Well I love buyout to much to drop it altogether, but a something like a LAW that would cause an industry increase at a price of dust production could be easily bearable.
Nah, nevermind, this would further empower everyone else and Lumeris.

I can see how you purposely run at -5k dust, financing it via market just so you can have your industry bonus. =D

I don't believe Lumeris already do that, do they? I don't know, I don't think so. So yes, "how can we make it happen that they achieve dust victory as easily as sophones achieve science".

As in "+50% production , -20% tech costs from 50 pop" for science victory, seems pretty good doesn't it?
vs
"You can have one extra trading company which is still nerfed to the ground , you will never have dust to buyout cause you need it to expand + your routes will still get blockaded by pirates at 50 pop, also you can give away systems at cost of influence".

For economy victory, I mean specifically on release the extra trading company was a beast, no joke, but then the trade income was insane for all the factions dust production did not matter, it was all in the trading companies.
Nowadays, I would not say they were useless but they do not really seem to make up for investing into them. + even mainting trade treaty costs influence per turn. as if it was not hard enough getting one before.
But there is vodyani, cravers, nakalim, riftborn all who can generate more dust than our beloved Lumeris.
What's more, they can even keep it, as in not having to spend it on doubling colonization costs.

Here's a fine example on how dust helps.

"Oh no, enemy has 7 CP fleet approaching! What can we do?!"

"We can buy our own fleet! Right here right NEXT turn." (+ right before we tier up to T2 in military, so the ships are actually cheaper and then retrofit them)

buyout vid Also sorry for breathing.

Joke's on Lumeris who are the only race that actually won't have the dust to buy them out, cause they HAVE TO spend it on colonization.
But hey, not the [any other race], cause they can just expand AND kill you at the same time. (ok to be fair vodo and unfallen might need some prerequisites)

My point is you can play any other race like Lumeris (I suppose were intended to be played like), better than Lumeris, and I find it sad.

The biggest problem for me with inflation is that you can completely break the mechanic by amassing a large pool of dust while there is a high inflation rate (by selling resources/ships etc) and then build C3 centers and behemoths to bring your dust/turn massivley negative, reducing inflation to 0.25x. This causes all market prices to drop to essentially zero, meaning you can rebuy all your previously sold resources for next to nothing, and more importantly, build trade ships which bring your dust/turn up to positive again. Then you delete the C3 centers and boom your dust/turn quadrupled. rinse and repeat. What this eventually means is that because the inflation rate is so incredibly high, nobody but you can afford the upkeep cost of military ships.