Supermetals

A Supermetals spokesman speaking in Starfall on Hermes says that technology:

eases labor;
preserves health;
prevents famine;
educates;
gives mastery of nature.

However, planets like Woden, Ikrananka, Ivanhoe and Vanessa, able to market only spice, fur, art, oils or minerals, cannot afford spaceships, power plants, automatons, laboratories or schools.

Although the technology to help them exists:

David Falkayn, discoverer of Mirkheim, must break his oath of fealty to van Rijn by giving this source of valuable supermetals to the poorer planets instead of to his own employer;

the poorer planets, organized as the Supermetals Company, must lie about the source of the supermetals that they sell to Technic society;

when the source is revealed, Supermetals' property rights in Mirkheim are denied and war is waged for possession of the planet.

This is all very unfortunate but also all too plausible.