WI: No World War I?

Don't forget income tax was instituted to pay for WWII.

I presume you're referring to the US here? Britain developed it in the Napoleonic wars and then re-introduced it about 1850 and I suspect most other European nations have had something similar for quite a while.

And hey, it's not necessarily a given that no war means slower tech development across the board, remember that there are all those extra millions of people alive, many of whom would become inventors and scientists as well as businessmen and investors. Probably specific stuff like the airline industry's development would be retarded in a relative sense but it's also possible other industries would be further along.

Good point which often gets overlooked. Periods of war tend to mean clear and dramatic advances in certain areas of technology, for instance a/c in WWI, but modern ones especially are often very destructive of people, wealth and economic opportunities. Difficult to tell how things would have developed without them.

Possibly the best balance is prolonged peace with occasional short wars or periods of tension and war scares, such as 19thC Europe between 1815-1914. [Preferably without the huge build-up of tension towards the end of that period].

Steve
 
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