Just getting reliable metal alloys, to order, to arrive at your bolt-making shop at will is insanely difficult to replicate. And then you need the tooling to keep your plant going. The machines you need for that are ludicrously expensive.
I mean, the existence of subsistence farmers proves that it *is* possible to live on the food you produce yourself, just lower quantity and quality than you could get with trade.
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I think you're underestimating how badly subsistence farmers live, and how few true subsistence farmers are left. You're also underestimating how badly people used to live in general.
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Yes, in some sense, subsistence farmers "merely" have lower quality food and less of it, but in practice, we're talking about a shocking difference in standard of living.
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What I’m curious about is the generalization of that. How many people would it take to build a (possibly worse, less safe, etc) airplane? Or power plant?
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Who cares about safe? You can't do it at all without modern machine tools, modern metallurgy, computers, etc. I don't think 1M people can even sustain a circa 1800 technology base.
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