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  1. Workable Goblin

    AHC: U.S. Public Utilities Mostly Publicly Owned

    Historically, the United States has embraced a mixture of public and private ownership for "public utilities," that is infrastructure that provides important public services such as clean drinking water, transport, or electricity, leaning towards private ownership. For example, while most...
  2. Workable Goblin

    Maximally Successful Dutch Revolt?

    What sorts of PoDs or changes would be necessary for the Dutch Revolt/Eighty Years War to result in the independence of a united Netherlands in the 16th or early 17th centuries? Moreover, what would the effects of such a maximally successful revolt be, both in the short-term and the long-term...
  3. Workable Goblin

    AHC/WI: No 9/11 Attacks?

    You know it was coming (honestly, I was surprised that a thread hadn't already been posted). What if September 11th, 2001 had been just another perfectly ordinary and uninteresting day, with no hijacked planes, destroyed skyscrapers, national calls for vengeance, or the like? Certainly no 20th...
  4. Workable Goblin

    Effects of U.S.-controlled Canada on Western river projects?

    Given that Canadian resistance to "exporting" water has been a significant factor in shooting down many ambitious water diversion projects such as GRAND and NAWAPA, I was wondering what effect (what is now) Canada being an accepted part of the United States instead of an independent country...
  5. Workable Goblin

    WI/AHC: A "Prussia of the Americas"?

    This phrase occurred to me recently apropos of a post I made a long time ago in a different thread, and I've been wondering just what exactly it could mean and what a "Prussia of the Americas" would look like. Presumably it means a country, probably (but not necessarily) a small one, that has a...
  6. Workable Goblin

    Most Diverse Possible "Founding Fathers"?

    Apropos of some reading I've been doing lately, I was reminded of a post I made about five years ago discussing how you could create a Founding Father (of the United States) who was a black man: Reading that, however, got me thinking: how could you maximize the overall diversity of the...
  7. Workable Goblin

    AHC/WI: NACA Rocket Research

    The National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics was a U.S. government body set up in 1915 to support research into various aeronautical problems, as a result of the widespread usage of aerial warfare in World War I and the recognition that the United States, despite being the originator of the...
  8. Workable Goblin

    AHC/WI: US Adopts Jefferson's "Measures Plan"

    IOTL, Thomas Jefferson (then the Secretary of State) recommended that the United States adopt a form of the metric system in 1790, in his so-called "Plan for Establishing Uniformity in the Coinage, Weights, and Measures of the United States". This would have had considerable similarities to the...
  9. Workable Goblin

    WI: SLS is Sidemount?

    After the election of Obama in 2008, it was apparent that the then-major program of NASA, Project Constellation, was not long for the world. Essentially the response of President Bush to the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, it had become bogged down in ballooning cost estimates and insufficient...
  10. Workable Goblin

    WI: FDR dies in 1944?

    Roosevelt had been in poor cardiovascular health for a long time, with very severe hypertension, so it seems plausible that he could have suffered a fatal stroke or heart attack significantly earlier than he actually did. This seems like it could have a significant impact, especially if his...
  11. Workable Goblin

    AHC: A More Effective United Nations

    As the title. Given any PoD between 1945 and today, how could the United Nations be made more effective? Because this is likely to be misunderstood, by more effective I don't mean more powerful; that is things such as "oh, they have a standing army" or "oh, there's no veto power" are outside the...
  12. Workable Goblin

    France never falls; what do the Allies do with German science?

    Given the close call nature of the Battle of France IOTL, a fairly popular topic of discussion here over the past longish while has been the outcome of a failure of Fall Rot to actually allow Germany to occupy continental France, however that offensive manages to fail. There seems to be a fair...
  13. Workable Goblin

    AHC/WI: Great Convergence of the world?

    While replying to a post on the No European Colonialism thread, I mooted the notion of a "Great Convergence" enabled by such a lack of colonization that would allow the spread of Eurasian technologies and techniques into the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa via trade instead of colonization, such...
  14. Workable Goblin

    AHC: Best Possible Post-Soviet Russia?

    Supposing a PoD no earlier than Gorbachev becoming Premier, and constrained by the Soviet Union breaking up more or less as per OTL, what's the best possible outcome for Russia in the post-Soviet world and how could you get there? By "best possible," I mean the one where the Russian people are...
  15. Workable Goblin

    WI: Kennedy Half-Dollar Converted To Base Metal in 1966?

    For some background, historically the half-dollar coin was fairly heavily used, but after Kennedy's assassination the conversion of the design to one featuring him led to a massive surge of interest in collection by people around the country. The Mint produced a huge (for the time) number of...
  16. Workable Goblin

    WI: Vanguard Goes First?

    As the title says, what happens if Vanguard 1 launches before Sputnik 1? For the sake of argument, suppose that this is because Soviet leadership develops similar fears to Eisenhower re: the legal regime for satellite overflights, and so slow-walks their satellite program so that the Americans...
  17. Workable Goblin

    WI/AHC: Effective Articles of Confederation?

    The Articles of Confederation, the first United States constitution, are notorious for creating a weak and ineffectual federal government, hobbled by the virtual independence of most of its member states. Ultimately, they were entirely replaced by the current United States Constitution, which...
  18. Workable Goblin

    WI: Early United States Interstate System?

    I posted this idea in my mass transit thread, but thought it was tangential enough that it could perhaps deserve a thread of its own. Essentially, what would happen if the idea of building a high-quality system of federally-funded controlled access highways across the United States appeared...
  19. Workable Goblin

    WI:Franco-Anglia and North American colonization?

    As the title says, what would the effects of having France and England unified under a single crown at some point (presumably during the Hundred Years War, but the exact point of departure doesn't really matter) be on the colonization of the North American continent, assuming that the Americas...
  20. Workable Goblin

    WI/AHC: More Mass Transit in the United States?

    For various reasons, in the 1940s and 1950s there was a sea change in the way that new developments in the United States were built. Whereas earlier in the century suburbs and similar outlying areas were usually built around a public transport link connecting the area to the central city and its...
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