That’s true. Self-sufficiency requires a country that has diverse enough natural resources, a large and diverse enough manufacturing base, consumerism by citizens who save, and enough cultural morality for exceptional levels of order and peace. We recently had that for a couple of decades.
In the old days, Egypt, China, the empires used to have, Oh I don’t know, ten years of grain stored. Now there isn’t much need for physical storage like that. But now we don’t have, by and large, shocks of physical goods, but now financial shocks. Book keeping really.
Why?
How can we have very very liquid markets in ‘securities’( paper ) and have it effect the physical reality, the people, goods, service, manufacturing so much?
How with all these lawyers, government intervention have we become so much more frail in paperwork, symbols, digits on a hard drive somewhere. Meanwhile all the factories are just fine, workers work, consumers buy.
Very strange.