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Dan Wang argues that China is a nation of engineers while America is a nation of lawyers, and this distinction explains everything from subway construction to pandemic response to why Chinese citizens will never have yards with dogs. His prescription: America should become 20% more engineering-minded to fix its broken infrastructure, while China needs to be 50% more lawyerly so the Communist Party can stop strangling individual rights and the creative impulses of its people. But would a more lawyerly China constrain state power, or just create new tools for oppression? And aren't the American suburbs actually sterling achievements where the infrastructure works quite well?

Tyler and Dan debate whether American infrastructure is actually broken or just differently optimized, why health care spending should reach 35% of GDP, how lawyerly influences shaped East Asian development differently than China, China's lack of a liberal tradition and why it won't democratize like South Korea or Taiwan did, its economic dysfunction despite its manufacturing superstars, Chinese pragmatism and bureaucratic incentives, a 10-day itinerary for Yunnan, James C. Scott's work on Zomia, whether Beijing or Shanghai is the better city, Liu Cixin and why volume one of The Three-Body Problem is the best, why contemporary Chinese music and film have declined under Xi, Chinese marriage markets and what it's like to be elderly in China, the Dan Wang production function, why Stendhal is his favorite novelist and Rossini's Comte Ory moves him, what Dan wants to learn next, whether LLMs will make Tyler's hyper-specific podcast questions obsolete, what flavor of drama their conversation turned out to be, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

Recorded October 31st, 2025.

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Timestamps
00:00:00 - American infrastructure and suburban life
00:05:18 - American vs. Chinese infrastructure buildouts...
00:12:25 - And health care investment
00:17:52 - Chinese suburbs
00:20:10 - The existing lawyerly influence in East Asia
00:25:12 - China's lack of a liberal tradition
00:29:35 - Why China's won't democratize
00:33:49 - China's economic disfunction
00:38:44 - China's expansionism
00:41:55 - Chinese pragmatism and bureaucratic incentives
00:46:50 - Chinese cities and regional culture
00:59:44 - James C. Scott, Zomia, and elite culture
01:06:27 - A 10-day Yunnan itinerary
01:11:57 - On Chinese arts, literature, and cultural expression
01:18:23 - The Dan Wang production function
01:30:34 - Tyler's grand strategy, or lack thereof

Cass Sunstein is one of the most widely cited legal scholars of all time and among the most prolific writers working today. This year alone he has five books out, including Imperfect Oracle on the strengths and limits of AI and On Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom. In his second appearance on the show, he brings his characteristic intellectual range to exploring liberalism's present precariousness and AI's implications for law and speech.

Tyler and Cass discuss whether liberalism is self-undermining or simply vulnerable to illiberal forces, the tensions in how a liberal immigration regime would work, whether new generations of liberal thinkers are emerging, if Derek Parfit counts as a liberal, Mill's liberal wokeism, the allure of Mises' "cranky enthusiasm for freedom," whether the central claim of The Road to Serfdom holds up, how to blend indigenous rights with liberal thought, whether AIs should have First Amendment protections, the argument for establishing a right not to be manipulated, better remedies for low-grade libel, whether we should have trials run by AI, how Bob Dylan embodies liberal freedom, Cass' next book about animal rights, and more.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

Recorded October 10th, 2025.

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Blake Scholl is one of the leading figures working to bring back civilian supersonic flight. As the founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, he's building a new generation of supersonic aircraft and pushing for the policies needed to make commercial supersonic travel viable again. But he's equally as impressive as someone who thinks systematically about improving dysfunction—whether it's airport design, traffic congestion, or defense procurement—and sees creative solutions to problems everyone else has learned to accept.

Tyler and Blake discuss why airport terminals should be underground, why every road needs a toll, what's wrong with how we board planes, the contrasting cultures of Amazon and Groupon, why Concorde and Apollo were impressive tech demos but terrible products, what Ayn Rand understood about supersonic transport in 1957, what's wrong with aerospace manufacturing, his heuristic when confronting evident stupidity, his technique for mastering new domains, how LLMs are revolutionizing regulatory paperwork, and much more.

Recorded live at the Progress Conference, hosted by the Roots of Progress Institute. Special thanks to Big Think for the video production.

Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video on the new dedicated Conversations with Tyler channel.

Recorded October 18th, 2025.

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Photo Credit: Jeremi Rebecca