to delete - [Article of the day](https://redd.it/jwroih)

Based on my conversations with actual Chinese people online, the idea that “Capitalist America doesn’t care about human life” is a fairly common propaganda point over there. Not really a stereotype I’d like to reclaim…

Oh my god, the enemy would rather passively die than do something minimally inconvenient to fight an infection! What will we do? We can’t attack them, because they for sure wouldn’t inconvenience themselves to fight back.

If we deployed chemical, biological weapons, or nukes, they wouldn’t wear masks either! Retreat, the fight is futile, we can never destroy their freedom not to wear masks.

More seriously though, that got to be the dumbest take about covid. Not the most evil one, not the most misinformed, just the dumbest.

edit: and to top it off, they absolutely refuse to unite together in face of a threat. Our entire strategy hinges on them uniting; as the saying goes, united they fall, divided they squabble and we just can’t deal with so much drama right now!

I will never understand the respect that this guy gets

America as a nation can in fact tolerate casualties, too many in fact. It had long been standard Chinese doctrine that Americans are “soft” and unwilling to take on much risk. If you were a Chinese war game planner, might you now reconsider that assumption?

I truly do not understand. What would “not tolerating” these casualties look like if Americans were “soft”? Nervous internal collapse like post-armistice Germany? Somehow falling apart like the USSR? Like what is the counterfactual Tyler Cowen has in mind that shows America cannot tolerate what is happening.

Unlike unnamed other countries, america has not spontaneously annihilated in a physics sense Despite having a bunch of people die due to bad management, the country (and the geographical area it resides on) still physically exist! If that's not a victory then idk what is tbh
If we fail at beating Coronavirus and all get sick, that shows we are strong. If we beat the Coronavirus and are victoriously healthy, that too shows we are strong. Sounds like he's got his bases covered, article practically writes itself

This nugget of racist agitprop does not reflect the views of Bloomberg Inc

China has done surprisingly well, and some of its vaccines are likely to prove sufficiently effective and safe. But the U.S., working with the German BioNTech company, has produced an entirely new kind of vaccine platform, namely mRNA vaccines.

“und I’m learning Chinese,” says Wernher von Braun

Aww, beaten to the punch! I was dithering about whether Tyler Cowen was within the catchment area of this subreddit.

The USA state has ever appeared to value human life.

Sure thing buddy.