Month: June 2026

In this piece, I would like to talk about a favorite movie: Witness starring Harrison Ford. The setting of the 1985 movie is Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, among the Amish. I like and admire the Amish. Let me start with a little bit about them.

The Amish are one of the most interesting religious communities in the United States. Their story began in Europe during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. They were originally part of the Anabaptist tradition. Anabaptists believed in baptizing adults rather than infants. In 1693, a Swiss Anabaptist named Jakob Ammann left the church, and his followers became known as the “Amish.”

Facing ongoing religious persecution (not uncommon among various Christian sects), the Amish began migrating to North America in the early 1700s, settling in Pennsylvania. There are no Amish left in Europe now. Their current population of over 360,000 are mainly concentrated in the US states of Pennsylvania (Lancaster County), Ohio and Indiana. Because they have large families (5 or more children), their population is doubling roughly every 20 years. Continue reading “Witness 1985”

TL;DR. Wealth is not distributed; therefore the question whether or not wealth is badly distributed cannot be answered without knowing the process that led to the distribution that was obtained.

In what sense is wealth distributed? Is there some stock of wealth that a society has that gets distributed to the people of that society, and if so, is there someone in charge of doing the distribution, and if so, is that person doing a bad job?

What if wealth is not distributed by someone any more than height is distributed among people? We do recognize that there is a “height distribution” in any population, which in technical terms is called a “normal” distribution, but that does not imply that there is someone who goes about distributing height. Certainly some end up tall and others short but height is not “badly” distributed merely because everyone does not end up exactly having the same height (or weight or looks or intelligence or whathaveyou.) Continue reading “Why is Wealth so Badly Distributed?”