AHC: Harm minimisation timeline

My challenge to you is to have a plausible timeline that minimises as much suffering and evil as possible. Thus, keeping murders, slavery and war fatalities and famines to the lowest numbers we can is the first priority, and then providing a decent standard of living to as many people as we can as soon as possible is a second. Try to be scientific about it in terms of numbers. e.g. Cromwell's massacres in Ireland matter a lot less than the killing fields of Cambodia.
 
I would say that we have two choices here, based on how recognisable you want the world to be.

The first is for slavery in any form to be declared a crime against god by theologians in the late 15th-early 16th Centuries, and as a direct result several powerful and devout Christian monarchs (followed by less powerful ones who see where the wind's blowing) outlaw all christians in the realm from taking part in any way in the owning or trading of slaves.

While this still leaves some leeway for plantation slavery, it's definately going to be much smaller in scale or possibly non-existent if said monarchs also don't trust non-christians to run the plantations (likely). This probably completely alters the entire colonial history of the Americas and Africa however, so things are unlikely to be familiar.


The Second is what I shall term the 'triumph of world liberalism'. Starting in the late 19th Century reformers are more succesfull in Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany and the Ottoman Empire. Bismarkian diplomacy continues to hold Europe in a tense peace until his death in the early 20th Century, and it takes at least another 20 years for an alliance system to come into play. Because by this time all powers are too strong to hope for a quick war, we instead have an extended cold war style situation rather than a World War. Western Governments take the attitude that 'the white man's burden is to establish proper government in colonial areas and the means whereby the natives can be correctly educated to take part in this government', which has the side effect of colonies getting better education and transportation funding. Colonies are considered to expensive to run and mostly unprofitable, so the attitudes are that they should either be given enough self-government that the central power doesn't have to take the burden of funding, or if promising made more profitable with a view to a lower level of self-government. This has the side effect of moving towards more of a British Dominion approach to independence rather than post-colonial civil wars and unstability.

Japan is treated as a slightly inferior but still important ally by Europe in their cold war and so feels included enough that the rampant militarism is toned down, while China continues to see mismanagement and foreign influence for a longer period of time, but avoids the Maoist regime's worse issues.

Anti-Semitism probably lasts for longer, but a lack of Balfour Declaration, more limited Zionist movement that moves for just cultural autonomy within Palestine due to lack of hope for indepenendence, and less need to unite the country by targeting an ethnic minority mean we avoid the Holocaust and Arab-Israeli wars and aftermath.



This is probably absurdly over-optimistic though.
 
Ummm.. a gobal catastrophe that kills all humans. Then there is no evil or suffering in the millenia that follow.... technically is your best bet.
 
A massive US wank, where French republic copies US constitution and allies (and eventually merges) with them and proceed to create United States of Earth. :cool:
 
Wouldn't that probably involve later banning of the Slave Trade, and either perpetutation or extenstion of slavery over a wider area and later than OTL?
 
There's my Continuous Democracy timeline, whose goal is to keep democracy active from its invention in the classical era.

Though, there's still plenty of ethnic cleansing and war and conquering and empire, it might be the least bad you can get. It definitely has higher tech than OTL, a serious good that keeps deaths and improves lives. And, people are least unhappy and best fed under democracies, generally. And, ethics progress fastest. So, slavery and then imperialism get ended earlier.

OTL has lower tech than we could have. That's because we had sad gaps between enlightenment eras, which see faster tech progression.

Though, it's been progressing at a snail's pace. Speaking of which, I'd better shut up and go work on it.
 
Sassanians were hardly perfect little snowflakes, and they were big on Zoroastrianism. I fail to see how any religious system will prevent people from f*cking things up.

Agree, religion usually isn't focussed on creating or destroying human suffering, so it's neutral.

Maybe a massive Roman wank where the empire doesn't degenerate into military despotism? Europe gets a Roman Empire that doesn't pursecute based on race or religion (and was pretty good about sexism for its time too), and Rome possibly founds colonies that share their ideals in Africa and the Americas, and other satelite states too. I don't know about China, but there certainly is room for them to become a large and relatively tolerant state too, and maybe a long term cold war between Rome and its satelite states and China and it's satelite states keeps conflict to a minimum. Not great, but it's an attempt.
 
Mankind dies out in the lake Toba bottleneck.

Harm minimized.

My challenge to you is to have a plausible timeline that minimises as much suffering and evil as possible. Thus, keeping murders, slavery and war fatalities and famines to the lowest numbers we can is the first priority, and then providing a decent standard of living to as many people as we can as soon as possible is a second. Try to be scientific about it in terms of numbers. e.g. Cromwell's massacres in Ireland matter a lot less than the killing fields of Cambodia.
 
Actually, if you use 'harm' to include 'death resulting in OTL people not being born' (a possible definition, as for example an alternate genocide would include a fair amount of this) then that is approaching maximum harm.
 
Actually, if you use 'harm' to include 'death resulting in OTL people not being born' (a possible definition, as for example an alternate genocide would include a fair amount of this) then that is approaching maximum harm.

MHO, that would be a foolish definition of harm. If you adopt that definition, then you go for a POD within the last 9 months, because that minimizes the number of OTL people not being born.
 
Let's define "harm" as "the amount of death and suffering as a percentage of the human population". That way 100% death rates aren't allowed!
 
Let's define "harm" as "the amount of death and suffering as a percentage of the human population". That way 100% death rates aren't allowed!

Death will always be 100% of the human population. Make it 'premature death.'

If you do that, childhood nutrition, better obstetrics, and ABOVE ALL, childhood disease, will swamp nearly every other consideration. Whichever TL gets to rudimentary medicine and germ theory for children first is almost certainly the winner.
 
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