5 ms·

I wonder if this change is economically driven: if electric vehicles and tools allow Amish to produce more, then their churches benefit from higher tithes.

by itake 3y ago

bbatha 3y ago
To some degree yes the Amish are most likely to use modern technology in business contexts. On the other hand if economics were the sole factor they’d all have robot tractors and the other multitude of productivity enhancing tools that have been developed for agriculture that have been developed over the last 200 years.
bruce511 3y ago
It's interesting to me that you pose this question. I would suggest that this says more about the culture you live in than the culture the Amish live in. (No offence intended.) My hypothesis is that you live in a primarily material culture (safe bet, since we mostly all do.) Thus most of your life decisions surround money. What can you afford, how to get more of it, how to spend less of it and so on. Again, z safe bet, since that's true for most of us in general, and is emphasised especially in the US. Most of this is just baked in, so when we look at alternative lifestyles we can assume that they make decisions as we do. That can be a mistake simply because its hard to conceive the way others live. For example it's common for Europeans to get over 30 days paid leave a year. In the US most shift workers get none. In Europe salaried workers work fixed hours, then go home. In the US they stay late, do emails all night, and so on. Neither approach is right or wrong, they're just different. And it's easy to put my motivations on another group, send then see their decisions as crazy.
- itake 3y ago
  Gentrification and inflation are real and they are coming for you if you fall behind. The Amish try to be self-sustaining, but it is extremely hard to not participate in modern society, especially considering healthcare. If Grandma is sick, do you let her die or do you pay $100k for cancer treatments? If you have 7 or 8 kids, then where does the land come from to house them? Europe is a great example of a region that hasn't had a significant technology breakthrough in decades. (I'm less familiar with healthcare tech, but most engineering products have come out of the USA and Asia). The impact is real: the pounds and euro have fallen in value to the dollar.
  - fennecbutt 3y ago
    A-are you serious? You've never heard of ASML? And that's just one example. Gonna write you off as just trolling lmao.
    - itake 3y ago
      I am sure you can name a small number of examples that came out of Europe (Mistral, Spotify, Siemens, etc.), but the fact is the US and Asia generate way more value than Europe has in the last few decades. ASML is half the size of TSMC, by marketcap.
      - fennecbutt 3y ago
        We were talking about technological breakthroughs/inventions, not market cap. Plenty of technological progress and research comes from Europe. Of course China and the US have larger, higher value _market_, that's well known but Americans in particular seem to love swinging it around. And idt it's fair to compare a couple hundred million people to four and a half billion people in the case of EU vs Asia.
        itake 3y ago
        Europe has 510m people and the usa has 370m. The USA is doing more with less. In 2008, the USA and EU had comparable GDP, but today the gap is 57%.
  - bruce511 3y ago
    I've lived my whole life in a country with inflation. Its really not a big deal (to us anyway.) Wages rise with inflation to keep pace, investements take it into account ,we're not aiming for fixed-income pensions, and so on. I know there's a generation in the US that haven't seen it before, so it's scary, but once employers get into step with it, it's really not. Gentrification is a more complex issue, and tends to be quite local. But again it's normal for neighborhoods to revitalise every second generation or so. Again though, your opening statement was viewed through the idea of money. And I get that you live in a world where this is the first (and often only) consideration. How might you see it differently though if you took a different primary goal? Obviously the world you live in is the world you live in. So I'm not expecting your society to change. Rather I'm challenging you to imagine a different premise.

I wonder if this change is economically driven: if electric vehicles and tools allow Amish to produce more, then their churches benefit from higher tithes.

by itake 3y ago

I wonder if this change is economically driven: if electric vehicles and tools allow Amish to produce more, then their churches benefit from higher tithes.

bbatha 3y ago

To some degree yes the Amish are most likely to use modern technology in business contexts. On the other hand if economics were the sole factor they’d all have robot tractors and the other multitude of productivity enhancing tools that have been developed for agriculture that have been developed over the last 200 years.

bruce511 3y ago

It's interesting to me that you pose this question. I would suggest that this says more about the culture you live in than the culture the Amish live in. (No offence intended.) My hypothesis is that you live in a primarily material culture (safe bet, since we mostly all do.) Thus most of your life decisions surround money. What can you afford, how to get more of it, how to spend less of it and so on. Again, z safe bet, since that's true for most of us in general, and is emphasised especially in the US. Most of this is just baked in, so when we look at alternative lifestyles we can assume that they make decisions as we do. That can be a mistake simply because its hard to conceive the way others live. For example it's common for Europeans to get over 30 days paid leave a year. In the US most shift workers get none. In Europe salaried workers work fixed hours, then go home. In the US they stay late, do emails all night, and so on. Neither approach is right or wrong, they're just different. And it's easy to put my motivations on another group, send then see their decisions as crazy.

itake 3y ago
Gentrification and inflation are real and they are coming for you if you fall behind. The Amish try to be self-sustaining, but it is extremely hard to not participate in modern society, especially considering healthcare. If Grandma is sick, do you let her die or do you pay $100k for cancer treatments? If you have 7 or 8 kids, then where does the land come from to house them? Europe is a great example of a region that hasn't had a significant technology breakthrough in decades. (I'm less familiar with healthcare tech, but most engineering products have come out of the USA and Asia). The impact is real: the pounds and euro have fallen in value to the dollar.
- fennecbutt 3y ago
  A-are you serious? You've never heard of ASML? And that's just one example. Gonna write you off as just trolling lmao.
  - itake 3y ago
    I am sure you can name a small number of examples that came out of Europe (Mistral, Spotify, Siemens, etc.), but the fact is the US and Asia generate way more value than Europe has in the last few decades. ASML is half the size of TSMC, by marketcap.
    - fennecbutt 3y ago
      We were talking about technological breakthroughs/inventions, not market cap. Plenty of technological progress and research comes from Europe. Of course China and the US have larger, higher value _market_, that's well known but Americans in particular seem to love swinging it around. And idt it's fair to compare a couple hundred million people to four and a half billion people in the case of EU vs Asia.
      - itake 3y ago
        Europe has 510m people and the usa has 370m. The USA is doing more with less. In 2008, the USA and EU had comparable GDP, but today the gap is 57%.
- bruce511 3y ago
  I've lived my whole life in a country with inflation. Its really not a big deal (to us anyway.) Wages rise with inflation to keep pace, investements take it into account ,we're not aiming for fixed-income pensions, and so on. I know there's a generation in the US that haven't seen it before, so it's scary, but once employers get into step with it, it's really not. Gentrification is a more complex issue, and tends to be quite local. But again it's normal for neighborhoods to revitalise every second generation or so. Again though, your opening statement was viewed through the idea of money. And I get that you live in a world where this is the first (and often only) consideration. How might you see it differently though if you took a different primary goal? Obviously the world you live in is the world you live in. So I'm not expecting your society to change. Rather I'm challenging you to imagine a different premise.