What one event from 1900-2016 would you remove/change for the best modern earth?

Election Reform in the US.

Campaign contributions limited to registered voters that live in the election district. Registered voters are allowed to make unlimited contributions to canidates. No contributions by political parties, corporations, unions or other associations. No "outside" money from outside the district. No lobbyists contributions or gifts allowed.

Make the office holders beholden to their own voters.

I don't know how this works in other countries.

What do you think?

Thank you,
MrBill

Too small of an influence I belive.
 
I heard at least one newspaper in Munich covered Nazi murder scandals relatively early on. My POD is that this catches on with at least one other German newspaper and the nazis remain a pipsqueak party in the Reichstag.

And stretching it, this leads to a very skillful hand played in regards to Stalin's forced collectivization and I think really orchestrated starvation. Maybe private, indirect threats of reducing trade deals if Russia doesn't let in relief organizations.

And once Stalin dies around '53, relaxation of tensions and there was never a cold war anyway.

In fact, Russia, Britain, the United States, France, Italy compete on who can provide better trade deals and genuine development to Columbia, Nigeria, Thailand, etc. It turns into a virtuous upward spiral.
 
I would change the story without caring about the consequences , I would prevent the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to prevent World War,I kidnap the baby Adolf Hitler and send him to an orphanage in Canada , then kill Lenin and Stalin and also send a message to the Czar of Russia to stay tuned with the Communists still are alive .Knowing humanity is widely believed that someone would take the place of Hitler and Stalin at some point, then at least I would postpone the World Wars to happen for maybe at least a 30 year ... .
 
Osama Bin Laden is caught in a car accident and develops a serious case of amnesia in 1991. Shortly after this worsens into an anxiety disorder and he gives up his terrorist ambitions for good.
 
Great Depression leads to a Communist America just like the ones in the TL "Reds!".

Reds! had pre-20th century PODs. In fact had a few. And you don't want the Great Depression to change, because that required WW1 to change. For a start the US gets involved in 1914, radicalising/disillusioning the American populace so much they turn to revolution.


I personally question whether or not a communist US would turn out how Reds! predicted, given it was a teleological TL (like most TLs). However if we're running on the assumption the changed event can lead to any outcome we want then one major event from Reds! could be modified to give you the UASR, though I'm not sure - it'd need to be a plausible PoD and you only get one. Which do you pick - McKinley lives or the US enters WW1 at the start (these are the two most likely to lead to change)?
 
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Reds! had pre-20th century PODs. In fact had a few. For one the US has to get involved in WW1 at the start.
I personally question whether or not a communist US would turn out how Reds! predicted, given it was a teleological TL (like most TLs). However if we're running on the assumption the changed event can lead to any outcome we want....

I don't know for sure because since democracy is so institutionalized in America I doubt anyone would revoke it without huge consequences.
 
Of course with no World wars driving innovation and social upheaval - our technology and social improvements would be somewhat behind what we experiance OTL Today!
Not necessarily. Who knows how many future Einsteins starved to death in a ghetto or were robbed and killed while fleeing as a refugee? Or how many captains of industry died on the beaches of Normandy?
 
Of course with no World wars driving innovation and social upheaval - our technology and social improvements would be somewhat behind what we experiance OTL Today!
I'm sorry, but NO! International conflicts don't drive innovation, except in certain fields, and they leave so much death and destruction (not to mention national bankruptcy and defence-company foreclosures from demobilisation), that any advantages are far outweighed. Much better in international competition.

On the social front things are no better, not for the Armenians under the Ottomans the, Ukrainians during the Holodomor, the Jews during the Holocaust, The Chinese during the Great Leap Forward, the Cambodians during the Khmer Regime and dozens of others. At best, after the war you might see some social improvement for the lower classes, if the country isn't bankrupt, hasn't lost, and is actually that way inclined. Of course you could mention continued colonialism, but I wonder, how are most people in Zimbabwe, Somalia, Bangadesh, etc doing today than they were under their respective masters? Was the Vietnam war a good thing for the Vietnamese?

So no, skipping the war wouldn't hold things back, not technologically and not socially, or at least I can't imagine ATL colonialism being much worse than the premature decolonisation they ended up with.
 
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I don't know for sure because since democracy is so institutionalized in America I doubt anyone would revoke it without huge consequences.

I find this to be an immensely dangerous idea, which weirdly seems to be really popular among the leftists on the forum (I'm not using this as an insult I should note). Okay, a Soviet or Nazi copy is unlikely to work in America but could you have a dictator in the right circumstances. Americans and American institutions have proven to be more than willing to give over to authoritarian impulses over the years. I mean in 1933, a film called Gabriel over the White House was released that more or less called for Roosevelt to establish a pro-New Deal dictatorship. The film is actually really instructive in how people justify dictatorships - the enemy are just stooges of capital and foreign interests who are keeping the working man down, the leader is more enlightened and brilliant than them etc... Sound familiar? I suspect that the dictatorship wouldn't be as overt as in the film - there would probably still be elections (that only the regime can win or even compete in) and the US constitution would still be 'respected', just not respected if you take my meaning. I actually really like Reds but it is a very idealized version of a communist revolution where everything more or less goes the way of the revolutionaries.

As for the OP, my big choice would be to have Herbert Humphrey beat Nixon in 1968.

teg
 
Not necessarily. Who knows how many future Einsteins starved to death in a ghetto or were robbed and killed while fleeing as a refugee? Or how many captains of industry died on the beaches of Normandy?

I'm sorry, but NO! International conflicts don't drive innovation, except in certain fields, and they leave so much death and destruction (not to mention national bankruptcy and defence-company foreclosures from demobilisation), that any advantages are far outweighed. Much better in international competition.

On the social front things are no better, not for the Armenians under the Ottomans the, Ukrainians during the Holodomor, the Jews during the Holocaust, The Chinese during the Great Leap Forward, the Cambodians during the Khmer Regime and dozens of others. At best, after the war you might see some social improvement for the lower classes, if the country isn't bankrupt, hasn't lost, and is actually that way inclined. Of course you could mention continued colonialism, but I wonder, how are most people in Zimbabwe, Somalia, Bangadesh, etc doing today than they were under their respective masters? Was the Vietnam war a good thing for the Vietnamese?

So no, skipping the war wouldn't hold things back, not technologically and not socially, or at least I can't imagine ATL colonialism being much worse than the premature decolonisation they ended up with.

Well if you can point to 2 relatively short periods of human history where there was greater advances in both technical innovation (or at least the practical application of innovation) and social change as as a result of WW1 and WW2 then I would be interested in hearing about them!

And I think we can all agree that war is shit and generally best to be avoided

So that I am absolutely clear my general point was that the 20th Century would have been 'better off' for the majority with out the 2 world wars - and that I would happily accept a slower pace of technical innovation and social change as well as a more measured decolonisation process relative to the somewhat hurried process experienced in OTL.
 
Well if you can point to 2 relatively short periods of human history where there was greater advances in both technical innovation (or at least the practical application of innovation) and social change as as a result of WW1 and WW2 then I would be interested in hearing about them!
1900-1914. Not much change on the social front (but at least, unlike the wars, no-one took a huge step backwards), but on the technological front, whooee where to start? Maybe with aircraft. In just over a decade after the Wright Flyer made the first tentative hops at Kitty Hawk we went from that to Igor Sikorsky's Ilya Muyomets' prototype airliners (capable of carrying 16 passengers or flying more than 500 km at a hop, and complete with indoor toilet and electric lighting), so where they could have gone from there with international rivalry playing into development is only to be imagined, as each nation would seek to build the biggest, fastest, longest-range most luxurious airliners around. And then there's 1954-1970, which saw both massive technological and (in places) massive social improvements.

So that I am absolutely clear my general point was that the 20th Century would have been 'better off' for the majority with out the 2 world wars - and that I would happily accept a slower pace of technical innovation and social change as well as a more measured decolonisation process relative to the somewhat hurried process experienced in OTL.
Except that for some things, development could easily move quicker without the wars. After all, what does war provide? Government funding, sure, but the dreadnought race proved that you don't need an actual conflict to garner government grants, and as the Space Race would later prove, even decidedly non-military projects can garner huge funding. Meanwhile, what war costs is civilian markets, private finance, lives, infrastructure, etc.
 

jahenders

Banned
Some of those would help the US, but probably don't produce a big change in overall modern earth.

Some of those changes would be hard to do. If a registered voter in district X can contribute unlimited amounts, what's to stop a friend from district Y "giving" that voter $10M, which he then contributes?

Election Reform in the US.

Campaign contributions limited to registered voters that live in the election district. Registered voters are allowed to make unlimited contributions to canidates. No contributions by political parties, corporations, unions or other associations. No "outside" money from outside the district. No lobbyists contributions or gifts allowed.

Make the office holders beholden to their own voters.

I don't know how this works in other countries.

What do you think?

Thank you,
MrBill
 
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