It seems like they should be able to slowly grow in size even if they are very inefficient, no?
Not really. Without some edge over other potential uses for that land, they’d eventually overstretch and collapse (if they loan to each other, even in hopeless cases), or reach an equilibrium where they’re losing land to things like property taxes, probate, and adverse possession as fast as they’re buying it up.
I can imagine a future scenario where Amish people own all arable land on Earth and everybody else lives in skyscrapers, arcologies, space stations, or some combination thereof. It seems weird, sure, but 1) I would take that as strong evidence that they’re simply better at making use of arable land, since they’d still be selling food to everyone else and competing with e.g. terrain-independent hydroponics, and 2) they seem to have little or no interest in expanding beyond the agriculture and specialty-manufacturing industries, and that’s the kind of thing where who does it isn’t as important as how well it gets done.
Shortsightedness has a well-known tendency to lead to longterm losses, yes. This goes back to basic rationality: if someone else is doing what you claim to want to do, and doing it better than you are, you’d better either start doing it their way, or figure out what you really want.
I think that those are basically, pretty much, a way of us unfairly stealing their land.
I usually model taxes as payment for various services, like police and fire department coverage and roads. If they had to handle those things themselves, that would take money that they could otherwise use for expansion, and could in some cases result in them being unable to use land because they can’t afford the relevant infrastructure, or having to sell land in one place to pay for infrastructure in another.
It is plausible that it would be more efficient for them to handle those things themselves, but not immediately obvious that that’s the case, at least. The economy of scale involved in having the government handle those things might outweigh any corruption or inefficiency or tendency to reallocate funds to programs that don’t benefit the group in question.
Not really. Without some edge over other potential uses for that land, they’d eventually overstretch and collapse (if they loan to each other, even in hopeless cases), or reach an equilibrium where they’re losing land to things like property taxes, probate, and adverse possession as fast as they’re buying it up.
I can imagine a future scenario where Amish people own all arable land on Earth and everybody else lives in skyscrapers, arcologies, space stations, or some combination thereof. It seems weird, sure, but 1) I would take that as strong evidence that they’re simply better at making use of arable land, since they’d still be selling food to everyone else and competing with e.g. terrain-independent hydroponics, and 2) they seem to have little or no interest in expanding beyond the agriculture and specialty-manufacturing industries, and that’s the kind of thing where who does it isn’t as important as how well it gets done.
Shortsightedness has a well-known tendency to lead to longterm losses, yes. This goes back to basic rationality: if someone else is doing what you claim to want to do, and doing it better than you are, you’d better either start doing it their way, or figure out what you really want.
I forgot about property-taxes and things.
I think that those are basically, pretty much, a way of us unfairly stealing their land.
However there are no ethical issues with it—so I think that makes sense.
As we become more awesome, property values + property taxes will rise until low-tech agriculture cannot compete.
I usually model taxes as payment for various services, like police and fire department coverage and roads. If they had to handle those things themselves, that would take money that they could otherwise use for expansion, and could in some cases result in them being unable to use land because they can’t afford the relevant infrastructure, or having to sell land in one place to pay for infrastructure in another.
It is plausible that it would be more efficient for them to handle those things themselves, but not immediately obvious that that’s the case, at least. The economy of scale involved in having the government handle those things might outweigh any corruption or inefficiency or tendency to reallocate funds to programs that don’t benefit the group in question.