Bonus Question of the Week
by Billy Joe Mills • Nov 13th, 2007 at 5:41 pm • 21 comments
What would the world be like without the United States?
Who would dominate? How advanced would technology be? How advanced would the humanities be? What would be the state of freedom? What would be the dominant methods of organizing government and markets? Which race would be considered the world’s dominant race?
Comment by JAL on 13 November 2007 at 2:00 pm:
China would own you, and your little dog, too. All the roads would be toll roads, and all the cars would be tin cans. Human rights would be defined by eating three square meals … per week.
Comment by tet on 13 November 2007 at 2:09 pm:
Billy Joe, can you do a bit of clarifying, please?
1) Did the American Colonies just end up part of the British Empire, like Canada or Australia?
2) Did Britain just decide not to colonize the New World?
3) Was the US formed and then fell apart in either 1812 or 1861?
4) Did the part of the North American continent where the 13 colonies were situated in our world simply not exist, it being part of the North Atlantic instead? (This would be a subset of 2 above without the land being claimed by anyone else)
I can do parallel histories for each of these. Wow, that’s an idea for a writing project. Would you guys be interested in that? I haven’t done anything big in a while.
Tom
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 13 November 2007 at 2:22 pm:
Tom,
Good point. Probably the most interesting and factually relevant scenario would be if we assumed that our Founding Fathers lost the Revolutionary War and we remained as colonies. However, this might be too easy because then you can just predict that Britain would gradually turn into something very similar to the current U.S. However, in order to make the thought exercise more difficult I think it would be best to assume that the entire North American continent was simply never formed so many years ago. This approach will prevent discussion of the assent of any pseudo, alter ego Americas.
You’re right that this would be an interesting writing project. Actually, that’s what followed in my mind when I asked myself that question earlier today. I’m not sure I’ll find the time to do it until xmas break, but perhaps we could each independently write our own versions and then send them to each other. The perhaps we could either combine them into one super good piece or try to pitch them to some obscure paper for publication as side by side pieces.
Comment by Billy Joe Mills on 13 November 2007 at 2:25 pm:
this follows the concept but is done through the lens of patriotism, which i’m not particularly interested in.
A World Without America:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/a_world_without_america.html
Comment by tet on 13 November 2007 at 2:34 pm:
Actually, “No New World” is a fifth possibility. Its ramifications go far outside the scope of what we’re talking about here, since the lack of New World gold would heavily impact the European influence of Spain during the 16th and 17th Centuries and probably result in the Reformation being a lot more successful than in this world.
I think a vastly less powerful Catholic Church during the Renaissance and Enlightment would far overshadow the changes wrought by a lack of United States, to tell the truth. I’m apt to reject that scenario, since it is different from what you’re aiming for.
Tom
Comment by Dead Florist on 13 November 2007 at 7:42 pm:
Billy Joe says, “this follows the concept but is done through the lens of patriotism, which i’m not particularly interested in.”
I would say it’s doen through the lens of G.W. Bush fellatio, which, I understand was once but is no longer synonymous with patriotism. But you’re right, not interesting.
I would say that if you want to eliminate the possibility of alter Americas (or more acurately, United States’s), you may have to do more than eliminate North America. There remain the same impeti for resettlement outside of Europe for various groups, perhaps causing South America to become more hotly contested. If we eliminate South America too, do we amend the planet to shorten the distance between East Asia and Western Europe? If not, that becomes a huge amount of uninterrupted ocean, making ship travel in that direction virtually impossible without some serious techological improvement. If this is the case, perhaps a colonial push into Africa would have been made sooner, establishing America-like countries there.
It’s fun to think about, but it all really depends on the initial asuumptions.
Comment by Ryan Gray on 13 November 2007 at 9:14 pm:
Well, none of us would be here, I know that. As for the rest, who knows.
Comment by Mike Täht on 13 November 2007 at 9:52 pm:
Interesting question.
You could fork off the world at any given point in time and end up without the Blighted States
Examples:
What if the indigenous peoples of the americas had a resistence to diseases like smallpox, etc, that decimated them long before the conquistadors came across? (I note that I am simply stunned at how pervasive the germs part of Jarad Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel” hypothesis is in places like wikipedia – I don’t remember anything like that in history books while I was growing up.)
Or the natives had some bug that took out europe?
(where did the black plague come from, anyway?)
or a world where one where clocks came to calculate longitude to another country…
Going earlier than that, imagine a world that didn’t have the droughts in 900 that killed off mayan civilization
or, moving forward, imagine a world where benedict arnold successfully handed over philadelphia to the brits, or
But you guys can get really out there – I never, never, never would have thunk about a time where the continents hadn’t split apart.
Comment by Allan Niemerg on 13 November 2007 at 11:22 pm:
I remember reading an argument once suggesting that even if the U.S. hadn’t formed as it did, there was still a good reason to believe a powerful country would spring up here.
There are two basic reasons why:
1.) abundant natural resources
2.) proximity to Europe
After all, why didn’t nations of European colonists spring up in Africa? It was after all, discovered first. It was the lack of resources that made it less than worthwhile. (But maybe it has more to do with germs as suggested by Mike.)
It seems to me, that once North America was discovered, it was almost inevitable that it would be come the stage upon which the ideas of the enlightenment would play out. Almost from the very beginning, North America was a place of social, political, and technological innovation. So regardless of whether the U.S. had formed the way it did, there would still be a vibrant and rich country or set of countries here.
Now that is not to suggest that things would have been as good had the U.S. not formed. The genius, after all, of the U.S. is that is a massive free trade zone in both labor and goods. Along with a fair legal system, the freedom to trade with few restrictions has permitted the development of a culture of entrepreneurship that has created steady growth.
Which is why I think that in 2050, we will still asking “what would the world be like without the United States” and not “what would the world look like without China.” Because even when china becomes a fully modernized country, it will still lack the dynamic, entrepreneurial culture found here.
Comment by tet on 14 November 2007 at 9:42 am:
Oh, how I hate blogger. I had a long reply to Mike and Alan.
Let me summarize, since I’m not going to do it again in full:
I believe that the smallpox arrived in the New World with the earliest Spaniards and shortly preceded the Conquistatores. It is interesting that both the Romans in the 2nd century and Europe in the 14th had similar virgin field epidemics, the latter killing from 75% of the population along the Mediterranean to 20% in Britain. We almost ended up writing this blog in Arabic. The Black Death probably came from Central Asia, spread by commerce due to the Pax Mongolius.
Alan, China is quite likely not going to be a competitor for very long. It’s about to undergo a population contraction unprecedented in human history combined with a sizable gender disparity. I don’t think the results of this are going to be conducive to a high rank in world economics.
I have a long reply to this topic outlined that I will write and post tonight.
Tom
Comment by Phil on 14 November 2007 at 10:44 am:
Tom, I have the sense that China owes its present prosperity to its population-reducing policies. A United States worth of peasants has moved to the cities in recent years because (a) farmers who don’t have to raise so many children have capital to invest in Western agricultural techniques, and (b) farmers who only have a single child are much more concerned about that child having a prosperous future — just continuing the same farm life their grandparents have is no longer enough.
I believe that China’s economy would already have collapsed and would be trying to get food aid to keep from adding to the famine death toll of hundreds of millions if they hadn’t put One Child Per Family in place when they did.
Even if you aren’t with me on that, it’s pretty clear that China faces at least as much trouble going forward from too many people as from too few. Their cities are grinding to a halt, and their agricultural production is headed for a crash as the marginal land that they’ve been overstressing to feed their people gives out. (A lot of agricultural land in north China has already become sand desert due to unsustainable agricultural practices.)
Comment by tet on 14 November 2007 at 11:01 am:
Phil, we’re talking about a drop of 50% in population in less than 50 years with a 55/45 or more discrepancy in gender.
This is unprecedented in human history without a plague or democide. What it has prevented is nowhere near as important as what it’s going to cause.
Take some time and do some research, the social changes are already starting to show. With increased lifespans, overworked twenty-somethings are supporting as many as four elderly grandparents.
If you remember, this was the reason that I had China’s government going overseas to find workers in my Future History. No one knows for sure what is going to happen, really. They’re about to live in interesting times over there.
Tom
Comment by Hanno on 14 November 2007 at 12:54 pm:
China is headed in one of a few directions.
1) Internal revolution because you have tons of bored men who aren’t getting any action.
2) Military aggressiveness as an outlet for said testosterone bubble
3) Importation of women from other countries
4) Dramatically increased incidence of prostitution
I wonder what the implications of halving population will be. We’ve seen the destruction wrought by doubling it…
Comment by kofi the war?! revolution?! stealing our women?!!1! on 14 November 2007 at 4:31 pm:
Why not an increased incidence of homosexuality?
Comment by Anonymous on 14 November 2007 at 5:12 pm:
I thought the consensus was homosexuality was not a choice, it was a biological imperative. So it does not matter how many women there are in a given society, that should not effect the percentage of homosexuality.
Comment by Brian on 14 November 2007 at 5:35 pm:
Anonymous,
I think Kofi might have meant “homosexual acts” rather than “homosexuality.” Of course you’re right that there would be no increased percentage of homosexuality, but anybody who’s ever heard a joke about prison rape knows that non-gay people will engage in homosexual acts when they find themselves in situations where that’s the only way they can release their sexual urges.
I would guess that it would be highly unlikely that there would increased incidents homosexual acts in China simply because men outnumber women, but that’s just my impression.
Comment by Phil on 14 November 2007 at 5:43 pm:
If homophobia is reflective of suppressed bisexuality (which I think is likely but certainly can’t prove), then a society that actually treated homosexual relationships as equal to heterosexual ones ought to be able to handle the gender imbalance Tom is talking about, assuming it’s all biological. (To the extent that it is a choice or determined by upbringing, it should be even more flexible.)
Comment by Allan Niemerg on 15 November 2007 at 1:57 am:
Alan, China is quite likely not going to be a competitor for very long. It’s about to undergo a population contraction unprecedented in human history combined with a sizable gender disparity. I don’t think the results of this are going to be conducive to a high rank in world economics.
Tet,
I absolutely agree, and you nicely expand on the point I was trying to make. Indeed, China’s one child per family (it’s actually closer to 1.8) policy may have prevented a Malthusian disaster in exchange for a population bomb. But China isn’t an exception, aging populations will create enormous trouble in Japan, Europe, and elsewhere.
Fortunately, here in the U.S., we are unlikely to suffer quite as badly from the transition. Thanks to immigrants and their propensity to have children, the U.S. is likely to see a healthy fertility and population growth rate for the foreseeable future. Of course that won’t make the baby boomer retirement transition easy, but it should ensure a sufficient population of young workers that the boomers may be able to avoid tough spending cuts resulting from current overspending.
Comment by tet on 15 November 2007 at 9:28 am:
Actually, Allan, my baby boomer retirement transition is going to go remarkably well, but that’s just because I’m a polygamist.
Tom
Comment by Aimee Chapman on 2 July 2010 at 10:28 pm:
Food Aids are badly needed by third world countries like in Africa in Asia.,”
Comment by Lucas Watson on 19 July 2010 at 6:01 am:
food aids are badly needed by third world countries and we really need to give something to the poor.-’,