The hard part is creating a viable alternative culture that can make collective choices about technology use.
It’s also worth noting that the Amish rely on the ‘English’ I.e. American legal system and military for their defense. Their way of life doesn’t stand alone outside of American society.
Furthermore, allowing people to maintain their lifestyle with minimal interaction with the state is probably the best possible use of the state in the first place.
Military forces are a separate problem from legal problems. I think rather a lot of the people rushing to correct me are conflating the two in their heads. When you say "just being taken by other Americans", are you thinking of a rogue criminal or some sort of organized invasion?
Personally, I suspect that even if you tried the sort of organized invasion that a civilian might try to put together that you'd still find yourself up against some stiff resistance. Criminals in general are less than excited about stealing from people when they can almost count on being shot at. They steal from people who won't shoot at them.
The problem is when you get to military levels of invasion, at the level where you start putting together forces that count on being shot at and still overpowering you.
Sounds like a militia.
Also, you don’t seem to be being taking seriously what it means not to have a legal system.
For example why are you talking about criminals? If there is no legal system, there are no criminals. A bunch of guys with AR-15s and pick up-trucks and walkie talkies really wouldn’t find it hard to displace a religious community who are relying on old hunting rifles, horse drawn buggies, and no wireless comms, especially since the Amish would have families to protect.
They'll only need to make an example out of a few people to make it clear that giving in to their demands is much cheaper than fighting them.
The beauty of a society that embraces individual choice is that the individual gets to choose. You can let somebody else decide for you, but you can also go against them.
The article loses me on this point as well. Any individual can look at the effects a technology has on those around them and decide not to participate. Does that mean you're left behind? Yeah, but the Amish face the same problem anyway.
The one advantage the Amish have is that their 'eccentric' choices are seen as more valid and respected compared to an individual making those choices. But I think that's more of a failing of our modern culture not respecting individual rights as much.
Said strong economy being most of the time directly linked to the technology level of the country.
The value of a TV is completely dependent on who can broadcast.
“Saying if I want a TV I should be able to buy one.” is a meaningless comment on freedom given that broadcasting is regulated.
The government doesn’t have to control who can buy TVs if it controls who can broadcast.
But if you don't want say a gun but then profit from an army that does use guns that does sound a bit hypocritical.
You can decide for yourself, but most technology is social, and so it matters quite a bit whether other people make similar decisions to you.
Is there any vaguely-homogenious 0.1% of America's population that could stand alone outside of American society, when you start requiring mega-scale social systems like a first-world legal system and military? I'm thinking "no".
The Amish are probably able to put some kind of legal system together themselves, but their decided religious pacifism limits them to living under protection of others.
In other words, you can be as “committed” to pacifism as you want, but your life and freedom, and your indulgence in your pacifist philosophy, is made possible by other people’s commitment to the defense against violence with violence, and, often, to their sacrifice.
There are some things worth dying for (for example, freedom as you point out). A pacifist has a similar mentality, but believes not taking a life is worth dying for.
Both the pacifist and the non-pacifist want freedom, but the pacifist would rather surrender liberty than kill if that's what it comes to. By analogy, I want to keep my car, but I would not shoot anyone who tried to steal it even though it's legal where I live. I might hate what they're doing but I value their life more than my car.
“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.” -- John Adams
> The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to the taking of life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists whose real though unadmitted motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration of totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writings of younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States. Moreover they do not as a rule condemn violence as such, but only violence used in defence of the western countries. The Russians, unlike the British, are not blamed for defending themselves by warlike means, and indeed all pacifist propaganda of this type avoids mention of Russia or China. It is not claimed, again, that the Indians should abjure violence in their struggle against the British. Pacifist literature abounds with equivocal remarks which, if they mean anything, appear to mean that statesmen of the type of Hitler are preferable to those of the type of Churchill, and that violence is perhaps excusable if it is violent enough. After the fall of France, the French pacifists, faced by a real choice which their English colleagues have not had to make, mostly went over to the Nazis, and in England there appears to have been some small overlap of membership between the Peace Pledge Union and the Blackshirts. Pacifist writers have written in praise of Carlyle, one of the intellectual fathers of Fascism. All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty. The mistake was made of pinning this emotion to Hitler, but it could easily be retransferred.
"Notes on Nationalism", 1945 (https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...)
The army was abolished by the man who became president by winning a civil war. Costa Rica maintains armed forces to patrol the border, combat drug trafficking, and maintain internal order, as well as an armed police force. But they don’t call any of these things “armies”.
They have a defense alliance with the United States. If another country tries to invade them, the US will use violence to defend them. Is it pacifism to depend on someone else’s willingness to sacrifice for you?
Costa Rica only exists as a country because they successfully used violence to repel a private army raised by a US citizen who wanted to annex them to the US.
Call me pessimistic if you want. I prefer to believe that I have a realistic view of the role of violence in the world.
In history there's a handful of cases where there have been what are viewed as probably warless societies. Honestly I wouldn't say they fared any worse than warring states. Indus Valley Civilization, Rapa Nui Civilization, Early Sumeria... I'm sure there's countless others in reality but those are what I recall off the top of my head.
I find it difficult to actually piece together a narrative where war is actually a necessity. Empire itself, abstracted, is really just the displacement of toil which isn't a "necessary evil" by any means. And by far and large that is what virtually all war has been predicated on up to World War 2 which justified itself with teleological underpinnings like Marxism and Fascist ideologies; perhaps a few exceptions being outright hostilities triggered by emotional kings.
Ultimately it's survivorship bias, but the surviving population is selecting for all the worst conceivable parameters, which in turn has perverted our whole understanding of civilization. It's made it seem as if war is necessary, that defense strategies and assets must be in place, etc... I don't think this is really the case, but creating a policy system that is totally forbidding of the powers necessary to conjure the public force is a difficulty in and of itself.
I do also suspect that people who do tow the line of government aren't self-contained individuals, they do themselves require laws, governance, and espouse things like inevitable war are exactly those predisposed to causing it, and they're projecting themselves.
If you don't believe in threats, why use https?
But I would disagree with the notion that one society should only adopt a belief if it generalizes to the entire planet. That's not really a useful yardstick to judge feasibility in a world that requires heterogeneity and in which different groups have different pressures. Universalism is a bigger lie than pacifism.
So what role does pacifism play? Let's reinterpret the Orwell quote -- those who have money and guns can be Pacifists. I would say yes. If they were militarists, it would end badly as you would get powerful warmongering states. So a bias towards pacifism among those who strong and in no danger makes sense, just as a bias towards militarism among those who are weaker and in danger makes a lot of sense. Then we can look at the other aspect. If you are a radically different subgroup embedded in a larger population, you want to keep your head down. You don't want to be seen as a threat. So the Amish, famously apolitical and non-militaristic, are more tolerated by the rest of society.
Whilst the Amish are reliant on the rest of society's laws and defenses, there are other ethnocultural groups within the USA that are reliant on the rest of society for their housing and food supply. That's a lot further down the hierarchy of needs.
This alternative culture is impossible under capitalism, where the tendency is for any and every technology to be acquired and applied in the service of the already rich and powerful.
Also, by definition, if collective choices are being made about the use of technology, then it’s not capitalism.
Collective choices get made within capitalism all the time. Corporations, clubs, cooperatives, unions, associations, etc, cities, counties, countries, etc, are all legally established collective choice making groups. There is also nothing preventing people from forming their own groups by free association.
The key feature of a capitalist enterprise is that the workers and the owners are not the same group. This is in contrast with a socialist enterprise, where the owners and the workers are the same group.
There is a ton of stuff preventing people from forming their own groups. Have you seen how companies (see Amazon & Starbucks recently) react to people attempting to do so?