From: "John Beamish" 

That's actually the official economic philosophy of North Korea.  It's
called "juche" ("self-reliance") and has some benefits
but the drawbacks significantly outweigh them.  Consider wheat and flour. 
Wheat requires nice level fields (to make harvesting easier) and flour
requires (cut me some slack here) uneven land so that you can get the power
from water running downhill to turn the millstones which will grind the
grain into flour.

In the 50's and 60's, as countries developed, they did two things: launched
an airline and built a steel mill.  Today, most of those steel mills have
gone bankrupt because the ecnomic efficiencies of a centralized steel mill
in a dozen or so countries (with some specializing in exotic types of steel
and others focusing on other types).

On Sun, 04 Feb 2007 02:24:19 -0500, Ellen K.  wrote:

> Well, anything really basic to a country, they should produce
> themselves.  (Like we should produce our own energy.)
>
> IIRC, Brazil wanted to go to alternative fuels so they developed
> something using sugar cane.
>
> Your below description is pretty depressing, I hope it doesn't come
> true.
>

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