4 ms·

Just out of curiosity, what would it look like if the world went back to local-first economies and eschewed global trade?

SamPatt 5y ago
Self-sufficiency is another term for poverty. We have centuries of observations confirming this.
hpoe 5y ago
Well for starters you'd be eating nothing but canned vegetables and jerked meat for most of the winter if you live far enough north to regularly get snow.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I don't think meat would have really a problem. Coming from country in north which is quite self-reliant on that side. But vegetables and fruit are much harder to handle.
paxys 5y ago
Do you mean everyone has a small plot of land and grows food to feed their own families?
dredmorbius 5y ago
How local do you want to go? Fundamentally, the theory of trade is that there are comparative advantages in different areas. At the time the theory was introduced, the early 19th century, by David Ricardo, much of that advantage was in agricultural products. Goods such as timber, cotton, wool, grain, tobacco, sugar, hemp, silk, and spices were either much more readily grown in certain areas, or were highly specific to specific climates. We see much of this today still. Extractive commodities also are very specific as to location, with tin, copper, gold, and silver particularly notable in ancient times. In the industrial era, this is dominated by fuels: coal, petroleum, and natural gas most especially, as these are both 1) highly concentrated energy sources and 2) very unevenly distributed geographically. Strategic minerals --- non-fuel resources which are vital to advanced manufacturing but are not widely distributed, are another concern, and was first recognised by the US during World War I (see the "Harbord List"). Another set of inequalities emerges though in the sense of regulations and power-balance between specific economic sectors, most especially capital and labour, though also of environmental regulations. One view of China is that it's been exporting not only hugely disadvantaged cheap labur, but a tolerance for accepting tremendous long-lasting economic damage without pricing that into the cost of its goods and services. There's an argument that manufacturing, if all extermalities and labour differences are priced in, should not be a geographically differentiated service, in general. Specific sectors of expertise might emerge (a discussion on its own), and there's the question of being able to motivate or redirect a massive workforce on short order (again, a strength of China's, though one India or Indonesia might also be able to match, eventually Nigeria as well if its population continues to rise). That would leave us with some locally-provisioned goods and services, and some imports. Overall the world might look more like the late 19h century through mid 20th, where local advantages in natural production account for some global trade, but most food and finished-goods production is relatively local.

SamPatt 5y ago

Self-sufficiency is another term for poverty. We have centuries of observations confirming this.

hpoe 5y ago

Well for starters you'd be eating nothing but canned vegetables and jerked meat for most of the winter if you live far enough north to regularly get snow.

Ekaros 5y ago
I don't think meat would have really a problem. Coming from country in north which is quite self-reliant on that side. But vegetables and fruit are much harder to handle.

paxys 5y ago

Do you mean everyone has a small plot of land and grows food to feed their own families?

dredmorbius 5y ago

How local do you want to go? Fundamentally, the theory of trade is that there are comparative advantages in different areas. At the time the theory was introduced, the early 19th century, by David Ricardo, much of that advantage was in agricultural products. Goods such as timber, cotton, wool, grain, tobacco, sugar, hemp, silk, and spices were either much more readily grown in certain areas, or were highly specific to specific climates. We see much of this today still. Extractive commodities also are very specific as to location, with tin, copper, gold, and silver particularly notable in ancient times. In the industrial era, this is dominated by fuels: coal, petroleum, and natural gas most especially, as these are both 1) highly concentrated energy sources and 2) very unevenly distributed geographically. Strategic minerals --- non-fuel resources which are vital to advanced manufacturing but are not widely distributed, are another concern, and was first recognised by the US during World War I (see the "Harbord List"). Another set of inequalities emerges though in the sense of regulations and power-balance between specific economic sectors, most especially capital and labour, though also of environmental regulations. One view of China is that it's been exporting not only hugely disadvantaged cheap labur, but a tolerance for accepting tremendous long-lasting economic damage without pricing that into the cost of its goods and services. There's an argument that manufacturing, if all extermalities and labour differences are priced in, should not be a geographically differentiated service, in general. Specific sectors of expertise might emerge (a discussion on its own), and there's the question of being able to motivate or redirect a massive workforce on short order (again, a strength of China's, though one India or Indonesia might also be able to match, eventually Nigeria as well if its population continues to rise). That would leave us with some locally-provisioned goods and services, and some imports. Overall the world might look more like the late 19h century through mid 20th, where local advantages in natural production account for some global trade, but most food and finished-goods production is relatively local.