One of the biggest drivers of the post-1492 world and of 1492 itself was and is trade, which factors into 5.1.
The difficulty I see is, how do you
show that? Frex, I know the "triangular trade" across the Atlantic drove the OTL economies of Caribbean islands, the U.S., & Britain. I know OTL it contributed to the growth of the slave trade as well as sugar production. Absent simply
saying that, IMO
far from satisfactory, or listing off statistics,

also
far from satisfactory IMO, how do I deal with it? It seems to me some of it can be addressed indirectly, by the growth of infrastructure; it it's fast, the money has to be there. Ditto the growth of armies/navies. (Mention of govts refusing to appropriate $$$? Or of navies "cheating" by claiming "repair" when they're really building whole new ships?

{OTL USN did this, BTW.

}) Or mention things like immigration? OTL, steamships meant more & more immigrants could go to NAm from Europe, & the number of 3d class passengers jumped as it became possible to make money on them, & as fares came down, more came... OTL, airliners, especially jetliners, finally wiped out this trade. (Had dirigibles

not suffered some bad PR,

they might've managed it, too.

)
In addition, there are sometimes bigger issues. In the OTL Great Depression, economists can't even agree on what caused it, what fixed it, & how. If the
experts can't agree, how in hell should I know?

Take an ATL that presumes a cause & hope nobody calls me on it?

(I pick Smoot-Hawley.

)
I'd say there are similar issues on language. An ATL U.S. is likely to be mostly Anglo-run (unless somebody PoDs Spain beating Britain & their being 13 Spanish colonies

). It's pretty hard to illustrate changes & still let your audience know what you mean. If I say "Phoenix, Kiowa", frex, you're likely to have some notion where I mean. If I say, "Nueva Zacatela, Kiowa", it's more likely to be, "WTF?" And even "easy" ones, like San Gabriel or Yerba Buena may get a "WTF?" (S.F. & L.A., keeping names dating back a little further.) Which isn't really on point from what you even meant, is it? You see what I mean, tho? Burgess could do it with
Clockwork Orange, 'cause he had room to work, & even then, you've got to be
intelligible. I've tried using changed grammar in stories I've written (nothing here

) & gotten slammed for being weird, when I was trying to reflect a different cultural dynamic. And I've gotten slammed for using the N-word too freely in ATL culture where it wouldn't be a big deal in the mainstream, any more than it was in the '30s-'50s Deep South U.S. OTL, but the reader didn't get it. A TL here, it's even harder, 'cause you've got so much less contest, usually.
*sigh* I'll stop ranting, now.
