GTOM said:
But the first Foundation book didnt bother to tell anything, how rim worlds reached that level of anti-scientific, superstitous state.
The show had something: we could see how Synnax was destroyed by climate change, then smart people fled, stupid superstitous ones remained. There were an exact root of evil, the Genetic Dynasty, not just we have to accept, that humans only become more and more stupid except the ones in the Foundation.
True. Original novels do limited amount of painting the world behind.
We have a bit of hints scattered, but it is not clear how the world around them goes. But some...
Anselm haut Rodric recognizes the smell of Vegan tobacco. And asks how Hardin could get it. Implying that Anselm now could not.
Anselm is Subprefect of Pluema. We hear that Anacreon itself is a prefecture. Most likely explanation is that Pluema is a planet and Anselm is a governor of a planet. We do hear of him in the capacity of envoy, and of a military commander, but it is historically common for regional governors to be sent to travel out of their bailiwick on missions like that.
Which means that Anselm is in charge of several hundreds of millions of people, one of a few tens of planetary governors (Bridle and Saddle gives the number of planets in Anacreon as roughly 32) and maybe a few tens of same rank people in central government - top hundred of Anacreon. And Anacreon can no longer import exotic luxury goods for his class. (While in his living memory, they still could).
In Bridle and Saddle, we hear of marker of the end of old good times - Zeon rebellion, then 190 years ago (160 years ago as of Foundation). We never hear if Zeon was a place or a person, but the result was that after it "Anacreon minded mostly their own affairs".
In the speech of Hari Seldon in Foundation, he says that he tricked the people of Foundation into staying until "their retreat had been cut off". The implication was that the normal reaction of people of Foundation to shrinking trade would have been to emigrate back to the inner Empire, like Trantor.
Chances are it happened to the smart people on Anacreon... over the extended period of decline.
Who leave, who stay?
Imagine that both Delicass and Anacreon are exporting cows to Trantor. A cow sells for 100 credits on Trantor. Carrying a cow by starship to Trantor costs 6 credits from Delicass, 60 credits from Anacreon on the rim.
In good times, both Delicass and Anacreon are earning. 94 credits for a cow on Delicass, 40 on Anacreon. Still a lot of money.
Now economic crisis happens on Trantor, so the cow only sells for 50 credits on Trantor. But the costs of interstellar travel are unaltered.
Trantor still gets cows, and Delicass still gets 44 credits per cow. But a cow on Anacreon is now worthless.
Even though the Vegan tobacco is low volume, high value compared to cows, so the transport costs of Vegan tobacco are low - say, a box of Vegan tobacco costs 100 credits on Trantor, 101 credits on Delicass and 110 credits on Anacreon - since Anacreon´s exports were low value high volume, they are now worthless, Anacreon has no credits at all and cannot afford any imports at all, not even high value low volume ones.
And there are more vital stuff than Vegan tobacco. Like, say, chloroform, iodoform, nuclear engines, trained specialists...
Who are prominent people at Pluema? Say... a baron and a surgeon.
When the trade is drying up, the baron´s cows lose value in hard currency.
He can still be a baron. He can still produce butter on Pluema and he can still command milkmaids. But he cannot get any credits for either cow, butter or milkmaid, and therefore he cannot import anything - not Vegan tobacco, and not chloroform.
Now, the surgeon also cannot do much useful work when he runs out of either chloroform or iodoform.
So the last ship comes, and the baron and the surgeon consider what to do with their last credits.
The thing is, the surgeon has an usable skill. If there is a starship visiting and he has the credits left for the one way ticket to Trantor, he can go to Trantor, get a job as a surgeon on Trantor and earn his living.
The milkmaid and the baron cannot. The milkmaid does not even have the credits for the ticket out of Pluema, nor a skill competitive on Trantor. The baron may have the credits left - but he also does not have a skill competitive on Trantor.
Which means that either milkmaid or baron, if they did get to Trantor, would not get a job and would die of hunger before hospital door.
If the surgeon has the choice to get on ship and go work on Trantor, or spend the rest of his life milking cows on Pluema because there will be no more chloroform imports, what would he choose?
If the baron has a choice to die of hunger on Trantor (because cows on Anacreon are worthless on Trantor and so are his skills) or of clogged arteries on Pluema (because the last medic took the last ship out), what would he choose?
