Hacker News Reader

Comment by March_f6 | Hacker News Reader

An excellent case study of what can happen when an engineer's ethical framework amounts to: "does it work?", given the cotton gin's impact on slavery. To think, if only it was invented after the civil war.

View on HN

from https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent:

"... In 1798 he figured out how to manufacture muskets by machine so that the parts were interchangeable. It was as a manufacturer of muskets that Whitney finally became rich. If his genius led King Cotton to triumph in the South, it also created the technology with which the North won the Civil War."

That's one take, sure. But the original point I was making was what if southern farmers had failed to make a large profit off of slave labor in the first place (with the help of the cotton gin), then maybe they wouldn't have been so attached to the idea of slavery to begin with and the civil war would have been radically different or entirely averted.

The cotton gin was invented in the 1790s. African slaves were used to work the American south for hundreds of years before that.

Depending on what you want to define as the start of slavery, slavery started in the US south between about 1650 and 1700--at best 150 years, and maybe not even 100 years. The entire institution of slavery in the US lasted only 200 years.

Interesting to be down-voted for this comment.

I dont blame James Watt for the exploitation during the Industrial revolution.

Deciding if you're a part of the problem or part of the solution can be done without thinking about blame in any sort of absolute terms. Also, the steam engine and cotton gin are two completely different inventions.

You might get a better response by saying something constructive, such as how Whitney could have predicted its effect on society given what was known at the time. Because it’s easy to want to have an ethical framework that results in good outcomes for everyone, but predicting outcomes is very hard.

Predicting outcomes is one thing. Putting the two questions: "Should I do something?" and "Can I do something?" on equal footing is another. Maybe don't conflate wishful thinking and foresight. And as far as the statement of a fact being constructive or nonconstructive, maybe don't conflate those things either.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com