The perils and pitfalls of a Dark Side magocracy
Emperor Palpatine had a plan, and it had nothing to do with any kind of responsible government. I've previously outlined that his Galactic Empire was so horribly-run that one would have to kill off almost the entire leadership before getting to the chance of someone capable gaining the throne. By all normal metrics, the Galactic Empire was a disaster, and while the actions of the Rebels were instrumental in hastening the collapse of the regime... one might safely assume that it would have collapsed within a few decades (at most), anyway. For a normal dictatorship, that would certainly be accurate. The truth is, however, that Palpatine deliberately designed his Empire to be the way it was. And if it hadn't been for the actions of the Rebel Alliance, the unsustainable nature of his despotic regime would have become a moot point.
On the face of it, there appears to be a serious discrepance between Palpatine when he's scheming to establish the Empire, and Palpatine after he has succeeded is doing so. In the former situation, Palpatine is careful, deliberate and very good at manipulation. In the latter situation, he is needlessly cruel, disproportionately destructive, and openly malevolent. This difference in personality has repeatedly been noted and analysed, with the usual explanation being that all the power had gone to his head. This supposedly made him increasingly over-confident, until he slipped up in a fatal way. This happened at Endor, but (so the argument goes) it was just a matter of time.
Indeed, the way the Empire was organised and governed seems to support this interpretation. Although Palpatine painted himself as an opponent of the megacorps initially, the outcome of the Clone Wars was that he unilaterally nationalised said megacorps and all their assets: an exercise in vast-scale plunder. He subsequently handed control over these corporations to his own cronies (which is 'truth in television', because this is what always happens when governments suddenly nationalise vast swathes of the economy). Said cronies were free to run the corporations as they saw fit (typically in ways far more exploitative than had previously been the norm, which is saying something). Palpatine's only demand was that they produced what his government demanded, at the price the government offered, with no back-talk. Thus, the new plutocrats became lap-dogs of the regime from day one. Free to exploit the populace, but in no way allowed to go against the government. (Hitler and Stalin would be proud, because that's pretty much how they did it, too.)
This type of corrupt and despotic "state capitalism" manages to mix-and-match a considerable amount of inefficiency with an active proliferation of perverse incentives. That is to say: because the megacorps are in the government's pocket, they can count on the government to keep the competition down. This removes all healthy competition, and leads to an ever more lethargic oligarchy. At the same time, the government's ability to set its own prices for whatever it demands results in too-big orders being demanded for too-low prices. The result is that the plutocrats, unwilling to cut back on their own pork barrel, instead try to cut back on costs. which they do by cutting corners. Which is why (for instance) stormtrooper armour is such low-quality garbage.
In addition to ruining the economy in this manner, the Empire also made things much worse by insisting on the maintenance of a permanent war economy. The militarists were key backers of Palpatine's regime, and consequently, the military budgets went through the roof under the Empire. In spite of the fact that the Clone Wars were over, and the only military challenge for the Empire consisted of (initially) very scattered Rebel cells, the size of the military was vastly increased. Enormous sums that could have been spent usefully were instead wasted on Star Destroyers and other instruments of war (including various "super-weapons", all of which were useless).
As far as we can discern, Palpatine's public reasoning here was essentially a Keynesian argument, in that he provided jobs for everyone, either in the construction of all these war machines, or in the ranks of the military, or in some other capacity serving the needs of that military. The problem with this is useless 'make-work' jobs that add no real value to the economy are ultimately only more damaging to the economy. Because every person in a 'ake-work' job can no longer contribute in any way that adds real value. And every credit spent on useless war machines can no longer be spent on anything useful. In fact, because the tax burden is vastly increased, more and more people will end up destitute due to the government's exploitative burden on the citizenry. Additionally, the high taxes will make smuggling more profitable, and will thus cause a vast increase in criminal activity.
That last point alludes to a sort of self-affirming effect that all despots (usually unintentionally) cultivate. Their policies cause more crime, which they then use to legitimise the police state. Their policies cause dissent and rebellion, which they use to legitimise the militarised state of society. This also how Palpatine painted things. The more his horrible policies wrecked the galaxies, the worse things got and the more stresses became unbearable. In turn, he used the worsening situation to justify new and even worse forms of despotism, which only perpetuated the corrosive cycle.
Palpatine, unsurprisingly, was an avid centralist (as all aspiring tyrants are, because despotism requires the ability to unilaterally impose the will of your central government on all regions of your domain). I have already argued why, on a galactic scale, centralism cannot be successful in the long term. Even ignoring all of the above, Palpatine's regime wouldn't have been able to last for very long. I have also noted, however, that all centralists must somehow create division and pit one segment of the galactic populace against another. Centralist rule is always minority rule, in a galaxy with countless sentient species. The way to gain support for it is to make a particular minority invested in imposing its will on all others. Palpatine did this via the twisted myth of Human High Culture, which portrayed all non-humans as lesser beings. Without such a tactic, he would not have been able to gain power in the way he did. Yet even this prerquisite for his success turned out to be yet another factor that undermined the efficiency of his regime.
Relegating (virtually) all non-humans to the status of second-class citizens at best (and victims of chattel slavery and/or targets for whole-sale extermination at worst) instantly robbed the Empire of the vast majority of its active and creative minds. If non-humans are limited to low-end jobs at best, then their potential cannot be actualised in a meaningful way. Unspeakable numbers of intelligent individuals, full of abilities to contribute to society in myriad ways, were instead discarded completely. Not only that, but humans of good character (and frequently of considerable intelligence and ability) were unwilling to further such a vile system, and thus withdrew themselves from its service. In many cases, they actively turned against it and joined the rebellion. (Crix Madine, Han Solo and Biggs Darklighter are but three names in a very long list.)
Overall, this left the Empire deprived of the greatest (number of the) greatest minds, and drove the most courageous people right into the ranks of the Rebellion. Which left the Empire with the mediocrities and the cowards. The small-minded bullies and the ethically defective sadists. Not only that, but adherence to the Empire's institutional xenophobia was a key qualification for advancement, which meant that even from those still remaining, not the most capable were put in charge, but the most wicked and perverse. (Which explains why the regime's utter echelons were almost wholly filled with spiteful, cruel and outright insane troglodytes.) We haven't even mentioned the insitutional sexism yet, which barred most women from any advancement, thus robbing the Empire of half its available potential again.
Even the people who did advance through the ranks were actively discouraged from any kind of meaningful loyalty: Palpatine constantly pitted them against each other in deadly power-games, rewarding those who most effectively killed or side-lined their rivals. (Unless they were too good at it, in which case he had them killed: no potential threats to his reign allowed!) Also, he surrounded himself with hysterical cultists and various types of Dark Side adepts (such as his apprentice Darth Vader, or the Imperial Inquisitors). These had broad authority to murder Imperial officials at a whim, and did so on a frequent basis. The populace had much the same to fear from the multiple (competing!) intelligence agencies and secret police forces, all of which had the authority to apprehend, imprison or execute citizens without trial, without recourse and without any reason given. All in all, constant fear, adversity and rampant paranoia were the norm in the Empire.
No wonder the Rebels won. It's almost a miracle the Empire lasted as long as it did! And there we have the crux, because we are indeed looking at something supernatural here. Not a miracle, but rather its exact opposite. Palpatine maintained his power through his abilities in using the Dark Side. And that very factor is why his Empire was so terribly mis-governed. He was an evil space wizard. His powers grew when the Dark Side was bolstered. Which happened due to suffering, fear, pain, hate and cruelty. So Palpatine structurally sought to increase those things, and to minimise joy, compassion, hope, love and mercy. (Which are, you will note, the very things that undo him in the end.)
This is why we can say that Palpatine wasn't suddenly an idiot after seizing power. The way his Empire was organised wasn't an accident, but a key part of his plan. The Empire was never even supposed to last for all that long. Palpatine caused all that (apparently) needless suffering because seizing power was actually not the goal of his plan, but part of it. Causing the suffering was his goal, or at least the proximate one. Because by throwing the whole galaxy into utter despair and agony, he endlessly expanded his own power, derived from the Dark Side.
Palpatine did everything wrong if judged as a conventional dictator, but the truth is that he was not a conventional dictator. He was always a force of pure malevolence. Some of the very best writers in the expanded universe alluded to this repeatedly. Take Luceno and Stover: they never portrayed Palpatine as some stupid evil dictator, but as a malevolent entity wearing a human mask. The climax of Stover's Revenge of the Sith novelisation really captures this, when Palpatine's true nature (as seen by Force-sensitives when he's not actively hiding it from them) is described. He is a living shadow. Completely inhuman, and devoid of any trace of light and goodness.
The ultimate implication of this was that Palpatine literally aspired to become a dark god, and consume the entire Galaxy in his unceasing destructive hunger for more power and more suffering to feast on. His Empire was ruled "inefficiently" by conventional metrics because Palpatine had no conventional goals. Keeping the Empire functional in the long term wasn't what he truly desired: the Empire was merely a stepping stone to godhood. And using the empire to inflict unimaginable cruelties on the entire galaxy was a key part of that plan. Which explains a whole lot about the Empire. It also explains that the Rebel Alliance was very important after all: if Palpatine hadn't been stopped in time, he'd have turned the whole galaxy into a giant funral pyre as part of an indescribably vast Dark Side ritual aimed at turning himself into an evil deity.
Thankfully, the very evil that a monster like Palpatine inflicts on others is the thing that rallies the good and the just against him. As it happened, they were in time to stop him before he could carry out his true plans.
On the face of it, there appears to be a serious discrepance between Palpatine when he's scheming to establish the Empire, and Palpatine after he has succeeded is doing so. In the former situation, Palpatine is careful, deliberate and very good at manipulation. In the latter situation, he is needlessly cruel, disproportionately destructive, and openly malevolent. This difference in personality has repeatedly been noted and analysed, with the usual explanation being that all the power had gone to his head. This supposedly made him increasingly over-confident, until he slipped up in a fatal way. This happened at Endor, but (so the argument goes) it was just a matter of time.
Indeed, the way the Empire was organised and governed seems to support this interpretation. Although Palpatine painted himself as an opponent of the megacorps initially, the outcome of the Clone Wars was that he unilaterally nationalised said megacorps and all their assets: an exercise in vast-scale plunder. He subsequently handed control over these corporations to his own cronies (which is 'truth in television', because this is what always happens when governments suddenly nationalise vast swathes of the economy). Said cronies were free to run the corporations as they saw fit (typically in ways far more exploitative than had previously been the norm, which is saying something). Palpatine's only demand was that they produced what his government demanded, at the price the government offered, with no back-talk. Thus, the new plutocrats became lap-dogs of the regime from day one. Free to exploit the populace, but in no way allowed to go against the government. (Hitler and Stalin would be proud, because that's pretty much how they did it, too.)
This type of corrupt and despotic "state capitalism" manages to mix-and-match a considerable amount of inefficiency with an active proliferation of perverse incentives. That is to say: because the megacorps are in the government's pocket, they can count on the government to keep the competition down. This removes all healthy competition, and leads to an ever more lethargic oligarchy. At the same time, the government's ability to set its own prices for whatever it demands results in too-big orders being demanded for too-low prices. The result is that the plutocrats, unwilling to cut back on their own pork barrel, instead try to cut back on costs. which they do by cutting corners. Which is why (for instance) stormtrooper armour is such low-quality garbage.
In addition to ruining the economy in this manner, the Empire also made things much worse by insisting on the maintenance of a permanent war economy. The militarists were key backers of Palpatine's regime, and consequently, the military budgets went through the roof under the Empire. In spite of the fact that the Clone Wars were over, and the only military challenge for the Empire consisted of (initially) very scattered Rebel cells, the size of the military was vastly increased. Enormous sums that could have been spent usefully were instead wasted on Star Destroyers and other instruments of war (including various "super-weapons", all of which were useless).
As far as we can discern, Palpatine's public reasoning here was essentially a Keynesian argument, in that he provided jobs for everyone, either in the construction of all these war machines, or in the ranks of the military, or in some other capacity serving the needs of that military. The problem with this is useless 'make-work' jobs that add no real value to the economy are ultimately only more damaging to the economy. Because every person in a 'ake-work' job can no longer contribute in any way that adds real value. And every credit spent on useless war machines can no longer be spent on anything useful. In fact, because the tax burden is vastly increased, more and more people will end up destitute due to the government's exploitative burden on the citizenry. Additionally, the high taxes will make smuggling more profitable, and will thus cause a vast increase in criminal activity.
That last point alludes to a sort of self-affirming effect that all despots (usually unintentionally) cultivate. Their policies cause more crime, which they then use to legitimise the police state. Their policies cause dissent and rebellion, which they use to legitimise the militarised state of society. This also how Palpatine painted things. The more his horrible policies wrecked the galaxies, the worse things got and the more stresses became unbearable. In turn, he used the worsening situation to justify new and even worse forms of despotism, which only perpetuated the corrosive cycle.
Palpatine, unsurprisingly, was an avid centralist (as all aspiring tyrants are, because despotism requires the ability to unilaterally impose the will of your central government on all regions of your domain). I have already argued why, on a galactic scale, centralism cannot be successful in the long term. Even ignoring all of the above, Palpatine's regime wouldn't have been able to last for very long. I have also noted, however, that all centralists must somehow create division and pit one segment of the galactic populace against another. Centralist rule is always minority rule, in a galaxy with countless sentient species. The way to gain support for it is to make a particular minority invested in imposing its will on all others. Palpatine did this via the twisted myth of Human High Culture, which portrayed all non-humans as lesser beings. Without such a tactic, he would not have been able to gain power in the way he did. Yet even this prerquisite for his success turned out to be yet another factor that undermined the efficiency of his regime.
Relegating (virtually) all non-humans to the status of second-class citizens at best (and victims of chattel slavery and/or targets for whole-sale extermination at worst) instantly robbed the Empire of the vast majority of its active and creative minds. If non-humans are limited to low-end jobs at best, then their potential cannot be actualised in a meaningful way. Unspeakable numbers of intelligent individuals, full of abilities to contribute to society in myriad ways, were instead discarded completely. Not only that, but humans of good character (and frequently of considerable intelligence and ability) were unwilling to further such a vile system, and thus withdrew themselves from its service. In many cases, they actively turned against it and joined the rebellion. (Crix Madine, Han Solo and Biggs Darklighter are but three names in a very long list.)
Overall, this left the Empire deprived of the greatest (number of the) greatest minds, and drove the most courageous people right into the ranks of the Rebellion. Which left the Empire with the mediocrities and the cowards. The small-minded bullies and the ethically defective sadists. Not only that, but adherence to the Empire's institutional xenophobia was a key qualification for advancement, which meant that even from those still remaining, not the most capable were put in charge, but the most wicked and perverse. (Which explains why the regime's utter echelons were almost wholly filled with spiteful, cruel and outright insane troglodytes.) We haven't even mentioned the insitutional sexism yet, which barred most women from any advancement, thus robbing the Empire of half its available potential again.
Even the people who did advance through the ranks were actively discouraged from any kind of meaningful loyalty: Palpatine constantly pitted them against each other in deadly power-games, rewarding those who most effectively killed or side-lined their rivals. (Unless they were too good at it, in which case he had them killed: no potential threats to his reign allowed!) Also, he surrounded himself with hysterical cultists and various types of Dark Side adepts (such as his apprentice Darth Vader, or the Imperial Inquisitors). These had broad authority to murder Imperial officials at a whim, and did so on a frequent basis. The populace had much the same to fear from the multiple (competing!) intelligence agencies and secret police forces, all of which had the authority to apprehend, imprison or execute citizens without trial, without recourse and without any reason given. All in all, constant fear, adversity and rampant paranoia were the norm in the Empire.
No wonder the Rebels won. It's almost a miracle the Empire lasted as long as it did! And there we have the crux, because we are indeed looking at something supernatural here. Not a miracle, but rather its exact opposite. Palpatine maintained his power through his abilities in using the Dark Side. And that very factor is why his Empire was so terribly mis-governed. He was an evil space wizard. His powers grew when the Dark Side was bolstered. Which happened due to suffering, fear, pain, hate and cruelty. So Palpatine structurally sought to increase those things, and to minimise joy, compassion, hope, love and mercy. (Which are, you will note, the very things that undo him in the end.)
This is why we can say that Palpatine wasn't suddenly an idiot after seizing power. The way his Empire was organised wasn't an accident, but a key part of his plan. The Empire was never even supposed to last for all that long. Palpatine caused all that (apparently) needless suffering because seizing power was actually not the goal of his plan, but part of it. Causing the suffering was his goal, or at least the proximate one. Because by throwing the whole galaxy into utter despair and agony, he endlessly expanded his own power, derived from the Dark Side.
Palpatine did everything wrong if judged as a conventional dictator, but the truth is that he was not a conventional dictator. He was always a force of pure malevolence. Some of the very best writers in the expanded universe alluded to this repeatedly. Take Luceno and Stover: they never portrayed Palpatine as some stupid evil dictator, but as a malevolent entity wearing a human mask. The climax of Stover's Revenge of the Sith novelisation really captures this, when Palpatine's true nature (as seen by Force-sensitives when he's not actively hiding it from them) is described. He is a living shadow. Completely inhuman, and devoid of any trace of light and goodness.
The ultimate implication of this was that Palpatine literally aspired to become a dark god, and consume the entire Galaxy in his unceasing destructive hunger for more power and more suffering to feast on. His Empire was ruled "inefficiently" by conventional metrics because Palpatine had no conventional goals. Keeping the Empire functional in the long term wasn't what he truly desired: the Empire was merely a stepping stone to godhood. And using the empire to inflict unimaginable cruelties on the entire galaxy was a key part of that plan. Which explains a whole lot about the Empire. It also explains that the Rebel Alliance was very important after all: if Palpatine hadn't been stopped in time, he'd have turned the whole galaxy into a giant funral pyre as part of an indescribably vast Dark Side ritual aimed at turning himself into an evil deity.
Thankfully, the very evil that a monster like Palpatine inflicts on others is the thing that rallies the good and the just against him. As it happened, they were in time to stop him before he could carry out his true plans.
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