"Mennonite Entrepeneurs" and related topics

[JohnH]

I’ll look forward to hearing your thoughts and experiences on this. I have spent a good bit of my life feeling pulled in both of those directions as well.

Glad to have you here, and I"ll be interested to hear your thoughts; although as someone who works in a "high tech career" and also lives a somewhat "traditional" "homestead" lifestyle, I think the two are irreconcilable.

Mennonite Entrepreneurs explores the tension between the act of accumulating personal wealth and the duty to the collective good, yet I think whatever tension exists between the two would be a tension that is stronger between a homestead lifestyle and a high-tech career.

As a firm believer in capitalism, I naturally do not worry about whatever potential tension there is between the act of accumulating personal wealth and the duty to the collective good.

One difference might be that Anabaptists, generally speaking, are not "firm believers in capitalism" and also, generally speaking, accumulating personal wealth is considered a spiritual problem, particularly the more traditional / conservative you go. (My own church group used to prohibit earning more than $100k a year in salary jobs in the pre COVID era; some Swartzentruber groups required young men to earn $50 or less per day.)

Groups that are less conservative, particularly ones that are transitioning to become less so, will often see an explosion in people accumulating a good deal of wealth, generally also accompanied by a few families who seem to be becoming poorer and poorer.

I believe that a competitive spirit is the most powerful driving force behind a successful career, startup, or competition. For example, when people speed run video games (they try to complete the game in the shortest amount of time possible), people just keep on getting faster and faster run times. This is partly because they learn by watching videos of past runs, and partly because they are competing with someone else and they keep defeating each other's run times day after day. More to the point, I believe that careers and startups tend to create value for greater society.

That's an interesting point of view, and one that is common place, but it would be in tension with traditional Anabaptist values. A "normal" amount of competition in my own church circles is considered acceptable, but only because it tends to help provide a better product for the buyer and keep someone from being tempted to raise their prices too much if they had a monopoly, which would be considered something we shouldn't do.

However, as far as such careers and startups go, usually only the founders are really the ones competing at an intense level. The rest of us are just salaried people. If the employees are pitted against each other to "compete" with each other, it results in a rather toxic workplace, much like Meta's present reputation where employees avoid helping other employees with projects.

How does one extend these insights to the tension between a homestead lifestyle and a high-tech career?

Generally speaking, Anabaptists don't. Once they fully embrace "high-tech careers", it is almost a sure thing they will be abandoning "homestead lifestyles", except perhaps as a hobby.

In my mind, the answer to this question is that high-tech stuff like computer science or inventions are birthed from the competitive spirit, in the same way that speed runners keep pushing each other to get better and better.

The majority of plain Anabaptists would consider high-tech computer stuff questionable and teach their own members to avoid it. The vast majority would teach against trying to play video games competitively.

But what I wanted to say is that a homestead lifestyle is probably the most valuable lifestyle you can live, because that's where all of matters of everyday life come together (work, family, struggle, etc.)

I would partially agree with that statement, but with the disclaimer that not everyone (particularly in the present era) can successfully live a "homestead lifestyle". (Note that Anabaptists generally don't call it "homesteading"; they would just refer to it as ordinary life, or if it's a larger operation, a "farm".) People who are partially disabled or not particularly skilled at it simply won't be able to do it in a way that turns a profit. An exception would be communal settings like some Hutterite settings, the Scottsville type churches, etc. where the entire community produce farms together, and those who aren't as good at it have an opportunity to be taught by those more experienced, and those with a disability, etc. are found another job to do, such as adding up lists of numbers from the Saturday sale day in the back office (since they don't use calculators either).

and I think high-tech engineering should be about creating value within that kind of life.

So far, "high tech" has been about destroying that way of life, and everything else in its path; the Y Combinator startup that needs to turn 100X returns in order to be considered is a prime example of why (or AirBNB, which returned 300,000X returns, yet has had the side effect of destroying many neighbourhoods and providing a poor experience for both host and guest). Fundamentally, much of high tech is simply rent seeking. AirBNB has successfully carved a niche where they charge 15% of the cost of a hotel stay and really do not do much beyond operating the equivalent of a classified ad; in particular, they do not operate anything close to the customer service of a typical hotel when a guest has a problem.

DoorDash and Uber Eats are another example. They collect a significant fee (as high as 30%) from the restaurant and then pay the driver $2. Uber often charges 2 to 3 times to the rider as the driver actually gets paid. And remember that these are the "competitive" success stories coming out of the high-tech world.

It shouldn't be about changing the way we live, but about making the way we live something easier, more sustainable, or similar.

So far, American high-tech is miserably failing then; we are consuming more oil than ever, producing more plastic than ever, and throwing away mountains of plastic trash. Much of the industry is based on planned obsolescence of physical, hardware goods. The new AI technology consumes a great deal of energy and there are concerns about water use. The data-centre operators often seem to run with almost complete disregard for local communities, preferring to convince local government leaders to sign NDAs they can then hide behind and not share any info with the community about the project.

Amazon recently negotiated a 30 year tax abatement for a project here where they are excuses from paying 75% of property tax. I don't get that discount for my own data centre, which is admittedly very tiny. The Amazon data centre isn't going to make my life easier, more sustainable, or anything else. And Amazon is one of the more responsible data centre builders.

It should not prescribe a different kind of life that it wants you to choose.

Well, being in high tech most certainly does; it is not a sustainable family based lifestyle like traditional Anabaptist lifestyles are, particularly since it means mothers or fathers working in them shut the door and keep their children out of their home office, or else they're driving to an office each day (and often in a place that is not conducive to a traditional lifestyle; it's pretty hard to run a "homestead" and commute in to the Bay Area unless you are quite wealthy). Part of the problem with these careers is it is hard to raise up the next generation: it's not a job like an actual, traditional homestead where the children have useful jobs to do with mom and dad from a young age.

That also makes raising a larger family much tougher. It's hard for mom to raise a large family (let alone "homestead") when dad is gone most of the day. It's even harder when both mom and dad work. The net result is small family sizes, and traditional Anabaptist life and society depends on people having, on average, more than 1.75 children.

So groups that move away from that eventually become non-traditional. This isn't a moral judgment on them, but if plain Anabaptists adopt the same lifestyles worldly people do, they eventually end up with the same patterns of home ownership, land ownership, family sizes, commutes, careers,and so forth that worldly people have.

[Ernie]

One difference might be that Anabaptists, generally speaking, are not "firm believers in capitalism" and also, generally speaking, accumulating personal wealth is considered a spiritual problem, particularly the more traditional / conservative you go. (My own church group used to prohibit earning more than $100k a year in salary jobs in the pre COVID era; some Swartzentruber groups required young men to earn $50 or less per day.)

Groups that are less conservative, particularly ones that are transitioning to become less so, will often see an explosion in people accumulating a good deal of wealth, generally also accompanied by a few families who seem to be becoming poorer and poorer.

Growing up in an ultra-conservative/Old Order hybrid culture, big business with say 25-50 employees was considered risky spiritually. It was believed that it was hard to be a deeply spiritual person if one was caught up in that level of entanglement with the world and handling large sums of money. (They didn't believe that if a person had a small business that he was automatically a spiritual person. They realized that there were more things that make a spiritual person.)
When I began circulating in the moderate-conservative constituency 25 years ago (I skipped a tour through the intermediate-conservative constituency) I learned that big business was something to celebrate rather than something that should be questioned. In the last 25 years I have seen the effects on the families of big businessmen that my church warned about growing up. But I have also met a few big businessmen who are very spiritual people, and who use their businesses as platforms for promoting the kingdom of God. Indeed they are rare, which I think confirms Jesus statement that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
What I think happens, though, is that because there does seem to be a few rich spiritual people, many people (who can't really handles riches) think they can be both rich and spiritual also. But they don't have enough self-awareness to realize what riches will do to them and their posterity.

[MennoSimons1998]

When it comes to Mennonite colonies in Latin America, I heard local Paraguayans and Brazilian tourists complain that Mennonite businesses are very greedy and intentionally overprice their products, how true or exaggerated this is I cannot say for sure, since I have still sadly not visited any Mennonite settlements in the country yet.

However, given how critically important Mennonite businesses and farms are in the agrarian and food economy of an entire country, people should always bear in mind the historical, cultural, and geographic disconnect that Mennonite colonies in Latin America have from their counterparts in North America.

[Soloist]

It’s something we’ve observed that Mennonites over charge for their goods.
We’ve always received generous wages when we’ve worked for Mennonites though.

[JayP]

I think all of this is more complicated than some think. I am not an across the board advocate of “well, we need that to survive” to accept just anything. BUT, I do think it complicated. For any business to “cut someone a break”, find a position for a “challenged” young person, etc. requires that the business operate with some “fat”. I know of one quite successful businessman who for his own sake would be happy t9 sell off the business and keep a small portion then give the rest away. But the church community needs the jobs it provides (safe ones too) rather than the cash gift.

In the same manner, not everyone fits into a cookie cutter profession and having some flexibility with opportunities of different k8nd of jobs can have value to the whole group.

In the same manner, we have all seen excesses and things allowed the “businessman” that IMHO would NEVER be allowed for a sister. My ping being business as a hobby or outlet is more acceptable than a hobby. We do well to remember that Jesus surprises us with a lot of his sayings. “BUT I SAY UNTO YOU…”. While we see concern for the poor, Lazarus preteen clearly was not poor. IF we did not have the explicit story of NOT condemning the woman pouring oil on Jesus feet I suspect many Anabaptists would be in line to say it should be sold and the money given to the poor.

I do not have all the answers, I just suggest we think hard and carefully to find those right balances

[Ernie]

I think all of this is more complicated than some think. I am not an across the board advocate of “well, we need that to survive” to accept just anything. BUT, I do think it complicated. For any business to “cut someone a break”, find a position for a “challenged” young person, etc. requires that the business operate with some “fat”. I know of one quite successful businessman who for his own sake would be happy t9 sell off the business and keep a small portion then give the rest away. But the church community needs the jobs it provides (safe ones too) rather than the cash gift.

In the same manner, not everyone fits into a cookie cutter profession and having some flexibility with opportunities of different k8nd of jobs can have value to the whole group.

In the same manner, we have all seen excesses and things allowed the “businessman” that IMHO would NEVER be allowed for a sister. My ping being business as a hobby or outlet is more acceptable than a hobby. We do well to remember that Jesus surprises us with a lot of his sayings. “BUT I SAY UNTO YOU…”. While we see concern for the poor, Lazarus preteen clearly was not poor. IF we did not have the explicit story of NOT condemning the woman pouring oil on Jesus feet I suspect many Anabaptists would be in line to say it should be sold and the money given to the poor.

I do not have all the answers, I just suggest we think hard and carefully to find those right balances

Could you please run this by AI for a spelling and grammar revision and then repost?

[ken_sylvania]

While we see concern for the poor, Lazarus preteen clearly was not poor.

Was he poor later in life???
I think I generally agreed with what I think you were trying to communicate in that post but WOW! Autocorrect FTW!

[mmhg]

One difference might be that Anabaptists, generally speaking, are not "firm believers in capitalism" and also, generally speaking, accumulating personal wealth is considered a spiritual problem, particularly the more traditional / conservative you go. (My own church group used to prohibit earning more than $100k a year in salary jobs in the pre COVID era; some Swartzentruber groups required young men to earn $50 or less per day.)

[Disclaimer] I did not grow up religious let alone Anabaptist, so please forgive me if I'm wrong. But I wanted to respond to you.

If I sufficiently comprehend some of the content in the book that I am reading (Mennonite Entrepreneurs by Calvin Redekop), then I would classify Hutterites as communal and Mennonites as "soft-capitalists". On the Hutterite side, Peder Reidemann as successor to Hutter argued that it's impossible for a Christian to participate in trade. On the Mennonite side, Menno Simons stated that some merchants and retailers are god-fearing and righteous. Also, the Strasbourg Conference of 1557 ruled that business and commerce is morally permissible so long as it's not offensive or contrary to Scripture.

Going by these "facts", I deduce the following conclusion: Mennonites believe in business, but they also believe that unlimited personal wealth accumulation is offensive to or contrary to scripture, and so they set a practical limit like 100k as a general guideline.

First of all, I would like to say that I fully believe unlimited personal wealth accumulation is destructive (or degenerate, or something like that). The reason for this is the AI paperclip thought experiment. If an AI system is instructed to create some paperclips, that could maybe be a legitimate or respectable business of sorts. However, a competent AI system that is instructed to create paperclips without a specified stopping point or limit would be a disaster. It would try to create unlimited paperclips and so it would soon do things like tear apart cars to use their metal for paperclips, and kill people that would be an interference to this goal, and so on.

Why then, do I describe myself as a firm believer in capitalism? That's because I believe a durable private monopoly would have to be sustained by government-created barriers in order to degenerate in the first place. Capitalism can exist in a Federal state or an Anti-Federal Confederacy of sorts, but I see myself as an anti-Federalist. (I say anti-federal to mean the broad sense of radical political and economic decentralization, not merely as a label for the eighteenth-century American Anti-Federalists). What I would say about my views is that capitalism is the "best of evils" in a Federal state, and "paradise" in an Anti-Federal Confederacy. Note: I sound like a Libertarian here, but I would describe myself as a "classical Liberal" (similar to John Locke or Thomas Jefferson) and not as a Libertarian, because I believe that Libertarianism is an internally inconsistent ideology. Libertarians use the non-aggression principle (NAP) as the overarching guiding principle for ethics and politics, but this expounds to contractual agreements being king, which itself is at odds with the NAP since contractual agreements can allow you to sign away your rights to life/liberty. So, the NAP is an inherently internally contradictory principle. That is my view, anyway.

I describe my views and the difference between Libertarianism and Classical Liberalism so to give the reader a better picture of why I call myself a firm believer in capitalism. That way, the reader can decide whether or not my views are at odds with that of Mennonite entrepreneurs. The book being a book cannot really interact well enough with me as the reader to make that analysis for me. So, I would love to hear from my readers what they think about my capitalist convictions. Because I am still in the process of figuring out how I should live my life.

However, as far as such careers and startups go, usually only the founders are really the ones competing at an intense level. The rest of us are just salaried people. If the employees are pitted against each other to "compete" with each other, it results in a rather toxic workplace, much like Meta's present reputation where employees avoid helping other employees with projects.

I think this is such a great point. I dislike Big Tech, Silicon Valley, etc. because I am an Anti-Federalist anyway. Still, I try to look at the whole elephant in the room to the extent that is possible and so I would say that this is still 100x better than a Soviet Commune. Federal Capitalism expounds to extreme greed, but a Federal command economy expounds to mass genocide over things as harmless as peoples' beliefs. Basically, my ranking from best to worst society is Anti-Federal capitalism > Anti-Federal socialism > Federal capitalism > Federal socialism. I think of the Hutterites as a sort of Anti-Federal socialism; I respect it and I think such societies are better than what we see from Big Tech, Silicon Valley, etc.

The vast majority would teach against trying to play video games competitively.

I figured! Lol. Still, I thought speedrunning video games as an example for the power of competitive spirit was in better taste than my other example, which is that the Martians (a broad family of 20th century Hungarian Jews associated with stellar proficiency in mathematics, physics, and science) were researching or working with the atomic bomb for their high school science fair projects. That is intellectually impressive and what made it possible was the intensely competitive culture. (To be clear, I am not trying to argue for war or militarism here, I am just treating the atomic bomb as a proof of concept that demonstrates the power of the competitive spirit). https://www.slatestarcodexabridged.com/ ... ir-Project

I feel fairly sure that there are examples of the power of competitive spirit that are in better taste (compatible with a homestead lifestyle) than speedrunning or atomic bombs, but I cannot really think of any off the top of my head other than like competitively debating theology with theologians maybe.

So far, "high tech" has been about destroying that way of life, and everything else in its path; the Y Combinator startup that needs to turn 100X returns in order to be considered is a prime example of why (or AirBNB, which returned 300,000X returns, yet has had the side effect of destroying many neighbourhoods and providing a poor experience for both host and guest). Fundamentally, much of high tech is simply rent seeking. AirBNB has successfully carved a niche where they charge 15% of the cost of a hotel stay and really do not do much beyond operating the equivalent of a classified ad; in particular, they do not operate anything close to the customer service of a typical hotel when a guest has a problem.

DoorDash and Uber Eats are another example. They collect a significant fee (as high as 30%) from the restaurant and then pay the driver $2. Uber often charges 2 to 3 times to the rider as the driver actually gets paid. And remember that these are the "competitive" success stories coming out of the high-tech world.

When I say high-tech, I am not thinking about AirBNB/DoorDash/Uber Eats; rather, I am thinking about cyborgs, drones, and flying jet cars that are simple, flexible, fully functional, efficient, etc. Lol! Otherwise, I pretty much agree with what you say. To me, it feels like a society that requires you to use AirBNB to get by (because hotels are way too expensive or maybe because you have perfume/pet allergies and cannot find a hotel in your area that accomodates for that) is pretty much a society that has a rotten core at its core. That's why self-sufficiency is so valuable and important.

So far, American high-tech is miserably failing then; we are consuming more oil than ever, producing more plastic than ever, and throwing away mountains of plastic trash.

I see this as a problem with Federalism, not a problem with capitalism. The Soviets would've hunted whales to extinction if fewer boaters protested and interfered with their actions. China has damaged the environment far more than America has. And so on.

The new AI technology consumes a great deal of energy and there are concerns about water use.

Contrary to popular belief (typically popular among leftist propagandists to my estimation), I think AI water use is not really a concern. First of all, AI systems and AI engineering keeps getting more and more efficient, thanks to competition! Secondly, the world's supply of corn alone costs 80x more water than the sum of all AI systems/infrastructures worldwide. Also, only 1% of that corn is eaten by people, with 40% of corn wasted/burnt. And a lot of that corn is used for the meat industry that I personally find really unethical (but feel free to disagree, I respect your views). I think the closest thing to a tangible concern about water use would be that AI systems use municipal water and this is worse than using agricultural water. But I am not that worried about it, social media intends to feed our fears and thus social media would not hesitate to turn a non-issue into an issue so to feed our fears. The whole water thing is likely a non-issue in my opinion.

So groups that move away from that eventually become non-traditional. This isn't a moral judgment on them, but if plain Anabaptists adopt the same lifestyles worldly people do, they eventually end up with the same patterns of home ownership, land ownership, family sizes, commutes, careers,and so forth that worldly people have.

Yeah I actually think that above all else, this is the kind of thing we should try to avoid.

[mmhg]

Growing up in an ultra-conservative/Old Order hybrid culture, big business with say 25-50 employees was considered risky spiritually. It was believed that it was hard to be a deeply spiritual person if one was caught up in that level of entanglement with the world and handling large sums of money. (They didn't believe that if a person had a small business that he was automatically a spiritual person. They realized that there were more things that make a spiritual person.)
When I began circulating in the moderate-conservative constituency 25 years ago (I skipped a tour through the intermediate-conservative constituency) I learned that big business was something to celebrate rather than something that should be questioned. In the last 25 years I have seen the effects on the families of big businessmen that my church warned about growing up. But I have also met a few big businessmen who are very spiritual people, and who use their businesses as platforms for promoting the kingdom of God. Indeed they are rare, which I think confirms Jesus statement that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
What I think happens, though, is that because there does seem to be a few rich spiritual people, many people (who can't really handles riches) think they can be both rich and spiritual also. But they don't have enough self-awareness to realize what riches will do to them and their posterity.

I think the part where you say that it is hard to be deeply spiritual with that level of entanglement with the world is such a good point that it kind of changes my views a little bit on some things. I wonder, then, if a high-tech career is actually more reconciliable with Mennonitism than entrepreneurship is. But I am still learning.

[Ernie]

I describe my views and the difference between Libertarianism and Classical Liberalism so to give the reader a better picture of why I call myself a firm believer in capitalism. That way, the reader can decide whether or not my views are at odds with that of Mennonite entrepreneurs. The book being a book cannot really interact well enough with me as the reader to make that analysis for me. So, I would love to hear from my readers what they think about my capitalist convictions. Because I am still in the process of figuring out how I should live my life.

However, as far as such careers and startups go, usually only the founders are really the ones competing at an intense level. The rest of us are just salaried people. If the employees are pitted against each other to "compete" with each other, it results in a rather toxic workplace, much like Meta's present reputation where employees avoid helping other employees with projects.

I think this is such a great point. I dislike Big Tech, Silicon Valley, etc. because I am an Anti-Federalist anyway. Still, I try to look at the whole elephant in the room to the extent that is possible and so I would say that this is still 100x better than a Soviet Commune.

The normal construct is to contrast capitalism with Soviet communism.

But there are many other options.

There is also Distributism, which I would suggest most closely reflects the historic Anabaptist approach, apart from the Hutterites, who practiced community of goods.