[stallmanite]

How can one examine a couterfactual in cases like this? Barring access to Marty McFly’s time machine unless you have two identical copies of a state to experiment on how would you go about this?

Edit: legitimately curious, not trying to be nitpicky

[joshuamorton]

You probably can't, which is my point.

Generally the best ways to analyze the impact of similar social changes is to compare two similar locations, one that makes a change and one that doesn't, over the same time period, and hope that controls for broader social change.

It's not perfect by any means though.