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I think you're missing my point, I'm not debating whether it is morally permissible to do what they do, I'm debating whether it would work without a much larger host culture that absorbs your cast-offs.
When nations face civilizational catastrophe, they've been known to try many things that don't work. It is important that we check to see if the thing we're trying will work before we waste time on it.
Right but today we just throw our mentally ill and drug-addicted onto the populous streets to haunt the low-wage workers who take public transportation. Intermittently they spend an expensive night in jail or take an expensive ambulance ride to an expensive hospital. Sometimes they kill each other or give each other AIDs or just die. It’s very costly as is. I imagine the religious extremist would just confine them somewhere for their own good, which results in a fraction of the social and economic costs and is also morally superior.
You can't just introduce random elements into your hypothetical haredi society and assume the breeding will stay constant.
It’s more that, and I get that you imply this, both the Amish and Haredim (the latter are more dysfunctional) are kind of quirky minorities who exist within the envelope or the umbrella of the wider, modern, largely secular societies they inhabit. In Israel where they’re only 10-15% of the population they are already causing a lot of problems, refusing to fight despite the country being surrounded on almost all sides by a billion Muslims who would, if their own governments let them, gladly give everything to destroy them, and the leading haredi politicians go on TV to say that young haredi men can’t be conscripted because they do as much for Israel by praying as the soldiers do by fighting (seriously, this is the current line). It’s not sustainable. The Amish are less parasitic, but again if they got to 15%++ of the population there would be more concerns about assimilation, participation in wider society, demands for a renegotiation of their social security exemption etc would be more common.
More obviously, if the Haredim were the overwhelming majority in Israel, Israel would either be destroyed or the Haredim would have to radically change their culture. This is the clearest point in favor of your argument.
I am curious if we'll see an increased defection rate from high-tfr subcultures into a low-tfr mainstream as the low-tfr mainstream ages and the value of young people increases. Arguably, this is already the dynamic of third world immigration to aging first world countries.
But I wonder if we'll see more young Amish or Haredi defect as they get a better "deal" from a mainstream culture desperate for young people.
When I buy pretzels from the Amish girls at the best pretzel stand in the world in Intercourse, PA; naturally one sometimes daydreams about marrying a pretty Amish girl in a bonnet. Theoretically, this is possible, to marry an Amish or Mennonite girl, but it rather seems not worth the effort. Right now, if I found myself single, like generations of wealthy but balding middle age professionals before me I'd get into my convertible and drive over to the local liberal arts college library and say "Whelp, nothing to worry about, they're still making them." But what if they stop making pretty undergrads? Then does the incentive to put a lot more effort into marrying the mennonite pretzel girl start to make more sense?
Forget it, she's marrying Chad Stolzfus, the son of the owner of the pretzel stand.
Nah, the pretzel stand is the Yoders, Stoltzfoos sells raw milk and prize winning aged cheddar.
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