• Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I always hate the “time traveller kills Hitler” stchick.

    Killing Reagan does not change the political climate that allowed him to rise to power. In fact killing him could have made things worse for the USA. See 9/11 for a recent example.

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Just go a bit farther back and teach Bonzo how to do the deed.

    • Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi
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      1 year ago

      I wouldn’t have killed Regan had I gone back in time, I would’ve gone a bit further back and after Rockerfeller got forced to sell standard oil, I would’ve offed him just before he was able to use the money he gained to form Chicago University and it’s dreaded Chicago school of economics.(home to the ludicrous idea that the free market will regulate itself) Which I think had even worse consequences than Reganomics, if not directly influencing it.

      At the very least, it would’ve likely extended the 30 years worth of post Roosevelt economic prosperity that decreased wage gaps, and actively created the middle class at least a bit longer before some other rich butthole got the same or a similar idea as Rockerfeller.

    • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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      1 year ago

      That assumes you’re only pulling off one time-travel assassination. What if you just keep doing them until the lack of the relevant people shifts the political climate by itself? Like in the "go back and kill Hitler (or just push him onto a different life path at a young age, if you have time travel, you can probably remove someone as a leader without just killing them), sure, maybe a different fascist rises in Germany instead, but if you take out that one too, and the next one, and the next, eventually someone who isn’t a fascist will manage to get into office, or if you keep it up long enough, the german fascist movement will run out of viable leaders, and cease to be a major factor in the political climate of the time.

        • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social
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          1 year ago

          To be honest, going back and just taking Hitler or any similarly historically important person out of the equation is likely enough to do that, for most people, given the impact he had on the world, or at the least removes the reason for you to go back in time, so presumably if you’re seriously contemplating doing this, whatever time travel mechanism you have going on probably has to be one where you are shielded from the consequences of whatever changes you make anyway.