Dune - Economics

Welcome back to the channel. I hope you all are having a great day. So today I want to again go on this odyssey and research talking about futuristic economies, uh, in some of our science fiction lore in various areas. But, uh, kind of the, the granddaddy of them all Dune, uh, the series that inspired Star Wars, that has inspired, uh, you know, just about everybody in the, uh, science fiction genre, kind of modern day, kind of stems from, uh, from Dune. Um, and, uh, today we want to talk about the economics of it and how it works, right? How it worked in the Dune universe. right? What type of economy was this? So, uh, to kind of get a picture of how the Dune economy worked, uh, first we have to understand kind of what type of government it, it, it, it worked on. And from our research, the best we can gather is that Dune, uh, had a ruling council known as the Landsraad, which was sort of like this these noble houses, right? But what they are is— because remember, this is interplanetary— so what this is, is these are planetary systems where noble houses rule planets, right? And they govern through a body called the Landsraad, which has an emperor. Now, this emperor who has, who wields quite a bit of power Uh, from my understanding and what I'm learning about Dune is that he isn't the— he isn't all-powerful, right? He's not like, uh, like when you think of, uh, straight monarchies, right? This is more similar to what you might have got in Great Britain uh, in around the 18th century with the Dutch East India Company, right? Where you had a king, you had a monarch, but then you had these powerful corporations, right, that were as powerful and as big as the monarchs, right? And, uh, in some cases could greatly control and influence the monarchs. And that's kind of like what you get in Dune. Uh, now their, their economy is a very interesting economy, kind of unlike many we, we see in generally when we think of futuristic economies. Uh, interesting enough, uh, the channel, uh, we do here is mostly, I think, dealing with futuristic economies or what will be. Uh, we talk a lot right now about the most advanced technology in the world, blockchain technology, uh, dealing, uh, with currency, right? And, uh, so it's very interesting. We have a variety of governments on our planet, uh, but we have this global economy that has a very global inclusive economy through use of digital currencies, right? And so the Dune economy, although it's probably set like 10,000 years into our future, this economy is a very much devolved one, right? And we'll explain that as we go here. But so setting up the framework again of the government and how commerce is conducted, Dune basically is at a stage in a future economy where they're doing space travel, right? Now everything, all the routes of trade and commerce similar to like what we got with our Star Wars video, Star Wars economy, is conducted by the expansion of these worlds to various planets where certain resources of value are mined and controlled. And so, The problem with the Dune economy is that space travel is a monopoly, meaning there is only one particular entity for the most part that controls space travel, and that's called the Spacing Guild, right? So you have a lot of players in the Dune universe governments. You have the Emperor, then you have the Landsraad, which is this ruling body, Then you have a company called the CHOAM, which is basically this corporation that has shares in the commerce and trade, similar to the Dutch East India Company, of these planetary systems, right? So in other words, you pretty much got like 3 controlling factors. You got the Spacing Guild, that is actually piloting these spacefaring vessels. And then you got the Landsraad, which is, uh, the, uh, the body of nobles. And then you got the Emperor. Now, to break it down, it doesn't work like a monarchy or an autocracy, more so as it works like a feudalist— a feudalism— a feudalist system versus a crony capitalist model, right? So a lot of similarities with that in the Star Wars economy, but there are some key significant differences. For example, uh, to contrast it with Star Wars and even like Star Trek, a lot of labor is dependent on robots, computers, and such, right? In the, in the Doom future series, there is no robots or computers. And the reason for that is because they are at a stage, or they've surpassed the stage in, uh, what we, uh, feel like we're gonna get in our future economy or our future world of, uh, AIs destroy mankind. So what happens in Dune is you have two groups of people, one who believe, who solely depended on computers and robots and, uh, want them around. And then you have a group of people who see them that is taking away human achievement, is making humans lazy. And, uh, there's this rebellion, uh, to destroy all computers and robots, right? So what's so interesting about that is in a very futuristic, sophisticated, advanced technology in the future like this, they don't have thinking machines or robots. They instead have focused on human achievement, uh, advances in expanding consciousness, longevity, and they have focused on, um, uh, being like human calculators, being like human computers where the brain is explored to its maximum uh, uh, capacity. And you have— and just focusing on that, they produce these amazing human beings, Mentex, uh, which are basically human computers, humans that have just disciplined their minds and, and become like computers, right? So that they don't have the problems like we're having in ChatGPT. You know what's funny is that, uh, You know, even when I talk about cryptocurrency, I talk about these future technologies. If we look at something like ChatGPT, where now there are signatures going around in the, uh, in the tech, in the AI fields to slow down development of ChatGPT because it's moving along so fast, we're afraid what's going to happen to human beings, uh, that, uh these, uh, supercomputers could, uh, destroy us all, right? And of course you hear notable people like Elon Musk and the others talking about things like this. So getting into the type of economy you have in something like this, uh, again, it's this feudalist crony capitalist model, uh, and that is because of the monopoly on these spacing guilds, right, the traveling, uh, and they have cornered the markets on it, so it's illegal for anybody else to do it. So, uh, you know, basically you have this spacing guild working close with the Emperors, and it's mostly to control the oil of the future, which is called the spice melange, which is only mineable by one planet called Arrakis. Or what we know is Dune. So, um, the reason that the spice is, is so valuable is because what it's done is it's, uh, it, it increases longevity, right? So people are living longer when they consume this spice. Um, and, uh, for some who are gifted, it can expand their consciousness to like superhuman levels, right? It's also very addictive, right? Uh, like some of our most addictive drugs, right? And so many of the, the rich, wealthy people who are controlling this thing, they are, um, uh, trying to monopolize on this production, right? And all types of political issues are stirring up behind the spice. But let's get more back into the economic purposes, right? Because there are so many great videos on Dune lore and so on. You can get into that. But, uh, to, to, to, to make it tangible for you to grab out and touch it and get a feel for it, uh, the currency they use is called the solari. And the solari is basically, uh, would be equivalent to about twice the value of the US dollar. It's around about $1.95. I feel like when I throw out numbers like that, it's— people can very much, you know, grasp it and understand it. And it's mostly used, um, between the Landsraad, again, this ruling council, right, of these interplanetary systems. Uh, it— people kind of look at this as an inspiration as well for Game of Thrones, right, which doesn't take place on Earth but on some type of planet, I believe, with two stars, right, two suns. A lot of people don't know that, but the intrigue, the political intrigue of Game of Thrones, Dune is kind of like that in space, right? So, right, you know, Game of Thrones medieval times, Dune kind of like, you know, out in space and so on. So, you know, understanding the value of the Solari, you can kind of understand the value of money that's coming out of out of the Doom universe, right? Now we speak now today in our economy on the fear of something called neo-feudalism. And that is like most of you all who get up and go to work every day, you notice that your dollars are getting value, what it can buy, your buying power is getting smaller and smaller, right? You're buying less and less. Uh, it seems the rich are getting richer and richer. And this closing of this wage gap, right? This wealth gap, or rather the distance between it, right? Kind of creates what you had in medieval times between a feudal system and a serfdom, right? And that's kind of how Dune works. Um, Dune has kind of become like what some believe we're on the road to becoming in this neo-feudalist system. Dune would kind of be a neo-feudalist system, um, and that the people who actually do the work— because remember, there's no computers— they earn very little, they get very little for their work. And these ruling classes of nobility, they live off the backs of these people. Uh, when they're mining the spice, they have like the slave class, they're called the Fremen, right, that do all the work on the planet Arrakis. They barely have water, they barely, uh, you know, have— the planet is pretty much barren besides the spice, which is the most valuable thing in their known universe, right? But there is this feudal system, crony capitalist model, right? And what's so very interesting about it all is this is the type of economy that many believe we're headed to as well. And it starts to mirror Dune in some ways, right? Uh, with the exception of one thing, and that's being what is termed as a robot economy, in which some feel that a robot economy will create enough wealth to make the price of goods less, you know, more cheaper, more accessible. And so that will kind of balance things out. Uh, you might run into a situation in a robot economy where, uh You know, no human labor is done at all. And that's very interesting. Whereas Dune is different. There are no robots to do it. So they're pretty much still enslaving humans even in the future. So this is a very strange combination of the most advanced technology imaginable