The Amish Effect

http://lancasteronline.com/business/local_business/the-amish-effect-unique-cultural-strengths-help-plain-sect-businesses/article_ba60c8e4-e6dc-11e5-9cc7-73775e680585.html

by networked • 10 years ago

136 67 10 years ago

lancasteronline.com

nikanj• 10 years ago

What a weird paradox http://imgur.com/fYi3aj9

baus2• 10 years ago

I grew up near an Amish community in Chautauqua County, NY. My parents had a barn built by Amish.

I hadn't thought much about the Amish in many years until I spent significant time in Chautauqua this year. I was surprised. Much of the land that had been abandoned as worthless, has been bought by the Amish and made productive again.

prometheus666• 10 years ago

Does it look like it is portrayed in the media, or they modernized a bit?

baus2• 10 years ago

I don't know how it is portrayed in the media, but I will say it is a pretty simple lifestyle in Chautauqua. It is not uncommon to see horse and buggy on the back roads. Modern amenities are definitely limited. There are exceptions, and I'm not sure how they are made, but overall it truly is a time warp.

chroma4• 10 years ago

11. For many Americans, the term “Amish” has strong positive associations: honesty, simplicity, old-fashioned virtue.

I'm surprised by this. I associate "Amish" with inbred luddites who abuse their children. I'm not saying "inbred" as a cheap insult. From the Wikipedia article on the Amish:

Since almost all Amish descend from about 200 18th-century founders, genetic disorders that come out due to inbreeding exist in more isolated districts (an example of the founder effect). Some of these disorders are quite rare, or unique, and are serious enough to increase the mortality rate among Amish children. The Amish are aware of the advantages of exogamy, but for religious reasons only marry within their communities. The majority of Amish accept these as "Gottes Wille" (God's will); they reject use of preventive genetic tests prior to marriage and genetic testing of unborn children to discover genetic disorders.

Also, the very last point:

12. Amish employees in Amish businesses are exempt from mainstream companies’ Social Security, health insurance and pension mandates. Though that keeps costs down, the impact is often exaggerated, Amish business owners say.

Talk about burying the lede! I had no idea Amish businesses had such huge tax breaks.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish#Health

mc322• 10 years ago

The Amish are hardly the only endogamous group in the US. Many small immigrant communities engage in similar behavior, because due to cultural reasons, they tend to marry into the same group, it's only as they integrate into the greater society they become more exogamous. Now, the difference here, is that they remain voluntarily isolated after so many generations and they don't tend to "import" mates from over seas as some smaller immigrant communities might do.

chroma4• 10 years ago

The main difference (to me) is that other groups use genetic testing to prevent diseases in their children. For example, Ashkenazi Jews use genetic testing to avoid having children with Tay-Sachs.[1] But the Amish's luddism causes them to reject these tests, ensuring that some of their children will needlessly suffer and die.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay%E2%80%93Sachs_disease

larsiusprime5• 10 years ago

Three claims, let's evaluate:

"inbred" seems to have a factual basis, that's fair.

"luddite" in this context is an unnecessarily loaded term that suggests an ignorance of history. (I.E., the luddites [1] were not simplistically anti-technology, they were anti-"the crown suddenly taking away the common land and giving it to rich capitalists to enrich themselves with industry while displacing us as laborers, and then blaming us for being against progress", ie, "Enclosure.') [2]

"abuse their children" requires proof. Is there evidence the amish abuse their children at a rate higher than the rest of society, and/or other cultural enclaves such as tight-nit immigrant groups?

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Rebels-Against-The-Future-Industrial/d... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

rat874• 10 years ago

I'm curious what you mean by land?

My impression was that the luddites were a movement against machines which let the factory workers replace high paying skilled jobs with low paying unskilled jobs.

chiaro• 10 years ago

I knew briefly a woman who had ran away from everything she knew at 17, to avoid a marriage. The stories of what counted as "normal" was horrific, especially with regards to daughters. Between the corporal punishment, starvation and strict-to-consequence-of-abandonment gender roles, it mapped closely to the popular conception of young women in radical islam.

chroma4• 10 years ago

"Luddite" is one of those words like "gay": it has a very different primary meaning today than it used to. I'm aware of both meanings and I used "luddite" in the common, modern sense of being anti-technology.

Is there evidence the amish abuse their children at a rate higher than the rest of society…

Where to start? The Amish stance on corporal punishment of children is well-known. "Spare the rod, spoil the child" (as Proverbs 13:24 is commonly misquoted) applies. Hitting children is common in Amish households and schools. Sources on this range from atheist neighbors[1], to friends of the Amish[2], to books that praise the Amish[3]. And speaking of Amish schools: They end at the 8th grade. People like to think that Amish teenagers have a choice about leaving the community, but what choice do they have when their prospects in modern life are so limited by their lack of education?

To frame it more concretely: If you had a neighbor who denied their children cold drinks or air conditioning on hot days, who hit them for questioning religion, and who took them out of high school so they could do work, is there any doubt that you would call child protective services? It flabbergasts me that the Amish get a pass here.

…and/or other cultural enclaves such as tight-nit immigrant groups?

This is moving the goalposts. It doesn't matter whether other groups also abuse their children. "But FLDS groups abuse their kids too!" is not an excuse that our society tolerates. In fact, with the FLDS, we sent in SWAT teams and arrested the church leaders. Sadly, the Amish seem to be grandfathered in.

The child abuse is the issue that gets the biggest rise out of me, but it's just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other ways in which the Amish needlessly inflict suffering on each other. Due to their piety, Amish positions on topics such as birth control, homosexuality, and the rights of women shouldn't surprise you.

1. http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/09/wha...

2. http://amishamerica.com/how-do-amish-discipline-children/

3. Amish Roots: A Treasury of History, Wisdom, and Lore p. 111, section titled "Disobedient Children"

jkraker• 10 years ago

I'm surprised by this. I associate "Amish" with inbred luddites who abuse their children. I'm not saying "inbred" as a cheap insult. From the Wikipedia article on the Amish

We need to be careful with this. A lot of problems happen when strong conclusions like this are drawn about a people group without actually interacting with actual people. Wikipedia facts are likely correct to some degree (like a stereotype?), but to make sweeping generalizations about all individuals involved is usually not helpful.

HillRat• 10 years ago

One mistake that many people make is attempting to understand the Amish as a religious sect. Really, they're more tribal; in fact, many Amish are essentially Biblically illiterate, as their "official" Bible is a translation in Hochdeutsch, which few understand. (Mennonites and New Order Amish tend to be more avowedly religious, however.)

As to their way of life ... well, they're people, not a theme park exhibit of bucolic pacifism, and people are inherently messy and complex. None of the Amish sects support personal fulfillment and self-actualization, certainly, and the social penalties for transgression are steep. Even worse, the insular and passive nature of the communities end up giving support to those who physically and emotionally abuse their families, even if they're a very small number within the larger Amish society.

tzs3• 10 years ago

I am assuming you are using "luddite" in the way it is typically used nowadays to mean opposed to technology, rather than using it to try to compare them to those who protested being replaced by machines in the early 19th century.

If so, you are quite wrong. This article on Amish hackers is enlightening: http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/

chroma4• 10 years ago

Your interpretation of my usage of luddite is correct. I was talking about what first comes to mind when I hear "Amish". That's a little different from what I actually think their beliefs are. That said, while I know the Amish have a more nuanced view than simple luddism, I don't think it's an unreasonable one-word summary. If there's one thing the Amish are known for, it's their lack of much of modern technology. Heck, most Amish spurn refrigeration. If that can't be called luddism, then I don't know what can.

I've seen the Amish hackers post before, and I always thought it perfectly demonstrated the Amish's schizophrenic relationship with technology. They won't use the electrical grid because they don't want to be tied to the rest of the world. OK, so where do they get the diesel to run their generators? They certainly don't extract and refine their own petroleum products. Many use compressed air to avoid electricity, but who provides them with pressure vessels and braided metal lines for these devices? Who makes their CNC mills and software to operate them? Etcetera.

They need the outside world to maintain their standard of living. They just have an extra step or two of indirection compared to most of us.

rat874• 10 years ago

The reason they were allowed to be exempt was that they were a small community who promised and demonstrated that they would take care of each other in old age.

jhonovich5• 10 years ago

"I had no idea Amish businesses had such huge tax breaks."

That is countered by them not taking / getting Social Security payments, government insurance, benefits, public schooling, etc.

dexterdog• 10 years ago

All things that don't have very good paybacks since they have to cover all kinds of other governmental bloat.

spacehome2• 10 years ago

If I had the option to not pay SS taxes and not receive SS benefits, I'd take that deal in a hot second.

tomohawk2• 10 years ago

After most furniture manufacturing moved overseas, it was impossible to find reasonably priced quality furniture for a while. I found an Amish furniture maker near Bird In Hand who filled that need for us.

The guy had no electricity, but did have a small PDA with a solar charger - many years before that became common and PDAs morphed into phones. He ran his whole business off of that, and what was in his head.

codemac• 10 years ago

North Carolina still seems to have tons of Furniture manufacturing. I imagine they haven't minded raising their prices out of state however.

tomohawk2• 10 years ago

My understanding was that after the initial rush to offshore, a bunch of manufacturing was brought back, specifically to NC, since there was still a skilled workforce there that had built furniture before.

We ended up buying a bedroom set manufactured in NC after this occurred. During the purchase, we mentioned that we were surprised to find decent quality in the brand we purchased, since the quality had been much lower last time we looked. The salesman related that this was the 1st batch being made in the US again, after an offshore experiment.

whiskeyzulu• 10 years ago

My roofer (in Lancaster County, PA) is an Amish man who owns a cell phone. He doesn't keep it with him, mind you, he just listens to his voice mail once an evening and returns the calls made. The next day he and his partners get driven around by a non-Amish to each job site of the day.

To use a stereotype in a positive fashion, he, like most Amish and conservative Mennonites I've dealt with, takes a lot of pride in his work and charges very little relative to other businesses.

noir_lord2• 10 years ago

Years ago I worked for a company that supplied medical supplies (bottles and jars etc) to other companies, the company was owned by a religious group who eschewed the use of technology much like the Amish, they ran the entire company on paper using old style ledgers.

When they needed to send a fax they'd nip over to the (ironically) software company/IT services company next door (a deal that was struck with the judicious application of baked goods).

They where nice people to work for but it seemed very strange to running a warehouse on paper in the late 90's.

bluejekyll2• 10 years ago

This article is interesting, but it perpetuates a generally positive impression of Amish life.

It's important to know that the Amish community is extremely conservative. In general, it does not have the protections that most Americans have put in place for their children (working conditions, etc.). Women in general are also very poorly treated, and lack many of the rights that we as Americans believe they should enjoy (like being equal to their male counterparts).

The response by the community to anyone who disagrees is expulsion.

http://fourhourworkweek.com/2008/07/15/escaping-the-amish-pa... http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/3348

sytelus• 10 years ago

My knowledge of Amish lifestyle comes from the book Growing up Amish. I really don't think most Amish people, including women, will agree with what you are saying. It's a deliberately different lifestyle and different set of belief system which might look operassive to someone living in American city but those values are very dearly held by those people, both men and women.

techiferous• 10 years ago

I think this oversimplifies it. I didn't grow up Amish, but I grew up in a tiny Anabaptist denomination that had a lot of cultural similarities with the Amish (but technology was allowed).

While it could be true that "those values are very dearly held by those people" you are not counting those who grew up Amish and left (or were expelled) because the values were not dearly held.

Speaking of my own experience growing up Anabaptist, I witnessed misogyny (women were not allowed to teach men) and a forced social cohesion that bordered on cult-like (people had to vow to follow very serious rules, including never to visit any other denomination, and pledge themselves to the denomination, and if they committed a "sin unto death" they were excommunicated from the community with no chance for reconciliation).

I can say with confidence that although there were some aspects of my religious upbringing that I appreciated, overall it was a bad religion that did not bring the best out of people.

jhonovich5• 10 years ago

I live in the area where this article covers, though not Amish nor related to Amish.

First of all, no one is expelled for disagreeing. And Amish regularly leave with no issues nor problems, making that decision before adult baptism. We know lots of people who do that. They still happily and friendly live next to and interact with Amish.

The problem (shunning) tends to come if Amish leave after baptism but I have yet to hear anyone expelled for disagreeing on issues.

As for children working condition protection, what do you think Amish children / teenagers do? They primarily do lots of household chores, certainly more than regular American kids but they do it with their parents and their siblings. Amish are not focused on making lots of money and they tend to do things at home so it's far unlike factory farms or third world factories one might imagine.

As for woman being poorly treated, it's quite rare for anyone, man or woman, to be poorly treated, attacked, demeaned, etc. among the Lancaster Amish from what I have seen and heard. I think what you are getting at its restriction of typical American freedoms. But the same goes for Amish men. Going out for beers with your buddies, getting a girlfriend on the side, building a corporate career, doing a YC tech startup, hanging out on a boat / yachet, etc. are all no goes for men. It's certainly not for everyone.

I would encourage you to check it out, it's less than 3 hours away from NYC and it's quite an experience. You might be surprised about how happy and fulfilled the Amish in Lancaster are.

Net/net, the article perpetuates a generally positive impression of Amish life because Amish in Lancaster generally have a positive / fulfilling life.

bluejekyll2• 10 years ago

I grew up near Lancaster, got my first drivers license there. I am Pennsylvania Dutch, so am related to them. My parents now live in Chautauqua, NY. I often go to the Amish to purchase leather, quilts, and food. I don't think they are evil, and I don't think that people (women) are necessarily unhappy in that community.

Lancaster is practically cosmopolitan compared to the Amish of Ohio and Western NY. So they are less restrictive than Amish of other areas. In general they have always been kind people in all of my interactions.

That being said, I do think that children have a false choice when they are offered to go live in the outside community. They have an 8th grade education. They might be able to get very manual labor jobs, but are most likely incapable of getting a college degree, without a lot of support. And chores are one thing, but when we talk about a lot of the other work on a farm we aren't looking at just cleaning up your room. Focusing on children alone, I think that community is one which does not even give their children an option of existing in the real world, without a ton of struggle.

wallflower• 10 years ago

Don't forget about Rumspringa.

A popular view exists by which the period is institutionalized as a rite of passage, and the usual behavioral restrictions are relaxed, so that Amish youth can acquire some experience and knowledge of the non-Amish world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa

"Devil's Playground" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0293088/

MichaelGG• 10 years ago

Which just serves to show them how bad the world is and give them a false sense of decision. Taking a sheltered kid and having them go wild is hardly a way to get a good view of things. And if they do get a good view and decide to enjoy the world, then everyone they know shuns them. It's quite deceptive.

andrewulrich• 10 years ago

I had the opportunity to visit a few Amish farms in central Missouri last fall. We enjoyed being able to buy farm fresh meat (some still twitching!), eggs, and such, and from what I saw and what I've heard from others' experiences, the Amish are honest, hardy, and hardworking. Their buggies shared the road with their neighbors' cars, and I was surprised to see obviously non-Amish homes in the area.

Also, I've seen Amish craftsmanship of barns and lofts and things on occasion, and have been impressed, and clients I've talked to had nothing but good to say about their carpentry work.

baddox• 10 years ago

I grew up near Amish country in central Missouri. My parents still live there. I have always been fascinated with the Amish: their way of life, religious/social/cultural/legal beliefs, their form of community governance, their historical relationship with the US government, and more.

graeme• 10 years ago

The Amish population is increasing rapidly: https://groups.etown.edu/amishstudies/statistics/amish-popul...

Kevin Kelly has written about the Amish: http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/

mchahn• 10 years ago

offers online ordering on a modern, well-designed website.

Excuse my ignorance, but doesn't this violate the ban on modern technology?

larsiusprime5• 10 years ago

No problem, this is a common misconception with the Amish. The Amish are not categorically anti-technology. They didn't randomly put a stake in the ground and say "no new tech after 1743!" or whatever.

Instead, they evaluate every single piece of technology before deciding to use it, to see if it will disrupt their culture and way of life. For instance, many Amish communities decided the utility of telephones was a good thing when they were first invented. Then they found that they encouraged gossip and other things they saw as culturally negative. So many Amish communities instituted a communal phone booth in the center of the village -- if you need the utility of a phone call, you have it, but without the personal temptation that comes with a personal phone.

Also there are many variants of the Amish, especially if you include the broader Anabaptist and Mennonite communities, each with their own rules.

For instance did you know some Amish communities allowed personal automobile ownership? They are not around any more because personal automobiles made it very easy for them to disburse and their communities died.

You could say that the Amish culture that survives to this day in a recognizably Amish form has been shaped by natural selection of a sort -- a test of whether the techs they choose perpetuate their community, or lead to assimilation.

(I don't have the specific citations for all this on me at the moment, but it's from what I've read in many articles and books about the Amish I've read over the years)

spacehome2• 10 years ago

disburse

disperse

tzs3• 10 years ago

There is no ban on modern technology. See:

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/09/02/217...

http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/

larsiusprime5• 10 years ago

...and there's my citations :) Thanks!

rat874• 10 years ago

Possibly they subcontract it out to non Amish?

eatonphil• 10 years ago

It's something else to see your little hometown newspaper on the front of HN.

mdip• 10 years ago

I had a nice chat with a friend who provides services for the Amish community in northern Indiana. I didn't know much about the Amish community outside of "they're the ones who don't drive cars" and the Amish turkeys my mom purchased for Thanksgiving (US).

I learned a few things that surprised me enough that I ended up Googling for proof:

- Some Amish communities allow electricity (limited, off-grid)[1]. What is allowed and isn't allowed can vary quite a bit, but only the teenagers can own cars[2].

- Amish throw the craziest parties; drugs, booze, you-name-it[2]. See "Devil's Playground (2002)", much of it shot in the community that my friend served.

- If your view of "eating healthy" rejects conventional pesticides, Amish != Organic. My friend, who previous ran an organic farm, said that the community she worked with was obsessed with yields and used an appalling amount of chemical pesticides and fertilizers[3]. In that community, there were no organic farms (though they exist). Every conventional practice that didn't break community rules was used, including with meat products, resulting in the worst of centuries old farming practices mixed with modern chemistry. GMOs are also allowed if that's something that concerns you.[4]

- Amish share some practices with Christianity, such as sex before marriage being forbidden, but some Amish communities encourage "Bed Courtship" (Bed Date or "Bundling"), where as part of courtship, two people share a bed ("Bundling" because they're bundled separately so they can become closer by ... talking). If my conservative parents had caught me sharing a bed with someone I was dating ... I don't even know what they would have done.[5]

My favorite part was the description of Amish kitchen cupboards: Filled to the teeth with Velveeta and gelatin[6] and they use it everywhere.

[1] http://www.discoverlancaster.com/towns-and-heritage/amish-co...

[2] And many own really nice ones ... during Rumspringa. My friend's children were not allowed to hang out with Amish teenagers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa

[3] http://amishamerica.com/do-amish-use-pesticides/ http://modernfarmer.com/2014/11/amish-mennonite-farmers-poll...

[4] http://www.biofortified.org/2013/10/amish-gmos/

[5] Here's an article explaining "why" it's allowed: http://www.sacred-texts.com/ame/amish/am07.htm

[6] I had heard of the gelatin thing, but not about Velveeta. Hearing descriptions about some of the meals made me ill. The attraction to Velveeta is shelf-stability. http://www.amishreader.com/2015/03/12/the-truth-about-authen...

kevin_thibedeau• 10 years ago

Amish share some practices with Christianity

Not surprising since they are Christians.

frozenport• 10 years ago

There is nothing wrong with a high failure rate, especially if you eventually succeed. On the other hand many Amish businesses don't scale, or provide littler inactivation - and certainly not technological innovation. The real Gleason is that they prefer self-employment.

elcapitan• 10 years ago

Interesting. It's a good thing that the United States are home to communities that seem to others to be out-of-time. Modern culture seems to be so quickly mingling all concepts that it's refreshing to see people who are mostly untouched by that and live just what they think makes them happy without the constant competition to be more "modern" all the time.

Their business seems to be less fragile towards outside influence and fashionable ideas which turn out to be nonsense half a year later. Ironically, they seem to benefit from the growing demand for niche and regional products outside their world.

Having said that, hope that Amish doesn't become the new Hipster lifestyle for the next 1-2 years now :D

wscott• 10 years ago

The comments here have a number of various negative stereotypes of the Amish. These are probably all based on factual events, but I doubt they are as negative as we perceive.

Do a thought exercise and reverse roles. Imagine you live in a highly conservative rural community and you wanted to make a negative documentary about the modern american lifestyle. There would be no shortage of truthful material to make us seem totally depraved.

Often I find my Amish neighbors are more accepting of us and our strange lifestyle and we are of theirs.

DanBC• 10 years ago

Whenever we see religious communities providing their own "courts" and "punishment" of child abusers we see those children continuing to be abused and the abusers continuing the abuse, often with different children.

This has happened across religions and across countries.

There have been significant problems with the Catholic church (because they're so large) either ignoring the abuse coming from nuns, or thinking that telling a priest to stop and moving him to a different town would help. That caused significant levels of harm to the survivors, and to the rest of society (in paying the costs associated with completed and attempted suicide, with drug and alcohol addiction, with mental health treatment, with reduced economic activity).

It's not just Christianity though. The Beth Din courts used by some Jewish people and the sharia courts used by some Muslim people have often told abuse survivors not to go to the police to report abuse. That covers child sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, but it also covers domestic abuse and domestic violence.

Here's one UK tv programme about rabbis: http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/rabbi-urges-alleged-...

So, while we don't know if abuse is worse in these communities we do know that the reaction to abuse is often totally inadequate.

As a general principle any organisation that has any contact with children needs to have in place robust child safeguarding processes.

It's a bit disturbing to see how weak this concept is in the US (and how it's sometimes really poorly done (eg lengthy interventions for people who allow their children to walk home from school)).

For tech companies: What do you do if a 14 year old discloses on your service that they're being abused at home? What if they say they're 11 and disclose they're being abused at home? What if an adult discloses that they're abusing their child? It might not be your role to report these to the relevant authorities (do you even know who those are) but you might want to have a single simple page on your website that describes your company's processes and requirements for interacting with law enforcement. (Something like "We don't cooperate with law enforcement under any circumstances. You'll need to take us through court" or "if you're the correct law enforcement agency and send us validly formed legal documents to example@example.com we can release this {list} information".) Users of your site who see the disclosures can then include your requirements in their reports to law enforcement.

freekh• 10 years ago

I suppose this is slightly OT, but wrt to the Amish apprenticeship , I have started teaching my 15yo nephew programming and, as of late, I have been thinking about ways to get him to do a couple of months of apprenticeship with me. Right now, I can tell he's struggling even with pretty basic notions. I think it is partially due to him not being proficient enough in english (he speaks and writes norwegian, french and spanish fluently tho so I don't blame him), so googling around and finding answers seems hard for him. I dont live in the same country as him so I don't really know where it stops clicking for him (and he doesn't have a lot of 'screen time' to do research because of his parents, which is a good thing I suppose, but not for teaching him programming). Also he's more of an entrepreneur type than a hacker type so his patience gets in the way for him to deep dive: he just wants to see his project happen, he doesn't really care how (I suppose that's normal for a 15yo though). Therefore, getting him to read a book, or doing some structured course is not going to fly (I think). Also I am pretty strict trying to teach him the "'real'" ''"basics"'': in JavaScripts example functions, scoping, events, the DOM, - not just how to glue together stuff. He's the one that asked me to help him out though, and he also said he wanted to really understand it (which is why I am trying to be strict) so there's innate motivation driving him. He asked me how to do a autocomplete (a list that pops up under an input box), so that's what we're building. (Tips are welcome by the way :)

To get back on the topic: writing this got me thinking that, maybe in a 100 years from now, the Amish will be the turn-to lisp/fortran/c/cobol? consultants :)

EDIT: typos

JoeDaDude• 10 years ago

I'm not sure if this commercial is insulting or flattering to the Amish, but it is funny: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2fkXt__lck

The Amish Effect

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