What if the us never gained independence

And parliamentary democracies are a lot, lot better than presidential ones. They're significantly less likely to collapse into dictatorship because they don't lead to irresolvable conflicts between, say, the president and the legislature. They lead to much less gridlock.

In the US, activists wanting to put a price on carbon emissions spent years trying to put together a coalition to make it happen, mobilizing sympathetic businesses and philanthropists and attempting to make bipartisan coalition — and they still failed to pass cap and trade, after millions of dollars and man hours.

In the UK, the Conservative government decided it wanted a carbon tax. So there was a carbon tax , and the coal sector has taken a beating. Just like that. Passing big, necessary legislation — in this case, legislation that's literally necessary to save the planet — is a whole lot easier with parliaments than with presidential systems. It was the introduction of another unnecessary decisionmaking entity, very common in the veto point-heavy US system, that created the crisis in the first place.

This is no trivial matter. Efficient passage of legislation has huge humanitarian consequences. It makes measures of planetary importance, like carbon taxes, easier to get through; they still face political pushback, of course — Australia's tax got repealed, after all — but they can be enacted in the first place, which is far harder in the US system.

And the efficiency of parliamentary systems enables larger social welfare programs that reduce inequality and improve life for poor citizens. Government spending in parliamentary countries is about 5 percent of GDP higher , after controlling for other factors, than in presidential countries. If you believe in redistribution, that's very good news indeed. The Westminister system of parliamentary democracy also benefits from weaker upper houses. The US is saddled with a Senate that gives Wyoming the same power as California, which has more than 66 times as many people.

Worse, the Senate is equal in power to the lower, more representative house. Most countries following the British system have upper houses — only New Zealand was wise enough to abolish it — but they're far, far weaker than their lower houses. The Canadian Senate and the House of Lords affect legislation only in rare cases.

At most, they can hold things up a bit or force minor tweaks. They aren't capable of obstruction anywhere near the level of the US Senate. Finally, we'd still likely be a monarchy, under the rule of Elizabeth II, and constitutional monarchy is the best system of government known to man.

Generally speaking, in a parliamentary system, you need a head of state who is not the prime minister to serve as a disinterested arbiter when there are disputes about how to form a government — say, if the largest party should be allowed to form a minority government or if smaller parties should be allowed to form a coalition, to name a recent example from Canada.

That head of state is usually a figurehead president elected by the parliament Germany, Italy or the people Ireland, Finland , or a monarch. And monarchs are better. Monarchs are more effective than presidents precisely because they lack any semblance of legitimacy. Indeed, when the governor-general of Australia did so in it set off a constitutional crisis that made it clear such behavior would not be tolerated.

But figurehead presidents have some degree of democratic legitimacy and are typically former politicians. That enables a greater rate of shenanigans — like when Italian President Giorgio Napolitano schemed, successfully, to remove Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister due at least in part to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's entreaties to do so. Napolitano is the rule, rather than the exception. Oxford political scientists Petra Schleiter and Edward Morgan-Jones have found that presidents, whether elected indirectly by parliament or directly by the people, are likelier to allow governments to change without new elections than monarchs are.

In other words, they're likelier to change the government without any democratic input at all. Monarchy is, perhaps paradoxically, the more democratic option. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding.

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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. George Washington crosses the Delaware, makes the world a worse place in the process. Emanuel Leutze This July 4, let's not mince words: American independence in was a monumental mistake. Abolition would have come faster without independence The main reason the revolution was a mistake is that the British Empire, in all likelihood, would have abolished slavery earlier than the US did, and with less bloodshed.

Independence was bad for Native Americans Starting with the Proclamation of , the British colonial government placed firm limits on westward settlement in the United States. In fact, the states, having failed to ratify a constitution following the American Revolution, are separate countries that oscillate between cooperating and warring with one another, as in Europe.

The little ones wanted each state to have one vote no matter how many people it had. They were too stubborn to split the difference. Turtledove told me that it was Richard Dreyfuss, the actor, who first gave him the idea of the American Revolution as a subject for alternate history. The two collaborated on a novel, The Two Georges , that is set in the s and based on the premise that the Revolutionary War never happened.

The artist Thomas Gainsborough commemorated the deal in a painting, The Two Georges , that is emblazoned on money and made ubiquitous as a symbol of the felicitous "union between Great Britain and her American dominions. The novel, which contains some delightfully bewildering passages "The British Empire and the Franco-Spanish Holy Alliance were officially at peace, so skirmishes between the North American Union and Nueva Espana seldom made the newspapers or the wireless" , includes a description of the painting :.

Bowing before the king, George Washington was made to appear shorter than his sovereign. The blue coat that proclaimed his colonial colonelcy was of wool like that of George III, but of a coarser weave speaking of homespun. Not all its creases were those of fashion; with a few strategic wrinkles and some frayed fringes depending from one epaulette, Gainsborough managed to suggest how long the garment had lain folded in its trunk while Washington sailed across the Atlantic to advance the colonies' interests on the privy council George III had established.

Turtledove told me by email that he had an "epiphany" when he traveled with his family to the World Science Fiction Convention in Winnipeg, Canada in , shortly before he published The Two Georges. As he read a book from the Little House on the Prairie series to his daughter at the hotel, he came upon a section about a Fourth of July celebration "on the plains in the late nineteenth century, with fireworks and with tub-thumping speakers talking about how the United States had broken away from British tyranny and was the freest country in the world as a result.

And there I was reading this in the country next door to mine, a country as similar to mine as any two nations on earth, a country just as free as mine—and a country that had never broken away from Britain at all.

It was a thought-provoking experience. In all areas government came close on the heels of the frontiersmen, if it was not there first. Since the colonists insisted on having a share in making or administering the laws, self-government and democratic institutions spread. Today the empire of settlement in North America, Africa, and Australasia covers about 9,, square miles. It contains about 24,, people of European origin, of whom 12,, are in Canada and 9,, in Australasia.

Canada started with Frenchmen and Americans. Then the British were the chief immigrants till about Since then there has been a large influx from the United States and from Continental Europe. In South Africa half the 2,, white people are of Dutch stock, half of British. There are 7,, natives, and nearly 1,, people whose ancestors were Asiatic.

The empire of trading posts or areas grew during the nineteenth century. The British had an expanding output of manufactured goods to sell and hence could buy far more of the produce of Asia and Africa. India supplied the jute needed for sacks and bags. Its black tea displaced green China tea in popularity.

Its indigo was in growing demand, and it had a surplus of cotton and wheat for expert. In return India became a market for British factory-made cotton goods, hardware, machines, and railroad equipment.

It grew to be the largest single customer for British manufactures. The development of its resources and railroads was a fertile field for British investments of capital. And its exports of bulky commodities provided freight for a great part of the British merchant marine. Chaos and anarchy forced the East India Company to pass from trading to ruling. That passage was long. The remaining , square miles were left in the hands of hundreds of native princes, who were bound by treaty to let the British supervise their relations with other princes in order to put an end to wars with neighbors.

In return they were guaranteed possession of their states and thrones. The job of ruling such an India was too large a responsibility for a trading company.

The task therefore passed by stages into the hands of the British government, and in London took complete control of Indian affairs. Elsewhere in Asia trading outposts were secured. Singapore grew to be the gateway to the Far East. When the Suez Canal was opened in a new problem had to be faced, since that canal offered a short cut to India, Australasia, and the Far East.

Britain therefore bought nearly half the shares of the canal company, obtained possession of Cyprus to guard the approach from the Mediterranean, gained control of affairs in bankrupt Egypt, and established a protectorate over a bit of Somaliland at the exit from the Red Sea.

In West Africa the slave-trading posts lost their importance when slavery was abolished in the United States, but by that time West Africa and the tropics generally were be coming valuable as sources of supply of a number of newly needed materials.

Palm oil was being used in making soap, candles, and cooking fats. Cocoa was becoming a popular drink or ingredient in candy. Peanuts yielded cattle feed and the oil that went into margarine. Rubber was wanted for tires, and so on down a long list. At the very moment that this demand for tropical products grew strong, about , a number of countries—France, Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan, and the United States in a smaller way—began to develop an acute desire to build empires and acquire colonies.

It was not a desire for empires of settlement, since the tropics were too unhealthy for white men. It was rather a search for raw materials, markets, fields where capital could be invested, and for strategically valuable outposts.

France took Indo-China. Britain rounded out its possession of Burma. Various nations got footholds on the coast of China. The British government at first took little interest in this new scramble, for it felt that more colonies would mean more expenditure on defense, more taxes, and more colonial or diplomatic headaches. It had to be pushed hard by the Australian colonies and by impending German expansion before it consented to take southeastern New Guinea, even after Germany had acquired the northeast part.

It resisted many attempts by Cape Colony politicians to expand northward, though Germany had set foot on the southwest coast of Africa. When an East African sultan invited a British company to take charge of his coast line in order to prevent it from being seized by Egypt, the British Foreign Office refused to approve the deal.

Even when an area had been recognized as a British sphere, no elaborate government was set up. They had to fight the slave traders, negotiate treaties with native chiefs, try to bring peace and order, meet the rivalry of French and German companies, make roads and build railroads, wrestle with tropical disease, face the constant criticism of missionaries and humanitarians who sought to protect the natives from being exploited, and meanwhile try to organize production or trade in the hope of making a profit on their capital.

The double task, political and economic, was often too large, too costly, and usually too meager in profit—for the tropics do not abound in easy riches. In that year Joseph Chamberlain, one of the top men in the Conservative party, surprised his colleagues by asking for the post of colonial secretary.

With him the policy of imperial indifference ended. The government of the company areas was taken over by the Colonial Office, and a policy which sought to combine the development of resources with the welfare of the natives took shape. The new imperialism had its effect in strengthening the network of imperial trade routes and strategic bases. When Germany and others began to acquire footholds along the ocean routes or near British colonies, or when new navies appeared on the oceans, the British had to meet the changing strategic situation.