Nothing, no one would listen to me and I doubt I could get away with killing billionaires or destroying their property

I’m going to visit the Cincinnati Zoo in 2016 and stop this one kid kid from falling into a gorilla enclosure.

Edit: fixed spelling error

Be really obnoxious about the ballot format in the Florida 2000 election until they either fix it or news outlets do a good job educating people about how to correctly vote for Gore

The guy that made LED headlight tech for cars would disappear, that’s for sure.

Find Elon musk and tell him that only betas use ketamine, and real epic cyberlords smoke fent

Considering I’d just be some guy, I’d invest all of my money in Nvidia and Bitcoin then when I get back and have millions, I’d spend it on passing wealth taxes and raising the minimum wage.

I would get everyone to sign the Paris agreement and give it real teeth for non compliance.

• Do what I could to stop the passing of the SCOTUS Citizen’s United ruling
• Write a letter to then Senator Obama that there’s a major recession coming and that holding the banks accountable and buoying the lower and middle class is a better option than a bailout of the private sector
• Warn about various impending natural disasters around the world to try to save as many folks as I could

I’d make sure a lot of people causing big trouble today wouldn’t be able to cause that trouble if you catch my drift.

Well if you allowed one more year, I really feel that stopping the Columbine shooting would have an exponential improvement on the quality of the timeline.

The one thing I realize about questions like this is that they are simply pointless. There is very little an ordinary individual can do to alter much. Even if you got taken back in time to the right time and place to make a change, what would that look like? People write stuff that predict the future all the time. Technofascist predictions about the internet being used by a few jackasses to monitor everyone and keep people under control have been written in the 90s, but no one listened at the time.

Assassination? Good luck! Even if you got teleported back in time to 1997 and were armed with a gun and right outside a room with an unsuspecting Peter Thiel and Elon Musk (and maybe a few others) would blowing them away genuinely ‘solve’ the problems we have today? Or would it simply allow for another person to step in and do the same shit but just with a different name and face?

Enriching yourself using well timed lottery numbers is practically the only thing that would make things better for you, but while that would mean you can relive those years in complete comfort (even luxury) if your objective is to change the world then it is a hollow one.

Diplomacy.

After 9/11, when the world weighed an invasion of Afghanistan, America could have skipped the invasion, taken the Al Qaeda leadership the Taliban offered up, and continued to seek O/UBL. A forensic investigation and specific arrests, extradition, trials, and convictions would have been much better than a disastrous 20 year war that accomplished two things: enriching military contractors and the impoverishment of a central Asian nation.

Diplomacy.

Deposing Saddam Hussein with the same type of pressure that, later, led to the ousters of Hosni Mubarak, Ben Ali, and Bashar al Assad. Some might say that 2003 created the pretext for the Arab Spring. I’d counter that time and tide created the conditions. Operation Iraqi Freedom was a pipe dream and an extension on the GWoT piggy bank.

Diplomacy.

Building a better, more sustainable future demands a move away from fossil fuels. Making driving, urban sprawl, warfare, agribiz, and Amazon packages into a socially toxic soup of ideas would have done wonders for green initiatives. Instead a turn away from the largest industries of the time was — and still is — regarded as heresy.

I’d write a list of future events and share it everywhere I can, editorializing of course to make sure them coming to volition validates my political views, and then use the eventual fame to shape the world in my image.

Ignoring that path, and with no political sway of my own …

I’ve got nothing. I’d be like 5 years old and Australian. And overall Australia’s doing pretty fine. If there’s one issue I’d focus on it’s digital privacy and my biggest adversary there would be Google. IDK, there’s not really one domino I can affect to change things. Maybe warn about 9/11 and the subprime mortgage crisis but I’m pretty sure other people already did both of those to no avail. Plus I’d be 2 or so years old at the time of 9/11 so that’d probably not go well.

The other half of states that do not have ballot initiatives should have them. So the drug war would have ended peacefully. Contaminated overdoses and corruption would have been prevented.

deleted by creator