I don’t think it’s just about “methods”. There was nothing wrong about the Cotton Gin’s “methods”, or its end goal. The problem was that other actors adapted their behavior to its presence, and, in fact, it’s not hard to see that this was very likely in retrospect (not that they could have predicted it, but if we “rerolled” the universe, it would probably happen again).
I don’t think it’s just about “methods”. There was nothing wrong about the Cotton Gin’s “methods”, or its end goal. The problem was that other actors adapted their behavior to its presence, and, in fact, it’s not hard to see that this was very likely in retrospect (not that they could have predicted it, but if we “rerolled” the universe, it would probably happen again).