Misesian Mecha Dinosaurs: The Praxeology of DinoTrux

Spoilers ahead.

DinoTrux is an animated Netflix original show for kids that follows anthropomorphized mechanized dinosaurs, called DinoTrux. They act, in the Misesian sense: consciously working to change some state of dissatisfaction to a more satisfying one. Thus DinoTrux are open to a praxeological thought experiment, what's it like to struggle with the problems of being incarnated as mecha dinosaur construction machinery?

DinoTruc live in a social order based on segregation by specie. They stick to their own kind and herd, not working together beyond that. All DinoTrux eat the same food, ore, and they all want to avoid aggression and environmental threats, like volcanic eruptions and tar pits. They only use violence to run-off outsiders and scrappers (DinoTrux that eat metal and other Trux), defend and seize ore and land, and displays of dominance.

There’s nothing physically or technologically stopping heterogenous grouping, seems it’s just a tradition of homogeneity - the way it is. However they got to this living arrangement, the critical fact is that no one perceives any better option.

This will change with an entrepreneurial Tyranno Trux named Ty Rux.

Ty is not a typical T-Trux, which are known to be belligerent blowhards. He’s easy going and amicable. When he catches a small rotary tool lizard called a Reptool eating ore Ty had uncovered, the Reptool expects the worst. But Ty welcomes him to more. The Reptool, named Revvit, is impressed. He returns the favor by doing something unthinkable, maintenance on Ty.

Ty had no idea smaller creatures could work on larger ones! Ty is inspired and suddenly imagines a previously non-existent potential, a mixed herd of Trux.

Ty came here as a refugee from a volcanic eruption, and he wants to claim territory right where they are, in a resource rich crater. Revvit is all but on board, because he, unlike Ty, knows this area is already considered someone else’s property. And sure enough the “owner”, another T-Trux named D-Structs, arrives and starts threatening these trespassers.

From D-Structs’ perspective, he was born here, this is his land and ore, and he’s successfully defended this claim. He knows it’s a cold, hard world out there, and he’s unwilling to risk this wealth and stability he’s found by introducing some volatility. He won’t be allowing these immigrants.

Ty’s travelled a long way, he knows this abundance is rare, and he isn’t leaving. He thinks D-Structs’ ownership claims are superfluous, and there’s room to negotiate a mutual peaceful coexistence. He’s going to test the legitimacy of D-Structs’ threats.

Turns out, D-Structs is pretty tough and his threats are 100% legitimate. He is ready, willing and able to enforce them. Ty loses, but he won’t leave.

Alone, Ty doesn’t stand a chance against D-Structs, but with a posse he can break D-Structs’ violent monopoly on the area. They then can establish a property line of their own, and if need be, physically remove D-Structs from that area.

Ty and Revvit go around pitching their idea to other DinoTrux. They make appeals to reason asking, aren’t we tired of hiding ore from each other? Wouldn’t they like “more ore with less D-Structs?”, a phrase worthy of a campaign slogan.

They manage to get three more interested DinoTrux, an Ankylodump, a Craneosaur, and a Dozeratops. Things get a little heated with one of these potential herdmates, the Dozeratops, and he ends up falling into a tar pit. Ty tries to rescue him, proving his good nature to the others, and inspiring them to help. They use their unique tools and abilities to engineer a bridge on the fly, and rescue him.

They admire their work and admit that each of them could not have done it without the others. They’ve bonded, proven they’re serious partners, ride-or-die Trux.

The jump from bridges to garages and Trux-washes happens quickly, setting off a renaissance of innovation. Ty’s idea led to the breakdown of the division-of-labor into more refined segments relative to the homogenous segregationist herds. Compared to Ty’s Posse, those herds limit their production possibilities and exhaust their utility. When building a structure, what good does it do to have a bunch of cranes around and only that?

This is the magic of entrepreneurs. No one, including Ty, foresaw the complex structures and processes they’d come up with. Ty imagined a way for DinoTrux to be more productive doing the same things they had always done. And now look, they even designed an ore-dispenser, not only unfeasible beforehand, but likely unimaginable.

This is deeply troubling to D-Structs. Not only has his physicality and aggression been defeated, making his property claim worthless. News will spread and more outsiders will arrive, his home crater will effectively be appropriated. D-Structs has to abandon his old solitary lifestyle. He has to adopt the tactics of these busy builders, and form a heterogenous group of his own. A union of malevolent construction mecha-saurs.

D-Structs is a quintessential T- Trux, and not as encouraging or easy to work with as Ty.

In recruiting a Scraptool, his first member, his “offer” is this:
Keep Ty’s body for scrap, apparently a huge boon for a Scraptool, and avoid being killed by D-Structs.
Refuse the offer, and be killed by D-Structs.

I put offer in quotations because, as Rahim Taghizadegan and Marc-Felix Otto point out, this is an offer only in an extended sense, it’s a threat, “since it can be rejected by the counterparty but not without incurring costs.” This is a cratic exchange, where there is a unilateral transfer of a good to one party enforced by the offer of a bad. D-Structs’ contract involves the unilateral transfer of a good to him, in this case the service of eliminating Ty. This is true regardless of the Scraptool getting compensated. Refusing to work with D-Structs results in him following through with the threat, failure results in the same.

It could’ve been a catallactic contract, where they each promise to exchange in hopes of mutual betterment, with no threats. Ty’s Posse can be described this way. There, members voluntarily and mutually promise to exchange their labor to complete projects that they expect will make themselves better off.

As far DinoTrux civilization can go, this counts as a step in that direction. An illustration of a point Mises makes in Human Action, that society and civilization are built on the facts “that work performed under the division of labor is more productive than isolated work and that man's reason is capable of recognizing this truth.” In the same way, DinoTrux would’ve remained isolated, rivalrous herds, “deadly foes of one another, irreconcilable rivals in their endeavors to secure a portion of the scarce supply of means of sustenance provided by nature.”

And it seems to illustrate Mises’ further point, that solidarity and love-of-our-fellow man grow out of cooperation, and do not lead to it. In his words,

“Within the frame of social cooperation there can emerge between members of society feelings of sympathy and >friendship and a sense of belonging together. These feelings are the source of man's most delightful and most sublime >experiences. They are the most precious adornment of life; they lift the animal species man to the heights of a really >human existence. However, they are not, as some have asserted, the agents that have brought about social relationships. >They are fruits of social cooperation, they thrive only within its frame; they did not precede the establishment of social >relations and are not the seed from which they spring.”