3 ms·

No, there is no universal "good" otherwise wars would not occur. The American Civil War and WW2 are pretty classical examples of massive disagreements over the

• EarlKing 4y ago
  You are conflating object and subject... the thing and its perception. Good can exist even as we disagree over its definition. Some people are simply right, and some are simply wrong. We are not gods.
• WalterBright 4y ago
  > black people would still be property Not likely. Slavery had already disappeared in the Northern states due to its inefficiency and internal contradictions. Secession was an attempt to prop up slavery by isolating it economically. It was never going to work. Slavery as an institution disappeared in other countries around the same time. It was free markets that destroyed slavery, as slavery simply could not compete with free labor, and slavery was incompatible with industrialization. In the South, by 1860, the only industry where slavery was still profitable was cotton, and that was coming unglued.
  • MichaelCollins 4y ago
    > slavery was incompatible with industrialization. From what I understand, early industrialization gave a temporary boost to slavery. The cotton gin and textile factories greatly increased demand for cotton at a time when industrialization had not yet addressed the harvesting of cotton in the fields.
    • WalterBright 4y ago
      The cotton gin did indeed revive slave produced cotton when it came out. But it was hardly industrialization. It was a hand cranked box. But that was not enough by mid century, and the slave economy was foundering again.
      • MichaelCollins 4y ago
        Eli Whitney's patent depicts a hand-cranked cotton gin, but I believe by the mid 19th century they were making much larger cotton gins powered by water wheels or animal power (e.g. four mules walking around a shaft.) And on the cotton consumption side of the industry, mechanized thread spinning and power looms were by then a mature technology. The industrialization of textile industry began in the 1700s, particularly in the UK where they imported huge quantities of southern cotton.
        • WalterBright 4y ago
          The textile industry was being industrialized - but it wasn't being operated by slaves. An educated workforce is needed to operate industrial machinery, and it was illegal to teach slaves to read. Industrialization and slavery are incompatible. Forced labor has never been able to compete with free labor.
          • MichaelCollins 4y ago
            I guess my point is that industrialization doesn't/didn't occur uniformly across entire industries; some aspects of industries were mechanized before others, temporarily increasing demand for manual labor in the per-industrialized segments to keep up with the machines. Textile factories create demand for field workers, steel mills and steam engines create demand for coal miners, railways create demand for workers that lay rail, etc. Another example, in an alternate timeline perhaps, might have been the development of the western territories. Instead of Chinese immigrants building most of the rail, it probably could have been a very profitable venture for slave owners. Slave labor was used for railway construction in the south, so it's not far-fetched. I agree that slavery was destined to lose in the end, but I don't think industrialization is a direct path to the economic obsolescence of slavery, because slave labor can compliment partial industrialization.
• tsimionescu 4y ago
  One small note: LGBT people can not be exterminated in the same sense as other minorities, since new LGBT people will always born, regardless of how many of us would be exterminated, up to and including 100%.
  • klyrs 4y ago
    Cold comfort to those of us who didn't survive.