Above I have laid out a diagram of the economic and power relationships between three crucial parties of Philip K. Dick's novel The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. In the novel, Dick weaves a complicated web of nested labyrinths that proved too difficult for me to successfully diagram in its entirety. So, instead, I chose to focus on the dynamic connections between the United Nations, the P.P. Layouts corporation, and the Martian colonists which are laid out earlier in the book. For those not familiar with the novel, an in depth summary is available here. The backstory to this diagram is a bit more concise: It's early in the 21st century, and Earth has become a practically inhospitable planet due to global warming and overpopulation, so the United Nations (who Dick has cast as the predominant governing body in his scenario) has begun drafting people to start colonies on Mars. Besides its tolerable temperature, Mars is an even less congenial environment where the colonists are forced to live in hovels. The Martian terrain and distance from civilization on Earth make the colonists desperately lonely and nostalgic, creating a reliable market for the goods of a corporation called P.P. Layouts. P.P. Layouts manufactures "mins", a variety of consumer products which are most analogous to dollhouse props. The colonists utilize these props to construct earth-like environments for themselves while enjoying the hallucinatory effects of a drug called Can D. Incidentally, this drug is unofficially produced by P.P. Layouts as well. The United Nations has made the drug illegal but has not legislated against the sale and marketing of P.P. Layout's mins.

Can D allows the colonists to escape momentarily from their hovels into a fantasy world that is based upon the mins they have set up around them. The curious thing about Can D's hallucinatory effects is that only 2 characters exist in the Can D world: "Perky Pat" Christiensen and Walt Essex. Most of the time, however, the colonists take the drug together due to its addictive nature and the small spaces that they share. When this ritual occurs, the colonists individual consciousnesses fall into the singular entity of either Walt or Pat. So, Philip K. Dick makes a virtual character that several minds have to struggle to control. If the individuals can agree, Walt and Pat will end up having some fantastic adventure (seemingly the ideal for the horny Martian is copulation). The members of this hallucination never seem to be able to reach consensus, however, and they frequently waste their drug experience away in frustration. Nonetheless, the colonists still struggle to continue escaping into the Can D cycle in order to enjoy the nostalgia that the P.P. Layout amenities provide.

While the colonists bounce between hovel life and hallucination, the United Nations and P.P. Layouts thrive as a symbiotic pair upon the impoverishment of the colonists. The United Nations creates a target market for P.P. Layouts by displacing people from earth, and P.P. Layouts provides a complacent labor force for the UN to govern on Mars. These two interests are still in competition with one another, however, and we see them wrestle for power over the flow of resources from one planet to another.