re: OT History people, if you could change anything in World History or American History..

quote:

---

There might be no communism

---

It existed before the war and would still be around today.

quote:

---

Going back much farther, I'd wonder if the indigenous tribes of the Americas could have accomplished something if they had brought the concept of the wheel with them from Asia. And the concepts of advances in metal working.

---

most native americans picked up on our technology to degrees as they were introduced. Comanchees were historically a dead beat tribe that got their asses kicked up and down the plains until they got ahold of horses and guns. they were doing wagons and tons of makeshift knockoffs of Western Technology in the 1800s.

the wheel was in Africa, Asia, and Europe for the most of the 10000s. only one group did much with it.

Slavery seems like an obvious one, so I'm going to propose a few different ones:

1. The Romans figure out how to use Vitruvius's rudimentary steam engine to generate power for making textiles. Rome goes through an industrial revolution in the first and second century AD during the height of the Pax Romana.

2. Romans discover Arminius's ambush and crush the Germanic resistance at Teutoberg. Varus is hailed as a hero.

2. The White Army defeats the Bolsheviks and wins the Russian Revolution installing a constitutional capitalist republic modeled after the U.S.

4. Byzantines win the Battle of Manzikert

5. Americans win the Battle of Quebec in 1775 resulting in the Patriots effectively ousting the British from most of Canada early in the war. Great Britain loses all of its North American colonies outside of the Caribbean before the end of the Revolutionary War.

6. Taft backs out of the election of 1912 resulting in Teddy Roosevelt winning another term. Teddy throttles the KKK and the Bolsheviks in the crib, keeps the military integrated, never approves the creation of the Federal Reserve or income tax, wins WW1 significantly earlier, prevents the hard peace that led to WWII, and doesn't dismantle the Ottoman Empire leading to a more stable Middle East with Israel as nothing more than an autonomous region under the Ottomans (who allow Jews freedom of religion).

Yeah, number 6 sounds pretty awesome: No WWII, no income tax, no federal reserve, peace in the Middle East, no Nazism, no Communism, no Cold War, no Holocaust, etc. Yeah, I'll take that one.

I’m going with no Mohammad….

Because the English common law was based upon tradition which was established by the cultural institutions ( Church, Govt, marriage, ..tradition) that had been successful up to that point

where the Napoleonic Code attempted to force structure without the cultural institutions/tradition


Took the good part of the enlightenment age without considering the benefits of tradition

I don’t think common law is superior for any reasons other than economics of scale. The civil code is vastly superior in a number of contexts, especially property law.

Louisiana’s problem isn’t that it’s legal system is “inferior” it’s that it’s significantly “different” from the 49 other states it shares a common marketplace with while not being large enough market on its own for others to feel the need to adapt to it (see California’s regulatory regimes essentially dictating standards to manufacturers).

quote:

---

4. Byzantines win the Battle of Manzikert

---

I said this one too. It’s fascinating “what if” bc without Manzikert, what happens? No Crusades? No rise of the Turks? No sack of Constantinople by the 4th Crusade? No Ottoman Empire? The Mongols would still do what they do.

Its a coint toss for me.

There are two sources of evil in the modern world, to me.

One is borne of Mohammedism and its fruit. The other,is the child of the French Revolution. Strangling either in their crib would prevent decades of war, preserve tens of millions of lives, do a great deal to arrest cultural, literary, and artistic decline, and two World Wars that would eventually be borne from these parents.

The LBJ Presidency.

Although the legacy of the current administration could be equally bad or worse.