Economics Question — Spice Value makes no sense??
Edit: Please don’t kill me, I’m asking cause I don’t know. I’m new to the series after my dad suggested I watch the 2021 film. I was interested that’s why I’m askin
If spice costs hundreds of thousands of Solaris per tiny unit, and Guild Navigators are continuously bathed in it 24/7 just to stay alive, the raw cost of the raw materials keeping a Navigator alive far exceeds the 1,460,062 Solaris round-trip cost for three navigators to transport the entourage to Arrakis. The guild is clearly operating at a massive loss loss on every single trip, unless they are magically generating more value just by existing than their ridiculous upkeep.
Additionally, the fremen casually use massive amounts of spice in their daily lives and hoard secret stockpiles, but are supposed to be like impoverished desert vagrants. If spice is genuinely worth 620,000 Solaris per decagram, any group sitting on underground oceans of it would possess more wealth than the entire imperial treasury.
I’m open to any explanation that proves me wrong, but this is bugging me.
Edit 2: obviously I need to read the books, this series seems a lot more structured than I initially got from this movie. I’ll have to watch it again after reading them 🙂