Is a self contained economy viable? Like a country that produces for itself only, and only consumes what it produces...

Is a self contained economy viable? Like a country that produces for itself only, and only consumes what it produces. I imagine the united states has enough natural resources that it could ignore every other country and be self sufficient in this sense.

Pls respond

The United States eat a lot of resources. Being totally self sustaining would require either the quality of living going down or major technological advances.

Couldn't (through culture and media influence) people stop buying stupid shit?

I would argue that living with fewer, higher quality possessions is more important than having a bunch of shitty chink products

usa has by and far the worst trade deficit in the world

Right, I just used a large country with many natural resources as an example. What if tomorrow, 50% of the population died and a new country was formed on the territory of the US, and it decided to be isolationist. Is that possible? To completely remove one's country from the global marketplace?

not only is it possible it's going to be possible in the mid term future. 2020's-30's.

Would it be a good idea? It seems like a less fragile system than the one we have now. You cant bully countries with retarded sanctions, higher rate of employment because you need to produce a lot more, and if one country fucks up and goes down it doesn't take everyone else with them.

A country could do that, it just isn't as efficient. And don't think this hasn't been tried by other countries. You can look at things like Mussolini's homeland Battle for Grain programs. They did allow Italy to become nearly self sufficient in their production of wheat, but the price and quality of grain went down.

*The price of grain went up the quality went down

It just doesn't make any sense. If country A is capable of producing more resources than it needs, than trading it to country B makes sense for both parties. Trade is beneficial to everyone involved.

It just can't be enforced, smuggling would increase tenfold. Unless a military-style JUCHE is implemented, this would never happen. Plus, no logic reason to do it, other than JUCHE.

It really sort of depends.

What would you be willing to do to achieve such a thing?

Can we think of the Earth as a self-containing economy?

>meteorites crash into Earth
>satellites go out of Earth

Perhaps an end to multinational corporations then?

The problems I have with the global market is that not everyone is playing by the same rules. Let's say country A cares for its citizens and their environent, it would make sense that the cost of production would go up, because paying people and regulating wastes have inherent costs.

However, country B doesn't give a fuck about its people and pollutes freely, meaning they can completely undercut country A simply because they only care about production.

Is there any way to stop this?

>Self sufficient
>Highest importer of food in the world because you can't produce enough as it is

Back to your r/criticaltheory, retards.

Country A develops a surplus of guns and kicks Country B's ass and takes their shit

I just used the USA as an example because it has a lot of natural resources. I'm sure the UK, and many other Western countries would work as well.

Looking for a method that doesn't bully

Not without losing some tech. You do need to import some natural resources even assuming you meet all the production demand. At that point you might as well import and export other shit.

> What's the solution?

Stop caring about the environment in this case.

But that doesn't make sense from any angel. From a religious perspective, God gave us this land to use, and I feel it disrespectful to ruin its natural beauty.

Logically, shitting all over it is detrimental to the survival of the human race.

Angle*

>God gave us this land to use, and I feel it disrespectful to ruin its natural beauty.
Mate we've been doing that since before written language was a thing.

Well tough luck then, because China doesn't believe in your religion and is outsourcing you up the ass.

Think about it like Minimum wage. The implication made, is that by implementing a federally imposed minimum wage we have improved the lives of many by lifting them out of poverty. What we've really done is simply made it a policy to no longer allow such jobs to exist. Does your job produce less value than say, 7.25$ an hour? Tough luck, your job is going to a guy across the sea who can do it for far less. With the environmental regulations in place, you've allowed heavily industrial jobs to either not operate the way they were meant to (At the cost of efficiency) or you've caused such jobs to not exist at all.

The market, although not necessarily moral at all times, does a fine job of fulfilling the needs and wants of entire civilizations and unfortunately the needs and wants of others don't tend to wait on one's religious superstition about the value of the environment.

There's no real way around it.