Would the U.S.A. have evolved today to be more like say Canada? Would the elite been less able to buy the politicians and even Supreme Court judges, like the newly installed Gorsuch?
Tough counterfactual question. So many variables would have shaped the eventual outcomes if no revolution occurred. US might have ended up like Australia within a Commonwealth. Or a revolution from Britain delayed into the 19th century might have become far more radical and turned against capitalism as well as Britain. Had Jefferson's image of a nation of small farmers and craftspersons won out as the future US, a very different social experiment might have emerged. The value of such huge, open-ended questions has always been to help people - as they think about the many answers - to realize that social development can always go in multiple possible directions. Things could indeed be very different today had earlier events worked out otherwise.
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