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Comment by steve1977 | Hacker News Reader

steve1977

How do they fit the manufacturing of the things they use into their worldview?

They want to avoid critical outside dependencies. For example relying on the electrical grid is avoided because that would be overly dependent on a single outside supplier.

But using electrical devices powered by batteries or generators or solar panels is fine in many of those communities because there are multiple suppliers of all of those (and in the case of generators for the fuel to power them).

From what I (think I) learned writing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39373558 they seek to minimise transactions with the rest of the world, so buying durable manufactured goods is acceptable (and higher-tech goods are even preferred as long as they have longer lifetimes) but subscribing to services is avoided.

So basically the higher number of transactions required for the manufacturing of higher-tech goods is ignored as long as it's not a transaction they are directly involved in?

That's my understanding, yes. For instance, for fabric, they avoid retail, going to manufacturers (or at least wholesalers) and buying a community-year's worth in a single transaction.

I guess it's channeling https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+17%3A15-16... ; transactions between english and amish are necessary (from being in the world) but to be minimised (not being of the world), whereas transactions between english or between amish don't count for flow across that boundary.

(too much rumination concerning flows across boundaries leads us across a different boundary: out of theology and into physical mathematics, eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokes%27_theorem#Maxwell's_eq... )

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Edit: unfortunately https://www.jstor.org/stable/44257359 (amish & tourism, 1997) is paywalled

For historical developments, see https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Nonconformity#Europe.2C_As...

For intersection with hippiedom, consider https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6itauSnrSZA

Sounds like they aren't against "transactions" as a thing - they are limiting _their_ transactions with society at large.

After all, the number of transactions required to make even a pencil is astonishingly high, as Adam Smith pointed out two hundred years ago.

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