Unless you've spent time in Holmes County, Ohio or Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, your impression of Amish life has probably been limited to Witness and Harrison Ford (or Birch Interval  and Rip Torn).  For the record, Rip takes more alcohol than the norm for the Amish population.  This behavior by what the Amish call "the English" would not surprise breakaway leader Jacob Amman, or Menno Simons, who originally founded the sect from which the Old Order split.

The current issue (April 19) of Time magazine devotes a page to the success of Amish businesses, and the Amish styles of working and management.  They, for example, have a start-up failure rate  only 20% of that  experienced by all US small businesses.  The telling phrase?  "Amish businesses value relationships over onetime deals."  There's also reference to working "higher up the value chain."  Maybe plain folk aren't as simple as we thought they might be.  

That's no surprise in this corner, but it's always encouraging to see unsolicited independent support for our core contention that the quality of business relationships is a compelling difference-maker in sustainable enterprise success, for, in Time's words, ". . . those more dedicated to the Golden Rule than the golden calf."