To what extent can a country be 100% independent from the rest of the world? Is there any country like that in the world? Maybe North Korea, but North Korea receives supports from China. Solution In principle and in theory, anything can happen. First, as always, we have to supply some more specific content for \"survive and prosper\". Are we assuming some preferences underlying the whole issue? If yes, then what kind of preferences are they? What kind of material goods and services do these preferences favor? Can these material goods and services be provided by the country\'s own resources, and to what degree? Looking at history though, (as we should), we notice that long-long before \"global trade liberalization\" policies became an officially declared goal and agenda of the powerful economies of the planet, international trade existed and expanded. For thousand of years humans are observed to trade with abroad -and no, nobody forced them to. So it appears that international trade gets chosen by human societies as a way to prosper. And because this choice has been revealed time and again, through different eras, civilizations, cultures, productive capabilities etc, it makes it difficult to think that a country could obtain a comparable level of prosperity without international trade. Survival, though, is another matter, since it is much more easy to survive than to prosper (as an individual or as a country)..

1. To what extent can a country be 100% independent from the rest of the world? Is there any
country like that in the world? Maybe North Korea, but North Korea receives supports from
China.
Solution
In principle and in theory, anything can happen.
First, as always, we have to supply some more specific content for "survive and prosper". Are
we assuming some preferences underlying the whole issue? If yes, then what kind of preferences
are they? What kind of material goods and services do these preferences favor? Can these
material goods and services be provided by the country's own resources, and to what degree?
Looking at history though, (as we should), we notice that long-long before "global trade
liberalization" policies became an officially declared goal and agenda of the powerful
economies of the planet, international trade existed and expanded. For thousand of years humans
are observed to trade with abroad -and no, nobody forced them to. So it appears that international
trade gets chosen by human societies as a way to prosper. And because this choice has been
revealed time and again, through different eras, civilizations, cultures, productive capabilities etc,
it makes it difficult to think that a country could obtain a comparable level of prosperity without
international trade.
Survival, though, is another matter, since it is much more easy to survive than to prosper (as an
individual or as a country).