Day 1: Read Settlers
Day 30: Amish Genocide
What the?
Amish are landowners. Actually pretty substantial land owners.
Yeah, they are.
The “joke” is more on the spectacularly totalizing ideology, inability to tolerate wierd random sects even in theory, general “yikes” factor.
I’m actually currently considering using, “what does your ideology/you think of the Amish?” As a stock useful question to extract a lot of information that I care about fast.
Because you get this kind of thing, where inability to tolerate cultural/economic/religious differences is illustrated. You also get people who fall over themselves to say how wonderful the Amish are and how they are a good example of what they want to make all of society look like.
My belief: Transhumanism is actually Good, but we need to establish areas and precedents such that things like Amish communities can still exist and be totally unaugmented, not just on a “legally permitted” level, but on an “economically feasible” level. (And not necessarily sharing in truly spectacular levels of wealth of the rest of society - the key thing is not desperate enough that they gradually have to give up or disappear.)
“The state is obligated to maintain the economic feasibility of every community’s chosen lifestyle” is a pretty deep hole to dig yourself into.
Not so much the Amish specifically, as I believe that Transhumanism should be voluntary.
And voluntary for real, not “it’s technically voluntary, but if you don’t engage in it, you starve to death.”
Also maintaining low-tech farming communities somewhere probably hedges against some kind of disaster.
Ok, but at what level (of wealth presumably?) do you reject the “legitimacy” of their cultural free zone.
It’s a tough question since it requires an effective subsidy, but it’s not something you can give a hard answer to because it’s situational.
An uncontacted tribe was recently wiped out by gold miners (unconfirmed). That subsidy could be in the form of preventing them from getting wiped out, but it’s still a subsidy.
The thing is that one thing that really scares people about Transhumanism is that it could become economically mandatory.
It’s hard to answer because central planning is fundamentally flawed.
You have to either be okay with destroying communities like the Amish or you have to allow markets to exist in some communities.
Which begs the question, at what level of wealth are they no longer culturally significant enough to be left alone? Why does wealth make a community less culturally significant?
Look, what “The Market” wants WRT Transhumanism is potentially fucking terrifying.
Just having people be healthy all the time isn’t enough for “The Market”. It’s ludicrously productive relative to the current day, but market forces don’t have a nice stopping point unless acted on by non-market forces.
Are you willing to modify yourself into a workbot whose preferences are only to fiercely and competitively work, eschewing basically everything else human?
If the answer is “no,” then “The Market” will allow you to be outcompeted for scarce resources by someone who will. Previously, this wasn’t as dangerous because basically no one could actually do that, and people could not replicate themselves.
The only way to avoid it is to tamper with the market instead of declaring that the market is morally inviolable.
The simple way to do that is something like just cutting everyone a check such that basic needs are met. That probably isn’t enough by itself, but it takes us a lot of the way there. It’s also most of the help those kinds of communities will need in the… let’s call it the medium term.
Anyhow, that’s only “markets don’t exist” if you think taxes negate the existence of “markets” - and since I view markets as purely a tool to be cynically used, and not morally binding, then if that’s the cost, then that’s the cost.
Do we crack open the land or cut off checks if other conditions get bad enough? We might have to. After all, groups like the Amish, and others who are, for lack of a better word, “weak”, depend for defense on the surrounding country or other stronger agents. It isn’t something we want to do, but it’s a chance greater than zero.
Pragmatics, dude. It doesn’t have to all be universals.
Edit: Or, to put it another way, relative to other goals I want to accomplish, and the means I want to accomplish them by, keeping the Amish around and Amish doesn’t really cost that much, marginally.
I mean, what, I have to keep high-on-self-righteousness Progressive Communists from killing them all due to “Settler Colonialism”? In any scenario like that, I have to oppose the Communists anyway. Someone could invade the country and seize the Amishlands? I have to prevent or repel the invasion of the country anyway. Plague of robot locusts? Well, that isn’t only a problem for the Amish, now is it?
So you’re imagining some sort of huge commitment, probably, but it isn’t. Inertia and cultural things and so on will probably keep them Amish for some time without requiring that much energy that wasn’t already going to be spent anyway. And if it doesn’t, and they just all spontaneously decide not to be Amish, not out of desperation, but just because they got tired of it and wanted hovercars more or something, then it’s not what I was looking for as a hedge anyway, so you know, let them.
You seem like an intelligent person and I’m genuinely interested in your perspective and position on theoretical societies.
And… id like to respond to this, but I found your answer vague and buried in a lot of other, only broadly pertinent to my question.
So if you don’t mind, and I promise I’m genuinely interested in your response, primarily in the values, rational and logic behind your answer.
What features of a society/community make it eligible from protection (and preservation) from forced economic and social manipulation? Is it a some
I will not commit to any sort of absolute rule of “which societies are protected from forced economic and social manipulation.”
Partly, this is because I believe economic coercion is real (contrary to certain ideologies), but also because all communities are always at risk for “forced economic and social manipulation,” and the world of communities is more like an ecosystem than not.
Things like property rights and national boundaries always exist within the context of force.
Still, I tend to take a more Utilitarian than Deontological view. The fact of the matter is that some people really like living the Amish life.
So I am willing to outline some rough things.
1. Do I have to pay for the community’s externalities, directly or indirectly?
With the Amish or Japan, largely no. With the Middle East, based on future migratory conditions, yes, and with resource conditions, nations that have a very high fertility, also yes.
This includes the dominant political conditions within my nation. If my nation’s dominant political figures are always demanding refugee intake, or mass migration, then practices I could potentially ignore before suddenly become my problem.
2. How well-functioning is the community internally? Do people actually like it, or are they just prohibiting anyone from escaping?
In many Islamic countries, being an atheist is very dangerous, and attempting to leave Islam risks death, this is in addition to things that aren’t even mandated by Islam, such as the burkas or FGM. The GDP is low, the corruption is high, and the economy only hangs on because of oil revenue. Debilitating preventable medical defects pile up due to generations of cousin marriage. (Also, Islam demands to spread.)
So it isn’t functioning well, and it uses some pretty extreme measures against half the population, that other traditionalist societies don’t.
By comparison, the Amish don’t appear to have this level of internal dysfunction, and they have some preventable genetic issues, but it’s because of a small founder population. They specifically send Amish people out into broader society to see if they want to stay Amish, and I’ve never heard of anyone getting killed for leaving the Amish life.
3. Just how many resources are they tying up? Can we afford it?
As mentioned earlier, the marginal cost of just leaving the Amish where they are is not that high. It could be too high if that land ends up needed in order to win a total war, but that’s unlikely.
If too much land is Amish, that makes the country unable to be adequately defended, and like with gold miners killing an uncontacted tribe, eventually someone else will enact “forced economic and social manipulation” on them instead.
In the case of Japan, they’re at parity with the global economy, producing value and all that.
4. What is gained by leaving them there?
There are benefits to having a small population of Amish. The first is that they produce various craft goods that people like. Also some people like to live that way (and if they’re small enough, the rest of us can act as a defensive buffer).
But also, it’s important to have some knowledge of by-hand manufacturing and farming practices in the event of some kind of technological catastrophe. Normally we’d have to pay people to do that, but the Amish do it for free! (Relatively speaking, based on existing property laws, and with an opportunity cost in technological output.)
I don’t know with certainty what all the disasters and problems having Amish hedges against, but my intuition is that having some functional low-tech groups around lowers humanity’s existential risks by a good chunk. Though I’d ideally like them on some island or other area that would be more difficult to raid if the cities fell due to technological collapse.
So, when we take all that together, I end up being more of a Nationalist, and at odds with the Progressive Leftists and various other groups. (Thus, for instance, suggesting giving the White Nationalists land for making some tiny city-state somewhere to shut them up and as an experiment, etc.)
