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In part because when labor is free you have less incentive to innovate; American slavery in the U.S. South was threatened more by the invention of the cotton g
by smileysteve 3y ago
In part because when labor is free you have less incentive to innovate;
American slavery in the U.S. South was threatened more by the invention of the cotton gin and the global floor for cotton prices dropping. This was diversified away somewhat with Tobacco, but still a major factor in the economics of slavery.
The sad part is that the US South was fearful of this economic reality - up to runaway slaves and illegal slave trade decimating the profit margins - which meant the powder keg for revolt was ready. But as we can see from the Southern "Tax" men stealing from the citizenry, the French less incentivised because of global cotton prices; the future in American slavery was futile.
- philwelch 3y agoI think you have the economic history of the cotton gin backwards there. The slave economy was much more tobacco-centric before the cotton gin, because even with slaves, cotton was too labor-intensive to be worth large scale agriculture before the cotton gin. The cotton gin is a good example of Jevons paradox, where making something more efficient (in this case, making cotton harvesting more labor-efficient) ends up increasing demand (in this case, of cotton-harvesting labor).