Expert Comment - Which economic model is more competitive? The West and the

The infection and death rates from coronavirus in most Western countries are higher than in East Asian countries by two (!) orders of magnitude (Popov, 2020b): the death rate is in the single digits per 1m inhabitants in China, Japan, and South Korea and in the hundreds in the US, France, UK, and Italy (Fig. [...] Just before the coronavirus recession of 2020, the economic upturn after the Great Recession of 2008–09 continued for 10 years – one of the longest economic booms in the history of the world economy. [...] The elimination of collectivist (community) institutions was a risky experiment that placed masses of the population below the subsistence minimum and resulted in a reduction or slowdown of population growth – the foundation of military might (number of people–number of soldiers) in the Malthusian growth regime. [...] Early attempts to ensure the priority of individual rights over the rights of the community at the expense of collective interests and low inequality (i.e., Greece, Rome, and the Byzantine Empire) led to the impoverishment of the masses, higher mortality, and foreign conquests. [...] The current attractiveness of the East Asian model of economic growth could be compared with the popularity of the Soviet model of catch-up development in the ‘third world’ in the 1960s.