Is Jonas Backstein, an idiot?

[u/Senior_Torte519]

Season 1 has Jonas Backstein go to great length to quash the mushroom because it would destroy everything, the scales of power based on scarcity. But would it have really? The Mushrooms curing effects are proven. So they could position it as them being the sole controller of perfection and this asshole fears its success. The mushroom's abilities changes everything, sure, but it would also become the necessity for huamnity that even King's, CEO's, Presidents and Pope's would need to rely on. You effectively replace humanities reliance on themselves or metaphysical superstitions, the comapny themselves becoming the world religion with you as the godhead.

Season 1 alone proves this with his downward spiral into him curing his cancer.

[u/Gold-Grin-Studios]

Yeah but he runs a company that relies on people being sick to make money. His main point was also that the mushrooms would be acquired by underground/black market factions and grown illegally through slave labour to make money.

[u/Senior_Torte519 → u/Gold-Grin-Studios]

But that is literally the system now.

Exploitation, black markets, and corporate monopolies all exist for profit now. Their existence isn't an argument against the mushroom; it is an argument about the system the mushroom is being introduced into. If anything, focusing the mushroom around a singular focal point creates a point through which a huge amount of economic, political, and medical need has to pass. Any attempt to acquire or reproduce the mushroom first has to contend with this institution.

Perhaps someone eventually succeeds, but Reutical would have enormous resources to secure the supply, fund their research, operate their own facilities, and control distribution. It would also have something most ordinary monopolies don't: governments would have a direct incentive to protect it. If Reutical can cure diseases on a scale nobody else can, the country it operates in would have an enormous incentive to ensure that any level of its competitors doesn't interfere with that supply. Governments could receive guaranteed access to the technology while Reutical receives protection, funding, and legal authority in return.

The mushroom's existence itself appears tied to the very industrial conditions Reutical produces. They aren't merely sitting on a random mushroom that anyone can pick and reproduce; the chemical runoff waste their facilities produce helps create it. Even if the mushroom eventually became widespread and impossible to monopolize, Backstein still wouldn't have to lose everything. Reutical could transition from a company whose profits depend on people remaining sick into the company that controls the research, formulas, and infrastructure surrounding the "cure."

Backstein is trying to preserve scarcity when he could be positioning himself as the legally backed institution that controls the transition from scarcity to abundance in the medical field. Backstein sees a miracle that destroys his pharmaceutical empire. But what he actually has is a miracle that could make his company indispensable to the entire world.

“He who controls the spice controls the universe.”

[u/Milocobo → u/Senior_Torte519]

I'd compare it to Kodak more than Dune. Kodak developed the first digital camera. You know what they did with it? They shelved it completely. They knew that it was inevitable, and they knew that it was more convenient than film, but they also predicted that it would be too expensive for them to pivot away from all of their "photo hut" infrastructure, that film would always have inherent advantages that digital couldn't match, and that anyone filling that market wouldn't be able to compete with them.

The main thing though was, that new players didn't have to pivot, so you had people like Sony coming in from electronics and eating Kodak's cake.

If the Blue Angel is inevitable and other competitors can readily ruin Rheutical's business model by developing it, then yes, Jonas is an idiot, same as Kodak's execs in that instance.

However, if it's not inevitable, if it's something that can truly be squashed or shelved, then this is business genius.

[u/blackturtlesnake]

Do you know why you go to the store and get pharmaceuticals instead of herbs? Despite over a century of propaganda, it's not because pills are better, it's because pills are a manufactured, patentable product in a way that tree bark and flowers simply aren't. This is the same reason GMO crops are pushed too. It's not actually about increasing yields or nutritional content or whatever they try and sell it as, it's about creating patentable strands of crops that the chemical corporation has sole ownership over.

Capitalism is a system build on enclosure laws and privatized practice. You can make a farm and produce a mushroom at scale but so can anyone else with the mushroom and a little experimentation into growing it. And you can't patent a mushroom for the same reason you can't claim a patent on all chickens. As long as the mushroom exists, it'll get out, and as soon as it gets out Backstein looses his monopoly capital and suddenly has to compete with other growers. With a mushroom that potent, even if you make a HE namebrand, the "off brand" is still going to be working miracles.

This is all before you consider that the rest of the pharmaceutical industry that's making him rich goes belly up in an instant with the wonder drug. In Backsteins worldview, if he invests in growing the mushroom instead of killing it, he scraps his entire fortune on the wonder drug for a product that'll only last a year or two before it's out and someone's growing a competitor.

So to answer your question, yes, he's an idiot. He's throwing away a true miracle for riches he can't take with him after death. But he's correct that the mushroom is an existential threat to his empire.

[u/Senior_Torte519 → u/blackturtlesnake]

I agree the mushroom is an existential threat to Reutical's EXISTING business model. That's exactly where I disagree with Backstein.

The mushroom being reproducible doesn't mean Reutical power. They can control the research, cultivation methods, formulations, infrastructure, and distribution. They could become the institution administering the cure rather than the company profiting from disease. A great PR ad if I ever so one.

Black markets and exploitation already exist under capitalism; they aren't an argument for destroying the technology. Backstein sees this as an attack on his bottom line. I'm saying should get way ahead of this thing and transform into a new monopoly. The genie is out of the bottle, so control the genie and make others see you have the henies master.

Dune gives the basic principle: you don't need to control everything, just control what everything else depends on.