I don’t think that’s true. That’s the same idea behind the cotton gin—that making slave labor more efficient would make fewer slaves necessary and so reduce it. But the opposite happened because cotton became more profitable and operations expanded. If any technology would have finished slavery it would be computers and robotics because robots are even cheaper than slaves. Also the jobs that those open up are inherently hostile to slavery—you can’t whip someone into programming faster or better.Ken wrote: ↑Sun Sep 10, 2023 4:08 pmIn the north, the source of energy that fueled industry and productive business endeavors was coal (steam) and then later oil. In the south the source of energy that fueled industry and productive business endeavors was human bondage. Absent the Civil War, what would have eventually killed off slavery would have been oil and the advent of diesel driven mechanization in agriculture.
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The video notes that one aspect of Southern culture was an aversion to manual labor. That’s an aspect of other cultures as well but I think that that’s another effect rather than a cause. I would suggest that cultures with an aversion to manual labor are cultures where hard work doesn’t get you much of anywhere. The South was more aristocratic with less room for advancement. Could some redneck have realistically have gotten the rights to develop the mentioned steel industry in Birmingham without some local bigwig interfering? The aristocrats themselves were doing very well for themselves in agriculture, why risk trying something new?