[pessimizer]

Excellent defense of biological weapons programs. Nothing like an assumed fascism "missile gap" to commit to chasing. What if other countries start experimenting with bringing back chattel slavery? How will we compete? Shouldn't we just assume that they have already, and we're behind?

Our scum is no less nefarious than their scum.

edit: the answer is to cooperate, rather than antagonize. We realized this in the past with nukes, but the least moral people in the world think that entering agreements between state-sized powers is just a delaying tactic until you can get an advantage. Let's figure out how to relieve those people of power as if all of our lives depended on it. If other countries being prosperous is always going to be considered a threat, we're always going to be in a fight that ends in mutual destruction.

[astrange]

> What if other countries start experimenting with bringing back chattel slavery? How will we compete?

Slavery is not competitive, so you can compete by continuing to not do it. (There are countries with near slavery like the UAE.)

This is actually why economics is called the dismal science, a slaveholder didn't like it when economists told him that!