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I don’t think that the U.S. could become autarkic while under the current regime of controls and economic laws. There are too many barriers to any kind of capital investment in, say for instance, mining for any kind of minerals. Mining is considered environmental destruction rather than economic activity and with that kind of problem, I don’t know if you could reasonably, in terms of cost, overcome the lawfare.
It’s pretty much unpreferable by definition, unless the autarky exists with no state intervention, as with the entire Earth.
The big problem is the difference in the marginal cost of inputs. Comparative advantage theory says that there is some point to buying even high cost goods depending on the advantage you gain by pursuing your own advantageous activity over doing everything autarkically.
Maybe we can say that aliens don't exist because if they did we'd be trading with them.
Aren’t we trading with them already? The aliens, I mean. I think we are going to find out how our world works in the near future.
Are they using dollars?
I don’t think so. I think they are using human lives. Eisenhower had something to do with this situation, I think.
The strongest proof yet!
What makes you think we aren’t trading with them? Or even conflicting with them? How many of their craft do you think we have shot down and reverse engineered?
Lack of conclusive evidence
Is that conclusive evidence coming soon? If much of the state apparatus breaks down and the state workers are only getting paid in near worthless FRNs, do you think some of the State Secrets might be slipped out and sold?
They might, but I don't know what those state secrets will be.
There are probably warehouses full of documents and artifacts that have heretofore been classified and hidden. It has been rumored that zero point technology has been squirreled away to protect the status quo in petroleum and electricity utilities.
let's ask Americans who work for BMW in South Carolina
True, no disagreement there. An autarkic US wouldn't be as bad as an autarkic NK. But I still don't think there's any evidence that autarky would be preferrable, even for a large diverse economy.
I guess I just don't know what Peter Navarro's theory is. Why would he be against a factory owned by BMW but operated here? It's not like the US doesn't have its own car companies too.