This Has to Stop

[The Grand Nudger]

Or what about the Amish? Beliefs they teach aside, they intentionally strip away access to modernism in virtually every way. Technology, education, everything that makes life worth living nowadays, completely cut off and isolated. 

Not true. I live within twenty minutes of the nearest Amish family and I can tell you for a fact that they absolutely accept rides from people who own cars. They eat out in restaurants and yes - some do allow their picture to be taken. While their farms might not use modern technology such as modern farm equipment and electricity, they do absoultely take advantage of modern conveniences while they are out in public. 

Saw them numerous times up at Hershey hospital when I took my oldest there for appointments to see her specialists. She stayed in the Children's hospital for 10 days after her last surgery. There were dozens of them in the family waiting room after a child fell out of a barn window. They used the microwaves and the refridgerators there as well as some of the kids played video games available for use. They do not turn away medical attention. They sell their goods and their wares to modernized people. How else do you think they make money necessary to pay their property taxes and the like? Did you honestly think that they were so far removed from society that they were somehow hidden, exempt from actually dealing with the public? When an Amish kid turns 18, they are given the opportunity to spend time in the real world, exposed to everything thing we have access to today, for a period of one year. They either come back to their community at age 19 or they opt out. If they opt out, they are never allowed to return to their community. Ever. But to say that they aren't ever exposed to modern conveniences is just a flat out lie.

Also - The Amish are frequently in the news papers as well and they all aren't "innocent" God-fearing people either. Just a few years back, a few Lancaster county Amish boys got busted for selling marajuana out of their buggy. Completely cut off and isolated, my ass. Do some research on a subject before you speak about it.

They also contract the non-amish owners of heavy equipment and modern diagnostic services.......in order to run their thoroughly modern growing operations.  

Their "amishness" has become a part of the branding of their products which isn't necessarily fraudulent, but which they are very willing to perpetuate by innocent omission of the actual particulars of their lives and business. I run a local "amish" farms IPM. A great deal of modern technology is involved in this, and ofc it would be...alot of money is on the line. So long as they have no personal interaction or involvement with it, it satisfies any legalistic challenge to their ideology...and frankly this is how the amish have -always- done business.

I wonder, sometimes...if anyone ever wonders why amish produce is not uniformly classified as organic..........if people imagine that the amish owners of a for market operation..for some reason, either failed to recognize or failed to secure a profitable designation for the products whose sale is the generator of cash upon which their lives depend.

No, they don't get the cert because they aren't organic. They have their fields sprayed. Boom sprayers are pulled by tractors up and down the row on a regimented schedule. They then sell the product as a sort of side-grade. It costs a smidge more because it's amish. That pays the note on the 300m. I wish I had a 300m.

All of this refers only to those amish producers who -don't- lease the majority of their arable land to factory farms.

-While the ritual community of the amish is profound and profoundly different, they aren't so fucking stupid and backwards as to drive themselves into bankruptcy over it. In order to support that ritual community, they have to be competitive.