Offopic , but nice nickname . <| sep |> So we just ignore the rest of the world and try and be completely selfsufficient ? Like North Korea ' s Juche idea ? That ' s the way forward in your eyes ? The UK made a conscious decision on 23 rd June to reject thatThere ' s just shy of half the votership you ' re ignoring there . Let ' s not act as if it ' s unanimous . Couldn ' t care less if no one else trades with us or buys our stuff , it ' s really not important long term . And there you have it International trade is really not important . Just an FYI it is important . In fact , with no international trade , we effectively have no economy . In case you were genuinely wondering why Remainers were saying that Leave voters are stupid , unfortunately you aren ' t the only person to try and tell me that international trade is unimportant , and that somehow we can remain the 5 th strongest economy by only trading with ourselves and trying to compete with ultralow cost manufacturing economies like China with no change in prices . That ' s such a colossal misunderstanding of economics I don ' t know where to even begin here . For the record , I don ' t think you ' re stupid as per se , but your understanding of how our economy works couldn ' t be further from accurate if you tried , and you don ' t seem bothered about learning from it . Indeed you almost seem content in your lack of understanding . So , let me give you an analogy so you can appreciate how it soundsIf someone you knew suggested they were going to arrange to have all the oxygen removed from the atmosphere because it wasn ' t important longterm to your health , and were not only 100 % serious , but had the ability to do so . You try to think of a way of explaining just how essential oxygen is to , y ' know , living , but with that level of complete misunderstanding you don ' t even know how to approach it . You try to explain it , but they clearly don ' t care . Even better , you try to point to doctors and medical experts , and this person just dismisses their comments and concerns as some sort of global conspiracy to keep the respiration money rolling in . They ' re seriously talking about removing their ability to breathe because they ' re genuinely unaware of how essential respiration is to life . Instead , they keep pointing out that oxygen is part of the fire triangle and is toxic if breathed in vast unrealistic quantities for long periods of time , and therefore they ' ve decided that oxygen is nothing more than a constant burden , and all will be well if we did without it . This is how it sounds to hear that you think we can get rid of international trade without dying as an economy .