AUTARKY

Self-sufficiency concerning food and material resources. Autarky systems are closed to matter and energy except for the continual flow of sun energy. Examples are a small isolated island economy in the Pacific Ocean on the one extreme and the "spaceship earth" on the other. National policies of restricting economic exchanges across borders to promote self-sufficiency in food, energy and technology and to make a country more easily governable have always been undermined by information flows and the mobility of people and could not be sustained for long. All biological organisms are open to energy and matter (see open system). (krippendorff)

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