Selections from my 1999 essay "Dreams of Autarky": [Here is] an important common bias on "our" side, i.e., among those who expect specific very large changes. … Futurists tend to expect an unrealistic degree of autarky, or independence, within future technological and social systems. The cells in our bodies are largely-autonomous devices and manufacturing plants, producing most of what they need internally. … Small tribes themselves were quite autonomous. … Most people are not very aware of, and so have not fully to terms with their new inter-dependence. For example, people are surprisingly willing to restrict trade between nations, not realizing how much their wealth depends on such trade. … Futurists commonly neglect this interdependence … they picture their future political and economic unit to be the largely self-sufficient small tribe of our evolutionary heritage. … [Here are] some examples. …