Indeed. That's an other concept that I'm not sure Musk is fully aware of. Economies, industrial production systems are highly inter-dependent on Earth. In our "technological civilization", even to build something as simple as a pencil, you need lots of people collaborating from all over the planet [1]. So to me the idea of building a "self-sustaining technological civilization" on mars sounds quite ludicrous.
Sure, but it does show how speculative Musk's plan for a "self-sustaining city" is. There is no such city on Earth. What makes him think it would work on mars?
Then scale back from 100% self supporting and make a place on mars that is most self-supporting or self-supporting in an emergency. They don't need to be self sufficient from day 1, they need need to be self sufficient enough to eventually get by without constant injection of resources. At some point that can be part of this economy that makes it unprofitable to have self-sufficiency on Earth, but because of trade costs the economics will look different, but not impossible. Locally source will be 1% the cost so buying from Earth with done only for the most valuable items. Things like seeds or IP make perfect sense to buy across the gulf of space. Thing like bulk lumber and toilet paper do not and probably never will.
I agree. I think smaller cycles of dependency are possible (and for the sake of stability maybe better). But we probably have to figure that out, before we go to mars ...
(not saying that it is worth the effort to go for it in the beginning, that would be up to the martians to decide I guess)