So, with all these 'what universe would you/would you not wish to live in' threads, here something along the same lines, but with a twist.
The earth is as it is today, but you suddenly have to power change a single thing in any single country other than your home one. And the effect is permanent or temporary as you wish.
For example, you could remove corruption from the current leadership of USA or perhaps make all weapons in North Korea vanish in a puff of illogicality and make sure they can never get new ones.
But now comes the twist: Whatever change you do, your country will have an equal but assuredly negative event of similar nature, also of permanent/temporary nature. Make the weapons of North Korea vanish? You loose them as well. USA get's national debt forgiven? Your country will have to pay for it. The economy of Britain gets saved? Yours is ruined beyond all recognition. Russia suddenly can't dig out raw materials out of their soil? Neither can your country. Japanese car industry permanently crashes beyond all hope of salvation? You guessed it: say good bye to a branch of industry in your country.
And don't worry, there would always be some consequence. So no saying 'loose all nuclear weapons in country X' and then laughing because you live in a country with no nuclear weapons. No, you'd just have some other negative impact on your country.
Now the question:
With this power, would you change anything? Why? And if you would, what would it be and to which country. And what do you imagine the negative impact would be in your country?
Here's my start on things:
I'd permanently make sure Saudi Arabia looses their oil reserves. Perhaps the loss of worlds largest single oil supply in-potentia and also in actual production would force us all to finally develop and really build some economically viable alternative sources of energy. The counter impact I believe would be that no oil or immediate derivatives such a petroleum would enter my country, since we actually have no oil reserves.
Sure, this would royally screw the world economy even more and my country would face pretty much full-blown panic (followed by pretty much the total reorganization of transportaion industry) for the next decade or so, but all in all I believe that would be a positive change as a whole for western world.
The earth is as it is today, but you suddenly have to power change a single thing in any single country other than your home one. And the effect is permanent or temporary as you wish.
For example, you could remove corruption from the current leadership of USA or perhaps make all weapons in North Korea vanish in a puff of illogicality and make sure they can never get new ones.
But now comes the twist: Whatever change you do, your country will have an equal but assuredly negative event of similar nature, also of permanent/temporary nature. Make the weapons of North Korea vanish? You loose them as well. USA get's national debt forgiven? Your country will have to pay for it. The economy of Britain gets saved? Yours is ruined beyond all recognition. Russia suddenly can't dig out raw materials out of their soil? Neither can your country. Japanese car industry permanently crashes beyond all hope of salvation? You guessed it: say good bye to a branch of industry in your country.
And don't worry, there would always be some consequence. So no saying 'loose all nuclear weapons in country X' and then laughing because you live in a country with no nuclear weapons. No, you'd just have some other negative impact on your country.
Now the question:
With this power, would you change anything? Why? And if you would, what would it be and to which country. And what do you imagine the negative impact would be in your country?
Here's my start on things:
I'd permanently make sure Saudi Arabia looses their oil reserves. Perhaps the loss of worlds largest single oil supply in-potentia and also in actual production would force us all to finally develop and really build some economically viable alternative sources of energy. The counter impact I believe would be that no oil or immediate derivatives such a petroleum would enter my country, since we actually have no oil reserves.
Sure, this would royally screw the world economy even more and my country would face pretty much full-blown panic (followed by pretty much the total reorganization of transportaion industry) for the next decade or so, but all in all I believe that would be a positive change as a whole for western world.
