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Comment by roland35 | Hacker News Reader

Amish are certainly an interesting group and I have a lot of respect for their work ethic! I recently had an Amish crew reside my house and they showed up every day with their driver at 6am! I am not sure how long the commute was but we live about an hour from Amish country.

They also had a young boy, maybe 12-14 years old, apprenticing with them. I believe Amish only need to do K-8 school and then they start their careers.

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The Amish are extremely honest people in my experience. The ones I have met selling homemade goods and foods are fastidious about not charging for old food (e.g. 2 day old bread is free) regardless of whether it is still good and could be sold. I think the work ethic ties in with this, they see hard work as the only honest path in some way I think. In either case, it makes them some of the best handymen and construction workers:)

Except for stuff like this https://www.cosmopolitan.com/lifestyle/a30284631/amish-sexua...

Oh my god, that's so horrifying. If you are in an insular community the idea that you want to hide abuse because it makes the group look bad, that's the same thinking that lead to decades of widespread abuse by priests in the catholic church. In america especially we have a blind eye toward the behavior of religious groups. There are other religious groups in america that have these self-reinforcing "the only way to be in the world is with us" behaviors. I'm sure there are also lots of decent people who are Amish too (probably doesn't need to be stated, there are decent people everywhere and in every group).

Blind allegiance to a group leads to endemic corruption, always has, always will.

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