What would the world be like with no Americans?

Daily Herald ^ | 5-31-2004 | Chuck Goudie

[LauraJean]

Without America the world would be speaking German and Japanese and there would have been no Israel since Hitler would have accomplished his goal of genocide.

[atomicpossum]

What would the world be like with no Americans?

It would be German.

[4Liberty]

Around 40% (almost half) of the world's RISKY R&D spending is done -- by the US, and US private firms.

Without the U.S., there is little to no technological progress.

China reverse-engineers all our commercial developments; Canada and other free-rider countries get our pharm. innovations (new drugs) - at a cut rate...

The US is great because we REWARD risk taking, and live-giving technologies and innovations. THESE THINGS ARE COSTLY, but help the world permanently/for generations.

Nobody wants to pay for them; WE pay for them, and encourage their development via profit incentive....

Duh! Is this HaRd?? NO.

Go USA!!!

[Camel Joe]

And the world would be a better place
For me
and you....

[far sider]

"What Would A Day Without (insert nationality here) Be Like?"

Canadians. Everything would be exactly the same except people would say "I wonder what happened to the Canadians."

Chinese. Everything would be the same except the world would wobble.

[Camel Joe]

I mean if the leash were gone!!!

[JellyJam]

amen, a million times over!

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[usadave]

Hispanic elected officials, including California's lieutenant governor, vanished.

And this is supposed to be a bad thing?

[drtom]

Umm...sorry but it's not as simple as that. You can't just in passing give all the credit to the country that rolled it out first. This would be the same like saying we would have never been able to fly to the moon without the Germans (Wernher von Braun). And I hope you won't believe that we wouldn't have figured it out without him, too...

Research and development is an on-going international competition. Countries leapfrog each other in various areas and at the moment we cover most of them. But our R&D is also based on a lot of foreign expertise.

The car engine was invented by Otto (German), the first car built by Daimler (German). Our own Henry Ford mass-produced the first car and made it accessible to the masses. The steamboat is based on Watt's engine (UK). Marconi (Italy) transmitted the first wireless message. The first computer (the Z3) was built by Konrad Zuse (German). Nothing would happen in the world of electronics without Maxwell, Tesla and Roentgen and so forth.

Long story short, you've got to give credit where credit is due and can't just rewrite history to claim it all.

If there were no Americans others would fill the void. Probably not as fast, but most likely as good.

[JellyJam]

I wasn't rewriting history to claim it all. Just showing what America means to the world. Nothing more, nothing less.

[drtom]

But you are saying there would be no vehicles, no computers and so forth when in fact those were not invented by Americans.

I think we're a pretty cool people even without bending the truth.

[fourdeuce82d]

couple of thoughts- are all these problems things that would crop up because we left, or because we had never existed?

i.e. if we all disapeared, would the prosthetic limbs disapear as well, or just not get replaced?

re: Osama Bin Ladenwould reassume his throne of evil and then claim control of the whole world. Without Americans, who would be there to argue with him? The French?

what a crock. Two words. "Heathen Chinee." Without us, they'd be the big dog. And osama (probably 1-200 million other muslims) would no longer be a problem for anyone.

I'd bank on a long, multi-generational stagnation- kind of like what happened after the Ming dynasty maritime exploration program was shut down. Life would go on...but not upward.

[jwalsh07]

Well now, lets imagine a world devoid of Americans since 1940. Just think of everything the German technocrats could have come up with. Perhaps Josef Mengele would even be enthroned on Mt Rushmore.

[Seniram US]

Of course it is only an opinion, but if there were no Americans, it would seem that America, too, would be gone or at least renamed. However, it there was no America, there would also be the end of the free world, for no other nation would be strong enough to withstand tyranny.

As the trants emerged, it would seem to lead to the liquidation of Christianity, similarly to the 1500s when it was nearly wiped out until the Battle of Lepanto.

The question for me is will God let America stand?

My guess is that he will, so I'll just continue to hope that God Blesses America no matter what the French and Germans think or for that matter anyone else.

[drtom]

Not that this has anything to do with my postulation that we don't need to embezzle other nations' achievements in order to stand out as the most powerful nation but let's go off on this tangent for a sec...

The only way that America as a nation wouldn't exist is if it had been discovered more than 100 years later (and therefore not yet become a nation). Let's go with that for arguments sake.

Would Christianity be liquidated? Probably not as the age of imperialism took place without American involvement (OK, we annexed Hawaii which wasn't really nice but...). So the state of the rest of the world would be pretty much the same around 1900. 1940/50 - Isolated from supplies, Britain would have been overrun by Germany eventually. Same with Russia. Since Germany was close to discovering nuclear fission we can safely assume that they would have had the bomb by about the same time. With the Nazis having been atheists, I cannot see a muslim threat occur in Europe like around Karl Martell's time. In fact, I think the Nazis would have simply nuked the whole Arab subcontinent as they wouldn't have been bound by UN, Geneva or common decency constraints. Riyadh, Baghdad, Tehran are far enough away from German territory to avoid any harmful fallout - chance are that a plane in the Reichstag would have triggered a rather decisive response.

I can't tell if God would have blessed Germany. The German cardinal told Hitler once "I haven't understood you for a long time but now I understand you" - so maybe they would have had the blessings of the Catholic church. I dunno. Not my place to predict.

Oh, and Mt Rushmore? No, not Mengele. He was just a little fart in the machinery. Probably Goebbels and Goering, but not Mengele.

[FierceDraka]

Interesting, especially considering that I'm something of a fan of Alternate Histories, myself.

[jwalsh07]

I can't tell if God would have blessed Germany.

In that case you are either unfamiliar with God or the Nazis. In either case You'll understand if I give your musings on Germany, the Catholic Church and Islam short shrift.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Eine Welt ohne Amerikaner? Er würde wundervoll sein!

[Taxman]

You are very close to the answer I was thinking of as I perused this thread:

Without an America, there would be no hope. Think Middle Ages or Dark Ages.

America is the shining beacon on the hill to the peoples of the world, and a pimple on the world's ass to world governments.

You see, our Founding Fathers spit in the eye of 4 + thousand years of history when they proclaimed that God gave certain unailenable rights to man.

The basis of American FReedoms is embedded in that simple statement. Ever since the Founding Fathers incorporated that model of government, tyrants the world over have been trying to marginalize that concept, which laid waste to the Divine Right of Kings.

Think way outside the box: Had America not been fortunate enough to have such Godly, learned, and FReedom loving men around in the 1780's, America would be just another third world bananna republic, and no one in the rest of the world would have a hope in Hell of being FRee.

There would be no FReedom in the world if it were not for America.

And there would be no hope.