Modern Tech inside an Amish Horse-Drawn Buggy
blog.caranddriver.com
blog.caranddriver.com
When (or if) people finally travel to Mars to stay, the biggest risk to the colony will be being dependent on imports from Earth. It will always be expensive to send ships from Earth to Mars, so it is folly to assume that resupply missions will continue indefinitely. So a colony which hopes to be viable must be vigilant not to be too dependent on outside goods.
This is the same as the Amish attitude. Every item from outside is regarded as suspicious; it MUST be rejected if it produces a dependency on the outside. Best if it can be made inside the community; perhaps acceptable if it can be repaired and used indefinitely even if it only comes from outside.
So a Mars colony will evaluate imports. Anything that can be made locally on Mars is best; things which can be repaired and reused indefinitely are okay; things which increase the dependency on the outside world will be shunned.
This was covered in Zubrin's The Case for Mars. With the input of some hydrogen and some energy, you can source feedstock for plastics from Mars' atmosphere. For example, ethylene:
http://pioneerastro.com/Team/RZubrin/Mars_In-Situ_Resource_U...
http://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=6970
In terms of having enough output from a material standpoint, the requirement is still mostly energy. It would require a lot of energy to move enough CO2 through the plant.
We can't ship metal, it's much to heavy. So we have to consider that beneath the fine powdery surface of mars there lies basalt rock. Is there a type of concrete that can be constructed from basalt material?
Concrete requires some rather specific calcium chemistry. But basalt is quite a good building material on its own, especially if you adopt Inca building techniques of mortarless flat-surface construction. Then all you'd need to do is construct interior insulating airtight shells to live in.
There's plenty of iron on the red planet, and from the red dust comes oxygen. Nitrogen will be harder to obtain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basalt_fiber
Among other things its used to make a type of rebar.
It has been proposed that many early Martian colonial buildings will be vaulted masonry built using locally manufactured bricks. The weight of the building and soil can serve to contain a pressurized atmosphere. Frozen water could be used in certain environments to make such buildings airtight.
It's also worth pointing out that the buildings don't have to be perfectly air tight. Small slow leaks are quite acceptable.
This alone is the most interesting point of the article. People not belonging to the community, like myself, have a fixed preconceived notion of what it's like to be Amish. I still don't know much about Amish life and culture, but it's fascinating to see where my assumptions are wrong (and what else I may be wrong about!)
So many people I grew up with seemed to think that Amish were being hypocritical by paying for taxi drivers to drive them around. That's an over-simplistic view. To an Amish community, taxi fees are a tariff intended to encourage finding a job close to home - or if at all possible - in your backyard. The ideal Amish are taught to strive for and desire is to have a farm and provide for your family with your hands.
Here is a great documentary about an Amish couple that gave the rare opportunity to be filmed and interviewed. It's not about the Amish that I grew up with, however their flavor of Amishness is philosophically equivalent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtNXvE_rLoE
This video contains content from BBC Worldwide, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds.
It has been discussed a few times here on HN [2].
[1] http://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Amish%20Hackers&sort=byDate&da...
Looking these over there doesn't seem to be any clear pattern to me. The grandparent mentioned them not wanting things that will "drastically change their way of life", surely having a washing machine is a bigger change to your life than having a chainsaw, even if you're a farmer.
The relative effect of these devices varies by location. This assessment might be true in Southern CA, but if you're heating your domicile using wood in Northern Ontario that chainsaw is looking pretty good!
I'd be leery of a chainsaw with handmade parts.
I also kind of wonder about lubricants and fuel in a chainsaw, how hard is it to safely duplicate those oils?
Except they are all air powered. They have all been rigged to run off pressurized air lines. The air is produced by a gas generator.
In the town where I grew up there are Mennonites, and now more Amish people. Apparently - the reason they don't use electricity from the grid, is because it's possibly made on 'Sunday' - ergo - they can't use it.
They all have generators to make electricity for their barns, equipment etc..
No electricity to the houses though.
Technology should be for us, not the other way around. Unlike the Amish, we put the cart before the horse.
You want those communities to collapse, because you see no other solutions except more tech, more greed, more 'progress'. That's the hamster wheel you've been given. What other life could there be?
The study linked in that blog post makes no reference to the Amish, whose happiness is entirely conjecture from the blogger.
Yes, we can do that, but that would be complicated to do it safely on humans - compared to that, a lifetime supply of drugs is cheap and simple.
I agree with what you said but think this is a little strong of a statement. I guess it depends on what you mean by technology. I'd rather live today than in the 1900s because of medical technology alone.
It's like anything. Technology just is. It's what people with free will do with it that can be harmful or helpful.
With that said, I agree we should be more diligent to at least be aware of how technology is affecting us personally, then act accordingly.
Here is Ben Franklin on the appeal of the traditional Native American life: "When an Indian Child has been brought up among us, taught our language and habituated to our Customs, yet if he goes to see his relations and make one Indian Ramble with them, there is no perswading him ever to return, and that this is not natural [to them] merely as Indians, but as men, is plain from this, that when white persons of either sex have been taken prisoners young by the Indians, and lived a while among them, tho' ransomed by their Friends, and treated with all imaginable tenderness to prevail with them to stay among the English, yet in a Short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good Opportunity of escaping again into the Woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them"
I was referring more to the Polio and TB and Smallpox. I believe estimates are 50-96% dead from European travels to North America. Crazy stuff.
--
[0] - defined as the culture that outcompetes other cultures; often called "Western culture", but it's not really important where it came from. McDonalds, for instance, is part of universal culture, but it wins not because it's from America; it wins because people find it to be actually a pretty good idea.
As for lack of "real cultural diversity", well, people apparently don't care. I know that I don't. Cultural diversity is just random noise for me - it's cool to look at when you have lots of spare time / income, but when I'm making day-to-day decisions about what to wear, eat, or use for my tasks, I'm going to pick it based on factors like quality, cost-effectiveness and usefulness. Or in other words - it's fun to go to a ${insert culture} restaurant from time to time, but day-to-day, I'm gonna buy the white bread that's the same and universally available almost everywhere.
They also live communally in farming colonies of about 80 people (half Dunbar's number) in very remote parts of Western Canada and the Northwestern US. Historically, the Hutterites have pissed off the local non-Hutterite farmers because the colonies are successful and can buy up local land from the non-communal/ religious/ pacifist local farmers; they were run out of South Dakota for their success combined with their pacifism in the early 20th Century.
They are pacifist, just like all Anabaptists (Mennonite, Amish, etc). Unlike English variants of Anabaptism (Quakers, etc), Hutterites and other German derived sects drink quite a bit of alcohol, I think. I think they have a great a-capella singing ritual tradition. I bet their food is great, too. I heard they like hockey.
The ~1900 Hutterites are also famous among population theorist/ demographers because their historical data provided the baseline of the highest possible, yet realistic, human fertility society. They married early (probably with quasi-arranged marriages), had lots of babies (much cheaper to raise in a communal setting), were healthy with relatively low mortality, and kept great records (German heritage...).
They are very much a going concern today, continuing to found new colonies even a few years ago, one in Oregon 14 years ago [3] below. I have always wanted to visit a colony, but I live in the urban Puget Sound and the closest colony is about 3.5 hour drive away. I have read that they are quite welcoming, as long as you are quite respectful in return (a fair trade, to my mind).
[1] http://www.hutterites.org/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutterite
[3] http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=200...
It's important that you know that Quakers aren't Anabaptists[0].
They hold the "peace church" thing in common, and have both essentially fallen out of consort with mainline Protestantism, but that's about it.
Generator hubs for bicycles are mature technology at this point. Including capacitors in the taillights so they stay on when the bike is stopped. Buggies could easily adopt them, but I guess it's not worth the bother if batteries mostly work.
If a horse isn't in a hurry, it usually travels at a walk, which is something like 5mph. So bicycle dynamos won't work well for a buggy.
The article discusses the higher efficiency of steel tires compared to rubber tires and the emphasis on light weight. Tens of Watts of generator load on the horse is probably more than the difference in steel vs. rubber tires.
If it's not enough to bother a human cyclist, it's not enough to bother a horse.
If you're prepared to live in a cardboard box you can save a fortune on rent. It's also a deliberately low standard of living.
It is quite a shame as Lancaster County is some of the world's best farmland/top soil and we've paved it all. :(
The article quotes ~$8,000 for a new buggy, plus a horse which although they produce themselves has to be fed and cared for. That to me sounds in the ballpark of the cost of owning a decent used car.
Obviously, there will be some who buy new more frequently, but that goes directly against their way of life (to not seek the material things of this world) and is not that common.
The big secret to small time farming is that if you don't have to pay for lots of shit like tractors, etc, you can make money the old fashioned way. Not having car payments, cable tv, etc helps too.
Also, many groups are loaded because they've sold land that's been swallowed up by suburban sprawl.
They poured a slab around the posts (well, the concrete company did), and then they got out their chainsaws and started cutting the tops off the posts and leveling them to each other. They attached cross members, and out of the chaos emerged the superstructure of the building. It went up fast. When they were done you would never know it wasn't built using traditional methods.
They don't mind buying things they can't make, as long as they can repair or do without them afterward.
They won't buy things that need constant connection to the outside - like grid electricity.
They will buy a generator as long as they can take it completely apart and put it back together. But if they can't do that they won't.
LED's seem unexpected to me, but I suspect they are OK with them because the lights are not for them they are for the outside world. As far as they are concerned they don't need them (so can do without).
Note: Things (such as buying a generator) vary by community.
So I assume they like LED's for the same reason you do, less battery.
If they did make incandescents (I suppose if they tried they could), then the comparison would be harder for them, and I would expect some communities to go one way, some the other.
You have to wind it such that no part of the wire touches (or it will burn out at that spot).
It's titanium which is not an easy material to make wire out of without special industrial equipment. And not pure titanium either, but has special additives.
You have to make it without any variation in thickness! Even a 1% variation will cause it to rapidly overheat and burn out.
It's also not a vacuum in there, but a mixture of nitrogen and argon, which needs special equipment to gather.
In short they could make a bulb like what Edison made, but without an industrial base not anything like a modern bulb.
And despite all that, those bulbs sell for pennies.......
The other half of their philosophy is avoiding pride. So cool, you're self-sufficient. But not perfectly so, or that would be prideful.
There's an old Amish joke - father is driving the family home from Meeting in the buggy. He turns to Momma and says "I guess we were the plainest ones there!"