The Horny Goat wrote:
> On Sun, 23 Apr 2006 17:54:51 GMT, "Ebenezer T. Squint"
> wrote:
>
> >Small groups (Amish, Hutterites etc.) do live in the past but an entire
> >country doing so would experience a drastic decline in standard of living
> >unacceptable to most of its citizens, and wouldn't do so until the required
> >resources of modern life become prohibitively expensive. In particular a
> >country that forgoes modern military tech would make itself a sitting duck.
> >The only countries today living a low-tech life are those that never
> >modernized to begin with, because of colonial mistreatment, political
> >instability, philosophical/religious beliefs, or sheer isolation.
>
> That's not quite true - Amish and Hutterites avoid modern luxuries but
> very very definitely make use of the latest and greatest technology in
> their work. This is true in both their agricultural and
> non-agricultural work activities. I would not own an Amana
> refrigerator if it were not so. Admittedly Amana is now owned by
> Whirlpool but my late grandmother had one in the 50s and 60s that
> lasted pretty much forever.
Nitpick: The Amana colony is neither Amish nor Hutterite. It is a
Pietist outgrowth of Lutheranism. The communal economic structure
somewhat resembles Hutterite colonies, but the history is quite
distinct.
Richard R. Hershberger
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