Wang Wei Lin: I don’t see the price of the machines as prohibitive. Standard machining stations and cells are commonly over $250,000. Three things are the measure of any part or process – cost, reliabilty and quality. Control these and you can build anything you want additive or subtractive.
Handle: Heh, oh that Lind. It’s always the same story, though oddly no one notices the uniform pattern or explains why there’s a common theme. Part of why the right always gets duped. There is in fact a natural, strong, and straightforward “conservative case for” almost every kind of state subsidy, transfer, infrastructure, or primarily economic program which is at least marketed at helping otherwise decent and hardworking members of “the struggle is real” class, which...
Isegoria: I’m reminded of William Lind’s conservative case for public transportation.
Harry Jones: Depends. How quickly can they give up their pacifism?
Jim: DJB: “A motorcyclist with a 1 in 860 chance of dying is truly astonishing. Most people have a 1 in 1 chance of dying.” lol
Jim: And Harry Jones, pray tell, how quickly and effectively do you think a group of hard-working, down-to-earth ethnic German agricultural folk can mobilize to secure their living space? https://groups.etown.edu /amishstudies/files/2015 /10/cropped-HeaderImage_ withWM.jpg
Jim: This was an anomaly, folks. The capitalists aren’t still doing this sort of thing, in every conceivable industry, with every conceivable product. Pinky swear.
Harry Jones: Defense is always relevant. No free ride lasts forever. The Amish survive and prosper in a terrarium created by the US government. Said government is looking shaky.
Handle: Wow, 21 minutes in 70 years, and that’s the success story. VRE (and MARC, with some differences) is an excellent passenger train service for commuting from the suburbs into DC for work, and would be good for better connecting the NOVA suburbs to DC in general for other trips, but it only exists as part of a deal made with the freight companies which own the tracks and use them intensely the rest of the time, and so passenger service is only available at very limited times during the work...
Bomag: I wonder what the Amish defense budget is? Teacher might have to step in here and explain it for us slow ones. I initially thought it a compliment: those who spend less on defense in the modern world have higher fertility and social cohesion. But maybe it’s a criticism: the Amish are drafting off the security provided by non-Amish.
Jim: Harry Jones: “I wonder what the Amish defense budget is?” You’re too smart to sincerely ask such an irrelevant question.
Jim: Uneducated: “If they read the Bible and steer clear of college, they’re well educated. Won’t be many engineers or doctors among them, but we’d all be better off without most doctors.” No, you don’t understand. “Well-educatedR 21; doesn’t mean being steeped in a culture derived substantially from the Bible, it means having a piece of paper from an accredited institution given the stamp of approval by middle-class bureaucrats and lawyers.
Harry Jones: I wonder what the Amish defense budget is?
Bob Sykes: Some years ago, the Columbus Dispatch published and analysis of Amish farm economics. Amish farms are substantially more profitable than conventional farms, despite the substantially lower yields. Amish profits depend on: (1) no powered machinery, (fuels, maintenance, capital investment); (2) no fertilizer (other than manure) or insecticides; (3) unpaid family labor and sharing labor with neighbors (barn raisings); cash only finances (no interest costs). It helps to live modestly and to be...
Lucklucky: This is the most important part. “…theorists of virtue politics elevate the selection of rulers over the restriction of their power…” Marxism is this primitive. No checks and balances, no limits on power. Read Hegel. The “ethical state” is the reason for more than 100 million political deaths in The 20th Century.
Uneducated: If they read the Bible and steer clear of college, they’re well educated. Won’t be many engineers or doctors among them, but we’d all be better off without most doctors.
Goober: Harry, yes, absolutely. This makes me think about how we’re constantly being scolded about not using mass transportation, in much the same way that we’re constantly scolded about our carbon emissions. What do they want me to do about it? If there was a train that ran anywhere close to a route that was even remotely adjacent to “from my home to my work” you can bet your ass I’d be on it. Scold me about driving to work all you want, I have no other option for most of...
Gavin Longmuir: “shunning an education.” I did not realize the Amish were all Ivy League graduates.
Eli: The Amish of 2020 are not the Amish of 1960. Is “breeding for plainness” another term for “results of fundamentalist sect”? Consider the first steps in implementing the fundamentalist lifestyle start with pulling kids out of school, covering the womenfolk, and shunning an education.
