PODs that could prevent the “malaise” of the 1970s

kernals12

Banned
That's an easy one, Israel is never created, and the Yom Kippur war is butterflied away. But I think this particular cure is worse than the disease.
 
France, Czechoslovakia and Italy going communist would give a strong incentive to tie wages to productivity leading to increased living standards and employment for first world white workers.
 
American corporations listen to quality and efficiency experts like Deming, so our manufacturing remains competitive against Germany and Japan during the 1960s.

More fuel efficient cars, enabled by above, and incented by higher gas taxes on imported Saudi oil.

No Vietnam.

We invent better night vision equipment and give it to the Israelis so they aren't walloped early in Yom Kippur war.
 

Khanzeer

Banned
What PODs could prevent the oil shortages and things like that?
All oil rich arab monarchies are turned into protectorates of western powers after ww2.Huge NATO military presence all over persian gulf to ensure local sheikhs cannot interfere ever in flow of oil.
 
I watched a series of lectures by a Scottish academic and he says that political leaders set up the political system to get the economic outcomes they want. After WW2 it was thought that unemployment was the cause of the troubles of the 30s so they set up the system to provide full employment, however any system has bugs and after about 30 years these bugs are so bad that the system doesn't work.

So basically the malaise of the 70s is the result of the bugs in the political-economic system set up 30 years earlier making the system unworkable.

I thought that was a reasonable explanation, especially in the context of current day political turmoil.
 
a smoother 70s would mean a weird world by say 1992, nevermind 2018. neoliberalism as only a chilean thing means big us/uk changes...
 
he says that political leaders set up the political system to get the economic outcomes they want.

Try the autonomists as a counterpoint. Political economic configurations like Fordism are projects to break down an existing working class subject (class composition, or class consciousness plus organisation). After 30 or so years the project breaks down if workers manage to configure new subjectivities which defeat the old limits. This argument sees post fordism as a means to break the wildcats inside big unions of the 40s and later 60s.
 
I watched a series of lectures by a Scottish academic and he says that political leaders set up the political system to get the economic outcomes they want. After WW2 it was thought that unemployment was the cause of the troubles of the 30s so they set up the system to provide full employment, however any system has bugs and after about 30 years these bugs are so bad that the system doesn't work.

So basically the malaise of the 70s is the result of the bugs in the political-economic system set up 30 years earlier making the system unworkable.

I thought that was a reasonable explanation, especially in the context of current day political turmoil.

It's a bit simplified, but, yes, I'd run with that. Note that our present system was set up in the '80s to stop inflation... and, well, inflation ain't the problem now.
 
All oil rich arab monarchies are turned into protectorates of western powers after ww2.Huge NATO military presence all over persian gulf to ensure local sheikhs cannot interfere ever in flow of oil.
Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Trucial States (today UAE) and Oman were British colonies or protectorates until 1960s-1970s
 
All oil rich arab monarchies are turned into protectorates of western powers after ww2.Huge NATO military presence all over persian gulf to ensure local sheikhs cannot interfere ever in flow of oil.

Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Trucial States (today UAE) and Oman were British colonies or protectorates until 1960s-1970s

Also more colonialism is just asking for trouble in the long run, especially with the USSR and pan-Arab nationalists like Nasser to serve as patrons for anti-Colonial revolutionaries.
 

Khanzeer

Banned
Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Trucial States (today UAE) and Oman were British colonies or protectorates until 1960s-1970s
Yes But not saudi Arabia , if all the qatif areas had been kept separate from hijaz and medina/ makkah that would have been beneficial to western interests

Nasser already had anti monarchist stance even against the independent KSA

This buildup would also discourage iran Iraq from joining any anti western embargo and iraq will probably stay pro western much longer

With sufficient repression, bribery and propaganda anti colonialism in Muslim world can easily be controlled, afterall Turks did it quite well for centuries
 
Last edited:

Khanzeer

Banned
A little late but no Iranian Revolution?

EDIT: Or just keep Mosaddegh in power?
he would have been even less likely than the mullahs to work with the west

traditional islamic clerics have always been willing to side with the west against USSR, whose socio-economic changes are their worst nightmare
 
The Vietnam War either ends in a US victory (such a victory would have to happen before the anti-war movement gains traction) or full-blown US involvement in the war doesn't happen at all
 
The Vietnam War either ends in a US victory (such a victory would have to happen before the anti-war movement gains traction) or full-blown US involvement in the war doesn't happen at all

Unless that victory/thwarted involvement butterflies away the OPEC crisis, the Iranian Revolution, and the Afghan invasion, I don't think it's gonna make much of a difference in regards to averting the malaise.

Granted, I was a kid in the late 70s, and living in Canada, but I was inundated with US media, including news, and I never got the impression that Vietnam was a big reason why people were disenchanted, at least not in a way that was impacting the way they voted.
 
The cost of the Vietnam War (plus weak U.S. manufacturing) pushed Nixon to ditch the Bretton Woods agreement, which set off stagflation. As such, to prevent malaise we'd have to not fight the war in the first place.
 
Last edited:
I watched a series of lectures by a Scottish academic and he says that political leaders set up the political system to get the economic outcomes they want. After WW2 it was thought that unemployment was the cause of the troubles of the 30s so they set up the system to provide full employment, however any system has bugs and after about 30 years these bugs are so bad that the system doesn't work.

So basically the malaise of the 70s is the result of the bugs in the political-economic system set up 30 years earlier making the system unworkable.

I thought that was a reasonable explanation, especially in the context of current day political turmoil.

You'd have to make some change to the system so that inflation is never a problem to the degree it is OTL, meaning you either put someone else who's a little less fond of government spending to oversee Depression-era recovery efforts, or you just tweak whatever POD is necessary to put candidates in office that would mitigate the causes of inflation in the 70s
 
Top