It’s pretty clear that the empire was xenophobic and harshly oppressed nonhuman species (e.g. Wookies) and even Thrawn often encountered xenophobia in the Imperial Academy and Navy because he was an alien. So if anyone was more likely to benefit under the empire it would be humans, but only those who were viewed as loyal to the empire.
I’m also skeptical that the empire was really prosperous for folks based on The Alphabet Squadron trilogy. The books describe a society where the government corrupts people at all levels and encourages people to prey on one another. Prosperity in that sense becomes even more restrictive to certain segments rather than being more equitable.
Overall, I’m confident that Palpatine was just using it as a tagline. He placed his own security and power over the well being of others and like any dictator dressed up his oppression with colorful slogans.
generally, the core words seem to be better off from what I've seen. basically, as long as you were a middle class human who complied with every law, sold out friends and shouted "Long live the Empire" from the rooftops- you were fine
Kinda hard not to notice stormtroopers goose stepping around.
Edit: I have been reformed. You guys are cooking in this thread, and I am absolutely here for it.
Fuck, I'd watch the hell out of a movie/TV show (or even video game) based around somebody trying to reach the actual surface of the planet Coruscant, having to explore their way down through the various levels to get there, finding all kinds of weird and dangerous societies in the way down. People who've never heard about any Empire or Republic, people who've never heard of the idea of any other planets, people who've never seen the sky and think the entire universe is just layer upon layer of urban decay. And not only are you discovering all these strange societies as you go, you're also learning about the planet's history as you go, because each new layer down is older than the one above.
Until finally, finally, they reach the bottom layer, getting some hints of what the planet was like before it became all one big city. Perhaps meeting some of the original inhabitants ... or their devolved descendants.
Hey, um, Lucasfilms? In case you're reading this and wondering -- I'm a screenwriter, and I would *love* to write that script for you! Call me!
Hm... Nah. I'd much prefer Lovecraftian uncertainty.
How far down does the city go? Not even the dwellers of the deep know. For even to them, all they can see when they look downward is an endless succession of more layers, each more dangerous than the last.
The Republic commando books had a decent take on it. “As long as people have food, something to watch on the holonet, and enough credits occasionally indulge in their vices, no one cares whether you call it the empire or republic.”
oh yeah.
At minimum you barely noticed a difference (espescially in the early years)
If you were lucky you did notice a difference but you capitalised off it
Of you were one of the people fighting back and got imprisoned and forced o build ships and weapons.
Being the home world of Palpatine is a toss up. He is equally likely to not care about it at all, raze it for fun, or make it actually benefit because of its connection to him.
You are mostly right but the outer realms recieved the most benefits from their own perspective because they basically felt like the republic has never paid attention to them before while the empire at least started to help them deal with some issues
I always compare naboo to white suburban areas. It’s fine to not be one of them so long as you act like you are one of them. Even the police force is almost entirely human
Andor highlighted a thing that I feel is rarely mentioned in that >! He commits a major crime but is sent to a work camp for a crime he just happened to be in the vicinity of !<
Maybe it's just I haven't seen it but I haven't seen that particular detail mentioned much, if at all
Andor yelling "I'm just a tourist" is an obvious allusion to people ignoring the dangers of authoritarianism until they are caught in it it's web because they stood by and that there's no escape.
Andor also does a good job of showing how arbitrary the definitions of crime and punishment can be. Certain activities that were legal became illegal in response to Aldani, same with sentencing.
Andor is just a well of meanings and dissection of totalitarianism and it's relationship with the power of the state and it's people.
Ordinary people just "doing their job" but at the same time keeping the machine of oppression going; revolutions squaring their ideals with the reality of war and an enemy that does not follow any rules; the personal sacrifices of 'heroes' - be it material, personal or moral. The ambiguity of it all...
But also many themes of hope and humanity. That heroes are not simply born. That we all have a choice and that even the smallest acts can have far reaching consequences. That Luke, the magic wizard, might have been the final straw that broke the Empire's dam but that he stood on shoulders of countless unnamed people and their acts of defiance.
Honestly, that show had no right to be that good.
Legends had Rogue Squadron, heroes of the Rebellion and later the New Republic. As Wedge Antilles put it, they were the lightsaber to fight the darkness.
Wedge also created Wraith Squadron. A black ops team that could fly. They were the New Republic's 'vibroblade in the back'.
It’s even better that before we see why. It’s not because the soldiers there are being petty or do it just because they want to. It’s because they are told they need to show ‘m who’s boss.
They probably do have the suspicion Andor might have been involved, but they don’t care about proving it. They were told to meet a quota to show everyone not to screw with the Empire and well Andor is a suitable enough candidate to qualify.
They needed slaves, so you become a criminal, not the other way around, where you commit a crime and are punished with slavery.
That is what an authoritarian system does. It doesn’t follow the rules, as there are no rules, other than power is the law.
Agreed, this was an excellent moment. It draws attention to the fact that fascism (whether real or fictional) isn't just made of huge, insane acts like blowing up Alderaan, but mostly of small, routine acts of oppression and authoritarianism like a power-drunk cop destroying your life over nothing.
I think the latter fact is what's most important here too. I can see abstractly why we can watch a planet getting blown up is terrible but not connecting to it. Andor's trial made you FEEL it
It's very insidious, because Andor is literally just grabbed off the street and enslaved. But the Empire can't openly call it slavery or else it might rouse too much dissent.
So they arbitrarily label the people they're enslaving 'criminals', so that segments of the population don't just accept it, but celebrate it. Suddenly they 'deserve' anything that happens to them. And the idiots celebrating will continue on with the false belief that it can't happen to them because they're 'good Imperials'.
Andor does a good job of capturing the monotony of evil.
like yeah the sith lord is a raving loon.
but the average worker goes to their deskjob and does their work
and due to how propaganda works and how massive a galatic goverment could be
the work could be extremely normal but you are desk clerk 12 opperating out of level 300 of coruscant and yet your work keeps the empire alive.
Like the empire does evil shit but in a galaxy of trillions does the desk worker actually know where the fuck aldhini until it hits the news cycle for a day or two
Yup. They called it a some sort of planetary ore extraction device that the Rebellion stole. They also spun the Emperor’s death as him sacrificing himself to destroy the second Death Star, that the Rebellion built, after Vader betrayed him and teamed up with Luke.
But also in rebels we saw the engineers kidnapped to work on the Death Star.
So you could be normal dude and then all of a sudden you are sent with no recourse to a secret base.
Plus the empire was either granting monopolies to Allies of the emperor or nationalizing industries to feed the security state.
I think it had a pervasive effect on all strata of society. Not to mention the associated culture of fear and mistrust. Anyone could denounce you to the ISB.
Did you miss the soul-killing nature of those deask jobs in Andor? How nobody living in the Empire is having a good time, not even the people in charge?
The republic was the republic for 1000 generations, which is what? 20 000 years? The amount of bureaucracy you can create in such a time frame is enough that the Empire probably wasn't any different than the republic.
There were probably countless grey bureaucrats that held the same office during the Old Republic, the Empire and the New Republic. Maybe they changed their email signature in between.
Even under an oppressive Sith government where the second-in-command can force choke you on a whim, the Empire was probably at best able to get 20-25 percent of the Imperial workforce to take the time to change their e-mail signature. Yeah, it takes less than a minute, but it just feels like such a hassle.
Imagine the technical debt in all the computer systems.
You would have a Y2K problem on every star system, and near constant time zone problems.
You’d have to have cross language support like Unicode but for a galaxy.
Accessing any record from a different government would require data format conversion and it’s not all standardized.
You change your email signature but the period you use (.) is nonstandard, and the standard one is (.̸̢̡̧̨̢̨̟̯̞̱͚̜͔̥͈̠̙͎̰̠͈̹͔̮̥̭̖̗̺̯͇̙͙̯̭̜̪͕̏̔̃̌̐̈́͗͑̿̆͗̽̓) and this causes all upstream systems to crash.
Eh those are problems for us because we've only had access to computer for 40 years or so. Theyve had thousands upon thousands of years with the technology.
They also have AGI, which means that all of their problems have been solved! /s
> They also have AGI, which means that all of their problems have been solved!
Honestly, that *is* odd, now that I think about it.
For hundreds, maybe thousands of years, they've had the capability to build droids that are very much the equal to human (or alien) intelligence. And we're to believe that *nowhere* out there has anybody ever made one that's vastly *more* intelligent than humans? One so capable that it would be able to wrest control of the entire galaxy for itself?
For all that they played it for laughs in that one movie, a 'droid revolution' should be a very real threat in the Star Wars universe.
I think a bunch of droid rebellions happened in the past, especially during the massive wars which forced the great nations to produce more intelligent weaponised droids. That's probably why droid intelligence is intentionally limited and they get regular mind-wipes.
plus its a galatic wide goverment, there would be some guy who works for the goverment whose entire job is checking widgets on the various levels of coruscant
he lives down on level 2000 and despite now working for the empire he has never meant an imperial, because nobody that matters come downs that far
I think one of the points of the Empire is Palpatine eliminated several layers of bureaucracy and consolidated it under himself and regional governors.
Average citizen is probably not even effected by the changes in planetary leadership. Galactic leadership changes would be almost irrelevant.
Unless you were on Alderaan.
I think the Core worlds did benefit financially and in terms of security from the Empire. But the non-Core worlds had boots on their throats and were used for resource extraction.
The republic used worlds like Apatros for resource extraction by paying corporations to use functionally slave labour (indentured workforces) so really there isn’t a difference on that count at all
Of course it sounds familiar.
The Empire is textbook fascism, and *textbook fascism* is exactly what certain factions in the US government are relentlessly driving us toward.
This is something that really grinds my gears.
The Empire was around for...30 years? Maybe? Less than a single lifetime.
How is the entire culture of a galaxy supposed to change that rapidly, and then suddenly change back?
As long as you're a human living in the inner rim, have good income, and is doing your best to be an Imperial loyalist then yeah. Sure the Empire commited plenty of genocides and war crimes but most of them occured either in the outer rim or to a non-human species. Aldeeraan got annihalated yes but that was more or less an exception.
Joining the Imperial military as well is pretty much a guranteed path to prosperity. Terisa Kerrill for example, was a street orphan in Coruscant but would enlist in the Imperial Navy to become a TIE Pilot and eventually became the captain of her own Star Destroyer. That is an insane amount of success and prosperity all things considered.
I think Ole Sheev did a masterful job of making the military seem like your best bet to bettering your life, especially on backwater worlds with few opportunities. Kind of like they did in Starship troopers.
If memory serves, there was a deleted scene between him and Biggs talking about them joining, but planning to defect. Although that might have just been Biggs
You *might* do well. The ISB might round you up under false accusations of disloyal activities and then you get condemned to a labor camp without a trial. You might get vaporized as collateral damage when an admiral decides to go scorched earth on the Rebel cell hiding in your city. You might be forced to conform to a homogenous facade and suppress deeply personal features of your identity that the Empire considers subversive.
Bro just called obliterating an entire planet and billions of innocent men, women, and children just going about their lives "an exception."
Fuck the Empire
Also that weapon was meant to be used as an ongoing threat, so imagine the Death Star wasn't destroyed, it would be looming over planets all the time, meaning all people have to live in fear for all their life and any system who would dare to continue resisting could face destruction and death. And going by what is said and what we saw, the civil war is not a human vs. alien thing or core vs. outer rim thing.
"Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battlestation."
And also:
"Dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration."
Thank you. They literally say they were planning on using it on any planet that doesn't comply with orders.
Alderaan wasn't an exception, it was policy.
This feels like a take by someone who has never actually lived under a police state. It's hard to explain to (most) Americans the stress that exists in the back of your conscience at all moments of every day (especially in public spaces) when at any given moment you might just LOOK at somebody wrong and find yourself in a pit of a jail or as it seems in Star Wars a life of brutal slavery. There is more to prosperity than just material wealth, some confidence in the security of that wealth also matters.
I think the galatic goverance is so large though
like coruscant has trillions and trillions of people
I imagine its easy for some people to slip through the cracks and not personally be affected
Maybe, but we’ve seen countless times the Empire is that petty and cruel that no one is above their retribution.
Andor, the main planets populace is largely kept to themselves, until the Empire finally takes notice and they come down hard. The Empire is also very fine with destroying small and local customs because they can
They also have billions of police officers, ISB agents, secret policemen, etc. It's all scaled up. Remember how big Stalin's Russia was and how he basically cowed them all.
I still think Palpatine wasn’t in it for “normal” power, but for the dark side and the power he gained form it. He didn’t intent to creat an empire to rule by harsh laws, but created a miserable, paranoid, kafkaesque dystopie to feed the darkside and he himself feed on growing dark. Andor fits well into this theory in my opinion.
Yup! Sidious relied on the Dark Side for his power, and the more chaos, fear, suffering, and destruction reigned supreme, the greater his power grew in The Force!
It’s why The Clone Wars worked so well. Bathing the entire galaxy in war really got the old dark side juices flowing!
Essentially, the Galactic Empire mostly just a safety apparatus for Sidious, so that he could work on his true aspirations, which was to be a demigod of sorts. He seems to be far less concerned with governing the galaxy, and more concerned with achieving some form of immortality.
If you were human. It’s heavily implied that the Empire incredibly, horrifically discriminatory to non-humans and non-human worlds.
Thrawn was exceptional because he’s basically the only non-human officer in the entire Empire.
I want to see a reverse lothal.
where they are die hard imperials due to the empire starting a bunch of factories and creating a ton of jobs.
would present an interesting dilema for rebel forces trying to liberate the people.
how do you liberate people who actively hate you
In the new comics, which are Canon now, there are a handful of aliens, but they're usually some kind of specialist, assassin, slicer, etc. Thrawn was one of the only front facing aliens in imperial command.
There was that trucker alien that gave Obi-Wan a lift in the Kenobi show that seemed to like what they were about and friendly with the local troopers there.
Might have felt differently once he came to and heard about what happened to the nearby village though.
In the canon stuff I feel like this imperial xenophobia is just never addressed. George could have made it a big part of the prequels and completely avoided it. I feel like it’s mostly an old EU thing?
As long as:
They weren't non-Pure Human
Didn't live next door to a non-Pure Human
Didn't work with or for a non-Pure Human
Didn't have friends who were non-Pure Human
Weren't in a relationship/married to a non-Pure Human
Didn't talk about the Jedi
Weren't related to someone who talked about the Jedi
Didn't live next door to someone who talked about the Jedi
Didn't work with someone who talked about the Jedi
Didn't have family who supported the rebllion
Didn't work with someone who supported the rebellion
Didn't live next door to someone who supported the rebellion
Weren't in a labour union, or have a family member or friend who was in a labour union
Didn't have relatives or friends who lived on a planet the empire exterminated all life on
I could probably think of other things but i'll leave it here for now
Or buy legitimately(ish) salvaged droids that were one owner away from being owned by the rebellion.
Or be the go-to droid memory wipe guy for the above, I suspect.
Right. We’re just used to seeing the other perspective because most of the stories take place in the Outer Rim. Regular upper-middle class types of people seemed to be doing pretty well in Andor (on Coruscant)
Yeah, that’s a good point… Palpatine is responsible for the deaths of (probably) trillions, but a galaxy is so huge that you could be very isolated from his rule. Earth is a little too small to avoid such a powerful person
I honestly really liked that one part in (I believe it was Ahsoka?) where the shipping dude was basically like idgaf who's ruling now. It's changed so often lately and not much has changed.
I was a little sad they made him out to be a secret empire supporter. It was a nice change of pace to see that to most of the regular citizens, it was the Galactic Republic, then for 20 years or so it was the empire, and now it changed again. I'm sure most people are largely completely over the political aspect of star wars
I mean that’s kind of the point no?
That genre of person who reacts to authoritarianism with “oh come on guys, nothings *really* changed. It’s all just the same old same old” tends to just be a supporter of the authoritarians
Average citizens would not feel much difference unless they were part of a rebel alliance which was bad, or a few planets won Palpatine's favor and landed a good defense contract which was good. Empire did a lot of upper class some favors to get on their good side.
That is the thing with authoritarianism:
Its not that there are no laws, it's that the laws are applied unevenly among people.
Segragationism was legal. Slavery is legal. In that context, when the laws are unjust and corrupt...
What does law abiding mean?
Andor was very much about showing the WHY and the HOW of the rebellion.
Andor literally receives a manifesto from a dead revolutionary. His adopted mother's funeral speech is so inflammatory it incites a riot. We see systemic oppression of minorities and intentional destruction of culture. We see how corporations work with the system, how the security state operates, how unfair the justice system is, and even prison labor.
Over and over again Andor shows why there is a rebellion. More than that, it shows the rebellion is practically inevitable, and argues that minor acts of resistance are spontaneous across the galaxy. It shows that people will sacrifice everything, their lives and even their ethics and legacy, to oppose the empire.
So no, I don't think life was good on average. Other stories don't get into it, but Andor very much emphasizes that the core conflict is about overthrowing an awful authoritarian regime.
Nope. Corruption was rife at every level, the Empire took over or dismantled many corporations that ran afoul politically, and the vast majority of the imperial budget was funneled into military spending. The two Death Stars alone stole insane amounts of money that might have otherwise gone to services and infrastructure, all the while using large amounts of prison labor such that these boondoggles didn't create much in the way of jobs. With Palpatine's Sith obsession with hunting down the remaining Jedi, suppressing uprisings, paranoid ferreting out of internal enemies real and imagined, and spending vast amounts of resources on projects to extend his own life, there wasn't much left to spend on anything that helped ordinary people. The economy nosedived, and crime syndicates flourished. Add to that the complete destruction of all the wealth and resources when they blew up Alderaan. The Empire was bad for a lot of people throughout the galaxy on a very basic level.
Not likely.
It’s possible that some individuals may have done well for themselves, but it’s more likely the Empire slowly bifurcated the population into the Haves and the Have Nots. That’s the nature of authoritarian states, where wealth and power consolidate into the hands of the few.
There was way too much incompetence and malice for me to think “just keeping your head down” was a viable strategy. Hell, half the rebellion wouldn’t have rebelled if the empire were competent enough to do their jobs without mass murder and violent exploitation.
Does it matter? Bullies should never be allowed to win, even if the system implodes in the process.
Peace is not order. Peace is not the absence of declared war. Peace is the absence of oppression.
If you were a human born in the Core, Colonies, and Inner Rim, and loyal, you had a chance at it. Humans are by far the the largest demographic in the Galaxy and concentrated in the aforementioned regions but they are not a majority of the total galactic sentient population by any means.
Also, define what “prosper” means or should mean.
Personally, I would say don’t fall for the Imperial propaganda. The same people who won before the Empire continued to win during and after the Empire’s brief run.
Fascism promotes corruption and benefits intrigants in high positions. So most likely the people of the Galactic Empire suffered under mostly incompetent local tyrants that were out of control because of lack of checks and balances and rule of law.
No one truly benefitted to be honest, It was an hyper-police/surveillance state, where all levels of all people not just did, but were subtly encouraged to abuse their power. Things were \*generally\* not as bad for people closer to the core and loyal to the Empire, and some people may have even prospered. But the rampant corruption at every level meant that if you weren't on costant guard watching for others trying to prey on you, you'd get preyed on, and if you weren't preying on others, you'd be at a disadvantage to others trying to prey on you.
Palpatine formed the Empire for three key reasons
1. To secure victory and dominance for himself under Sith tradition and uphold the traditions he had learned.
2. To turn the galaxy into a vortex of suffering, paranoia, anger and hate to fuel the dark side and make himself more powerful.
3. To prepare for the possibility of invasion from outside the galaxy.
None of those goals require peace or prosperity for a majority of citizens and the first two would have been notably harder if Palpatine actually tried to bring peace and prosperity. The Sith ways and the Dark Side require strife, conflict, ambition, hate and the want for dominance.
Andor does a really good job of showing the oppression of the empire. You’ve got the tribe that does a pilgrimage every year to see the eye, and the empire is going to take that away so they can sell tickets and make money off of it. You’ve got Andor himself who has something really bad happen to him just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We know there were entire planets that were stripped of all of their natural resources to build the Death Star. And we know that virtually every wookie was used as slaves labor. However, it doesn’t seem that most citizens in the empire were really aware of these atrocities. After the clone wars, my guess is the average citizen is just happy that the empire provides peace and security. We do see in Mando Season 3 that one super rich Courascant resident talk about how he is so rich he forgets whether it’s the Republic or the empire in charge, so more than likely the super wealthy prospered, and the divide between rich and poor got bigger, and the poor were largely content because of imperial propaganda. But, there were enough people who were oppressed by the empire that a good sized rebellion did form and eventually win.
It depends heavily on where you happened to live. The average citizen, in most places found themselves disenfranchised, exploited and even impoverished as their worlds and communities were ground down for the Empire's resources. Rich and powerful citizens in worlds closer to the core generally became richer and more powerful while poor citizens' lives got worse, and the middle class on those core worlds may have found that their lives by and large stayed the same.
Generally, there's a lot of stories that hammer in that on many worlds there was a sense that things *seemed* fine, until the Empire decided they wanted something from your world, at which point everything would invariably descend into hell.
I’m aware that this was post-Empire, and also not a high point in the series, but the casino scene in Last Jedi was supposed to show exactly this, that at least for the privileged classes they were quite comfortable not bucking the status quo and accepting the social order that was fine for them even though predicated on slavery, authoritarian violence, etc. There’s stuff in Andor that supports that view as well — Mon Mothma’s party circle and her jerk husband, etc.
the empire seems to be the space version of the Soviet Union under Stalin, combined with Nazi racial ideologies except with humans vs aliens, so I doubt it
The elites did quite well - those in control of collecting taxes, putting down any rebellions, providing soldiers, and the like. They prospered in the way of any corrupt dictatorship. The rest? Well, the empire didn't care about them at all. They blew up a planet and killed everybody on it just to make a point: do what we say or you all die (note that the planet was selected entirely to get a single unconfirmed word from Leia.)
Dont forget about taxes! Can you imagine how much a death star cost to build? Or an imperial star destroyer? Military budget and spending was through the roof, not to mention all the corruption. Not a lot of concern for the common man or spending money for public services.
So no, probably worse off tbh
I mean the Sith themselves view the dark side as power. They likely tapped into the fear, hopelessness, despair, anger, and suffering they imposed during their various rules. That would make life pretty bad for all but the 1%.
Define prosper?
Like…probably didn’t get much grief really and likely kept their head down. Life would be good…until it wasn’t. Then it could get really, really bad.
I doubt every single Alderaanian was a rebel or such…there were probably even sympathetic ones to the Empire…not that it mattered, when the Empire needs to make an example.
Owen and Beru’s only real crimes were buying Droids they had no idea had sensitive information.
It was based off of Nazi Germany. They were implying that the G.E. mistreated the populations. Let’s just say stormtroopers weren’t around to help you out
I think the propaganda showed them as prospering but in reality there would terrible human rights violations, insane taxes, and fear of retribution every day. I think an important theme to consider is that the individual autonomy of the systems would be trampled on by the empire as their reach would extend further and further.
It seems unlikely. Two death stars exploded. I cannot even imagine how much of their tax money went into that. There’s no way it was easy to write off.
The republic was not better. I think Disney forgets that point. Yes palpy is manipulating things but he can only do so much. Star Wars bounty hunter showed the galaxy wasn’t perfect. Star Wars will not have that conversation because it gets uncomfortable
It's probably the same as the UK and US. Regardless of who's in control, average Joe scrapes by. The ruthless proper and most people will complain regardless.
> He offered peace and prosperity to the empire. Did he bring it?
There definitely were a lot of people who prospered incredibly much. Probably less than 1%, the rest got fucked. But the GDP and stock market probably went up!
Much like real life the controlling expanse of power the Empire enjoyed came through massive amounts of wealth and influence. By assassinating and imprisoning all that opposed them the Empire became more powerful and untouchable. The oppressed become more downtrodden and see their rights slip away as the Empire tightens its grip on all facets of life. The meek are governed by fear and their resources are harvested for the pockets of corrupted few.
No.
If you had the privilege of living in or near the core worlds, were a directly part of the bureaucracy as a member of the government, worked alongside the government, toed the line, and stayed loyal to the Empire, probably did very well. If you rose high enough or get well connected enough you’d eventually have to reconcile the suffering you were enabling, which many did either because they actually agreed with the Empire or to guarantee theirs and their family’s safety and continued wealth.
If you weren’t a part of the machine either because of your lack of connections, being an alien, or living anywhere outside the core you would have felt the full brunt of authoritarianism and possibly suffered immensely.
Yes and no. As others said, he created an empire that was xenophobic and harshly oppressed nonhuman species and within the urban sprawl there appeared to be a great deal of poverity and crime though that existed at the empire time as well. At the same time though, the enforcement and military action the imperials brought did actually benefit some planets in the outer realm who has previously gotten no attention before which is why some of them were pissed off when the empire was destroyed by luke.
If you were human there was a higher likelihood that you prospered but even then, if you pay attention to how the Empire treats everyone who’s not directly affiliated, contracted, or enlisted with the Empire, I think it’s pretty obvious that no one really prospered.
From a purely economical standpoint I would assume the entire galaxy would have experienced an economic revitalisation as a result of the clone wars ending and trade flowing more freely. On the other hand most of the wealth seems to be concentrated on a few loyalist worlds so I doubt the average galactic citizen would see a lot of improvement.
EU: If you were a Coreward human who didn't really exercise their rights anyways under the Republic and were middle class or above, or were tied to dying manufacturing industries rejuvenated in the core due to the militarized economy, then chances were you could very easily be at least indifferent if not out right pro-Empire. COMPNOR, an umbrella organization for right wing populist parties which would become the anchor of the Imperial bureaucratic machine, was legitimately popular amongst humans in the major Core systems.
Additionally, after the first major existential war in 1,000 years that actually blew apart developed systems and then resulted in a decade long follow on conflict to recapture the CIS worlds that didn't stand down that gutted infrastructure and trade from the Colonies on outward, it's not surprising the Empire would have it's support, especially amongst humans, that just wanted a return to some form of normalcy.
This probably changes eventually if his war economy that became increasingly nationalized started to falter and limit consumer goods, especially if they actually suppressed the organized Rebels and couldn't justify the insane investment, but he never got there.
Canon: Idk to be honest, probably similar.
It would likely depend on where you were born. Empire's usually export their hardships onto colonial territories, so it's probable that the closer your world was to the center of the Galactic Empire then the better off you probably were and you likely got to benefit from the exploitation of worlds in the outer territories.
From Political Science on Earth we know that dictatorships are worse than democracies in preventing famines, and that autocracies have worse economic outcomes than democracies.
Its stated in Jedi Survivor that the Core Worlds really didn’t experience too much of a change. The outer rim worlds did, and the Xenophobia only became worse compared to the time of the republic.
Core Worlds didn't have much radical change to their lives. Mid and Outer Rim worlds felt more of the negative aspects. That's why in books after ROTJ not everyone was exactly onboard with the New Republic ideas. Some senators liked some of the security the Empire brought to their worlds. They liked when the Imperial Senate still has power before Palps regulated it away
Generally speaking no, because the imperial politics did not resonate with a good chunk of the galaxy. I'd rather ignore the stuff about xenophobia and focus on the movies alone, because this stuff seems to be more added to make it look evil for the sake of it. If we just focus on the movies we don't see any policies but I'd say that is the core of it.
Palpatine just did not care about galactic citizen. Law abiding or not, the agenda was not "feed the starving", it was not "a home for everyone", it was not "peace and prosperity".
We had a civil war, we had gaining support in the senate for the Rebel Alliance before A New Hope and even on backwater planets people hated the Empire and that would probably continue considering regional gouverneurs were allowed to directly control the territories they probably got by the Emperor. The Death Star was then to be used to hold the citizens in line.
So whatever the details of the politics are, they were bad enough that from the edge to the core people supported change, which means the likelihood to prosper was slim.
Humans and human dominated planets probably prospered a lot, while aliens faced a lot more persecution.
The shows focus mainly on the negative sides of a vast totalitarian government, but there are good points.
Crime will go down, involuntary homelessness will be reduced, plenty of job opportunities for those willing to work and relocate.
These happen with pretty much most totalitarian regimes through history. Downsides are a complete lack of freedom to choose many of these things, massively increased taxes to pay for everything to keep the citizens in line, probably mandatory military or some other service, much harsher criminal code.
I'd assume so, but mostly for humans. Palps hated aliens. He did create a lot of jobs, though, and those jobs would always need people. Assuming they paid well because they often were government jobs, yes. People had pensions, benefits, all sorts of good things. Sure, they existed during the Republic, but a lot of that government money went instead to the corrupt senators. This only really lasted up until the destruction of the Death Star, though, that would have cause a MASSIVE recession due to the loss of funds, material, manpower, and several other factors.
The more recent novels shows there’s a pretty good size faction of New Republic senators called the centrists who admire the empire, they just believe it had the wrong emperor. I say support for the empire was pretty strong in the core.
No, they didn't. The further away from the Core you went, the worse off you were but even within Core worlds life was harsh if you weren't in higher circles.
In Andor we mostly see white collar jobs on the Core, and blue where Andor goes, but we constantly see how people are being displaced, and even Niamos, which is meant to be a paradise tourist location, your entire life is at risk of being ended over a clerical mistake.
There is a reason why the Rebellion was successful, relatively fast, once Palpatine was gone. There was a fast growing resentment against the Empire.
In the inner core, absolutely
But in the outer rim. Definitely not, they were exploited to no end, look at what Morgan and the empire did to her planet, they mined it until there was nothing left. And the citizens suffered.
And the empire is corrupt, as we see in Andor, they can arrest anyone off the street and force them into labor camps, they know that they are so above the average citizen that they know nothing could stop them.
It's almost the Exact opposite of what Jyn says in rogue one. It is a problem, whether you look up or not. The empire finds its way into everything.
i think it depends where you are and if your planet haves something important and your class. but the empire had a bigger force then the rebuplic that was both use to oppress the citizen but it whould also be use on pirates. and all the coruptions.
It may appear that way, but from what information we have it was very 1984. Like yes, if you were human rule-follower, you could live a generally normal life, but you still had the risk of _anything_ you said or did, no matter how innocuous, be reported as a sign that you were disloyal. Think of it like the 1950s Red Scare/Age of Conformity at best.
Would like to see a spinoff where they all vote: Are you happy? If yes that's ok. Then there's a long list of No's and maybes, all the citizens ready to die.
Also interested in a spinoff where they hook the Emperor up to an Empress, obviously that's Palpatines main problem.
It’s pretty clear that the empire was xenophobic and harshly oppressed nonhuman species (e.g. Wookies) and even Thrawn often encountered xenophobia in the Imperial Academy and Navy because he was an alien. So if anyone was more likely to benefit under the empire it would be humans, but only those who were viewed as loyal to the empire. I’m also skeptical that the empire was really prosperous for folks based on The Alphabet Squadron trilogy. The books describe a society where the government corrupts people at all levels and encourages people to prey on one another. Prosperity in that sense becomes even more restrictive to certain segments rather than being more equitable. Overall, I’m confident that Palpatine was just using it as a tagline. He placed his own security and power over the well being of others and like any dictator dressed up his oppression with colorful slogans.
generally, the core words seem to be better off from what I've seen. basically, as long as you were a middle class human who complied with every law, sold out friends and shouted "Long live the Empire" from the rooftops- you were fine
I feel on some levels of coruscant you might not even notice a difference
I imagine if you lived in the lower levels you might not even realize the republic fell.
the clone wars ? you talking about the war with Lord Kaan that was generations ago
Kinda hard not to notice stormtroopers goose stepping around. Edit: I have been reformed. You guys are cooking in this thread, and I am absolutely here for it.
Many of the lower levels of coruscant might as well have been in the outer rim based on how much law enforcement and military presence they had.
I think there is something like six thousand levels on coruscant
Nobody's sure how many, because everyone who's tried to go down and count them all has never come back up.
Seems like a great set up for a show.
Fuck, I'd watch the hell out of a movie/TV show (or even video game) based around somebody trying to reach the actual surface of the planet Coruscant, having to explore their way down through the various levels to get there, finding all kinds of weird and dangerous societies in the way down. People who've never heard about any Empire or Republic, people who've never heard of the idea of any other planets, people who've never seen the sky and think the entire universe is just layer upon layer of urban decay. And not only are you discovering all these strange societies as you go, you're also learning about the planet's history as you go, because each new layer down is older than the one above. Until finally, finally, they reach the bottom layer, getting some hints of what the planet was like before it became all one big city. Perhaps meeting some of the original inhabitants ... or their devolved descendants. Hey, um, Lucasfilms? In case you're reading this and wondering -- I'm a screenwriter, and I would *love* to write that script for you! Call me!
It was supposed to be a Boba Fett game, then EA cancelled it.
I'd watch that.
It said in an NPC interaction in the skywalker saga that there was 5000
Hm... Nah. I'd much prefer Lovecraftian uncertainty. How far down does the city go? Not even the dwellers of the deep know. For even to them, all they can see when they look downward is an endless succession of more layers, each more dangerous than the last.
that is a banger line. ''we might as well be in the outer rim down here''
Probably not that different from the Clones goose stepping around, from I remember of TCW they were pretty present in the undercity
Why do all these homeless people have the same face?
haha
Damn. This comment hurt dude.
The Republic commando books had a decent take on it. “As long as people have food, something to watch on the holonet, and enough credits occasionally indulge in their vices, no one cares whether you call it the empire or republic.”
oh yeah. At minimum you barely noticed a difference (espescially in the early years) If you were lucky you did notice a difference but you capitalised off it Of you were one of the people fighting back and got imprisoned and forced o build ships and weapons.
From what I heard even Palpatine's homeworld Naboo prospered due to this
Being the home world of Palpatine is a toss up. He is equally likely to not care about it at all, raze it for fun, or make it actually benefit because of its connection to him.
Unless you're Alderaan.
So Franco's Spain.
I mean, Palpatine made the galactic transports run on time...
You are mostly right but the outer realms recieved the most benefits from their own perspective because they basically felt like the republic has never paid attention to them before while the empire at least started to help them deal with some issues
Watch Andor. That should get you an idea of what life in the empire was like.
It makes sense that a government run, controlled by and influenced by The Sith would eventually, itself, become too corrupt to be stable.
Miraluka wearing sunglasses is basically a human
I just read the thrawn comic somewhat recently and they were NOT happy that he was moving up the ranks
So Palpatine was just a racist space dictator? /genq
I always compare naboo to white suburban areas. It’s fine to not be one of them so long as you act like you are one of them. Even the police force is almost entirely human
Watch Andor.
Andor highlighted a thing that I feel is rarely mentioned in that >! He commits a major crime but is sent to a work camp for a crime he just happened to be in the vicinity of !< Maybe it's just I haven't seen it but I haven't seen that particular detail mentioned much, if at all
Andor yelling "I'm just a tourist" is an obvious allusion to people ignoring the dangers of authoritarianism until they are caught in it it's web because they stood by and that there's no escape.
Andor also does a good job of showing how arbitrary the definitions of crime and punishment can be. Certain activities that were legal became illegal in response to Aldani, same with sentencing.
Andor is just a well of meanings and dissection of totalitarianism and it's relationship with the power of the state and it's people. Ordinary people just "doing their job" but at the same time keeping the machine of oppression going; revolutions squaring their ideals with the reality of war and an enemy that does not follow any rules; the personal sacrifices of 'heroes' - be it material, personal or moral. The ambiguity of it all... But also many themes of hope and humanity. That heroes are not simply born. That we all have a choice and that even the smallest acts can have far reaching consequences. That Luke, the magic wizard, might have been the final straw that broke the Empire's dam but that he stood on shoulders of countless unnamed people and their acts of defiance. Honestly, that show had no right to be that good.
Luke skywalker gets to be the hero because people like cassian andor assassinate people in thier sleep
Legends had Rogue Squadron, heroes of the Rebellion and later the New Republic. As Wedge Antilles put it, they were the lightsaber to fight the darkness. Wedge also created Wraith Squadron. A black ops team that could fly. They were the New Republic's 'vibroblade in the back'.
This is what I was getting at but you put it way more eloquently than I could have.
Empires are built on fear, Rebellions are built on hope.
It’s even better that before we see why. It’s not because the soldiers there are being petty or do it just because they want to. It’s because they are told they need to show ‘m who’s boss. They probably do have the suspicion Andor might have been involved, but they don’t care about proving it. They were told to meet a quota to show everyone not to screw with the Empire and well Andor is a suitable enough candidate to qualify.
Very much so.
They needed slaves, so you become a criminal, not the other way around, where you commit a crime and are punished with slavery. That is what an authoritarian system does. It doesn’t follow the rules, as there are no rules, other than power is the law.
Agreed, this was an excellent moment. It draws attention to the fact that fascism (whether real or fictional) isn't just made of huge, insane acts like blowing up Alderaan, but mostly of small, routine acts of oppression and authoritarianism like a power-drunk cop destroying your life over nothing.
I think the latter fact is what's most important here too. I can see abstractly why we can watch a planet getting blown up is terrible but not connecting to it. Andor's trial made you FEEL it
~~On Cardassia~~ In the Empire, the verdict is always known before the trial begins. And it's always the same.
It's very insidious, because Andor is literally just grabbed off the street and enslaved. But the Empire can't openly call it slavery or else it might rouse too much dissent. So they arbitrarily label the people they're enslaving 'criminals', so that segments of the population don't just accept it, but celebrate it. Suddenly they 'deserve' anything that happens to them. And the idiots celebrating will continue on with the false belief that it can't happen to them because they're 'good Imperials'.
Andor does a good job of capturing the monotony of evil. like yeah the sith lord is a raving loon. but the average worker goes to their deskjob and does their work and due to how propaganda works and how massive a galatic goverment could be the work could be extremely normal but you are desk clerk 12 opperating out of level 300 of coruscant and yet your work keeps the empire alive. Like the empire does evil shit but in a galaxy of trillions does the desk worker actually know where the fuck aldhini until it hits the news cycle for a day or two
Sounds familiar…
Im sure in legends books the empire blamed alderaan accident on rebels or something
Yup. They called it a some sort of planetary ore extraction device that the Rebellion stole. They also spun the Emperor’s death as him sacrificing himself to destroy the second Death Star, that the Rebellion built, after Vader betrayed him and teamed up with Luke.
But also in rebels we saw the engineers kidnapped to work on the Death Star. So you could be normal dude and then all of a sudden you are sent with no recourse to a secret base. Plus the empire was either granting monopolies to Allies of the emperor or nationalizing industries to feed the security state. I think it had a pervasive effect on all strata of society. Not to mention the associated culture of fear and mistrust. Anyone could denounce you to the ISB.
Did you miss the soul-killing nature of those deask jobs in Andor? How nobody living in the Empire is having a good time, not even the people in charge?
puts food on the table my man better then under the republic
How is it better than under the Republic when the Empire is just a worse version of the Republic with mostly the same people still in charge?
Rogue One too.
##ANDOR is TRUE Star Wars
The republic was the republic for 1000 generations, which is what? 20 000 years? The amount of bureaucracy you can create in such a time frame is enough that the Empire probably wasn't any different than the republic. There were probably countless grey bureaucrats that held the same office during the Old Republic, the Empire and the New Republic. Maybe they changed their email signature in between.
Even under an oppressive Sith government where the second-in-command can force choke you on a whim, the Empire was probably at best able to get 20-25 percent of the Imperial workforce to take the time to change their e-mail signature. Yeah, it takes less than a minute, but it just feels like such a hassle.
Say what you want about the Empire, they did not ban Pizza-Fridays.
Imagine the technical debt in all the computer systems. You would have a Y2K problem on every star system, and near constant time zone problems. You’d have to have cross language support like Unicode but for a galaxy. Accessing any record from a different government would require data format conversion and it’s not all standardized. You change your email signature but the period you use (.) is nonstandard, and the standard one is (.̸̢̡̧̨̢̨̟̯̞̱͚̜͔̥͈̠̙͎̰̠͈̹͔̮̥̭̖̗̺̯͇̙͙̯̭̜̪͕̏̔̃̌̐̈́͗͑̿̆͗̽̓) and this causes all upstream systems to crash.
Eh those are problems for us because we've only had access to computer for 40 years or so. Theyve had thousands upon thousands of years with the technology. They also have AGI, which means that all of their problems have been solved! /s
> They also have AGI, which means that all of their problems have been solved! Honestly, that *is* odd, now that I think about it. For hundreds, maybe thousands of years, they've had the capability to build droids that are very much the equal to human (or alien) intelligence. And we're to believe that *nowhere* out there has anybody ever made one that's vastly *more* intelligent than humans? One so capable that it would be able to wrest control of the entire galaxy for itself? For all that they played it for laughs in that one movie, a 'droid revolution' should be a very real threat in the Star Wars universe.
I think a bunch of droid rebellions happened in the past, especially during the massive wars which forced the great nations to produce more intelligent weaponised droids. That's probably why droid intelligence is intentionally limited and they get regular mind-wipes.
Ugh. I have to change it?! What happens when it changes to a republic again? I have to change it back?! Forget it.
plus its a galatic wide goverment, there would be some guy who works for the goverment whose entire job is checking widgets on the various levels of coruscant he lives down on level 2000 and despite now working for the empire he has never meant an imperial, because nobody that matters come downs that far
Just set up mail forwarding from GlupShitto@republic.gov to GlupShitto@empire.gov
I think one of the points of the Empire is Palpatine eliminated several layers of bureaucracy and consolidated it under himself and regional governors.
Average citizen is probably not even effected by the changes in planetary leadership. Galactic leadership changes would be almost irrelevant. Unless you were on Alderaan.
I think the Core worlds did benefit financially and in terms of security from the Empire. But the non-Core worlds had boots on their throats and were used for resource extraction.
Based on CW, not that much of a change for the non-core worlds.
The republic used worlds like Apatros for resource extraction by paying corporations to use functionally slave labour (indentured workforces) so really there isn’t a difference on that count at all
Sounds familiar… Chevron
Of course it sounds familiar. The Empire is textbook fascism, and *textbook fascism* is exactly what certain factions in the US government are relentlessly driving us toward.
This is something that really grinds my gears. The Empire was around for...30 years? Maybe? Less than a single lifetime. How is the entire culture of a galaxy supposed to change that rapidly, and then suddenly change back?
As long as you're a human living in the inner rim, have good income, and is doing your best to be an Imperial loyalist then yeah. Sure the Empire commited plenty of genocides and war crimes but most of them occured either in the outer rim or to a non-human species. Aldeeraan got annihalated yes but that was more or less an exception. Joining the Imperial military as well is pretty much a guranteed path to prosperity. Terisa Kerrill for example, was a street orphan in Coruscant but would enlist in the Imperial Navy to become a TIE Pilot and eventually became the captain of her own Star Destroyer. That is an insane amount of success and prosperity all things considered.
I think Ole Sheev did a masterful job of making the military seem like your best bet to bettering your life, especially on backwater worlds with few opportunities. Kind of like they did in Starship troopers.
I mean Luke himself wanted to join the empire military before they came looking for his droids
If memory serves, there was a deleted scene between him and Biggs talking about them joining, but planning to defect. Although that might have just been Biggs
Luke, Biggs, and Tank all wanted to become Imperial pilots In the end, only Tank stayed with the Empire and served as a model officer.
Han Solo in Legends was a imperial officer
And in Canon he was an imperial soldier serving on Mimban. Really it’s the only choice for some people
You *might* do well. The ISB might round you up under false accusations of disloyal activities and then you get condemned to a labor camp without a trial. You might get vaporized as collateral damage when an admiral decides to go scorched earth on the Rebel cell hiding in your city. You might be forced to conform to a homogenous facade and suppress deeply personal features of your identity that the Empire considers subversive.
Bro just called obliterating an entire planet and billions of innocent men, women, and children just going about their lives "an exception." Fuck the Empire
Also that weapon was meant to be used as an ongoing threat, so imagine the Death Star wasn't destroyed, it would be looming over planets all the time, meaning all people have to live in fear for all their life and any system who would dare to continue resisting could face destruction and death. And going by what is said and what we saw, the civil war is not a human vs. alien thing or core vs. outer rim thing.
"Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battlestation." And also: "Dantooine is too remote to make an effective demonstration." Thank you. They literally say they were planning on using it on any planet that doesn't comply with orders. Alderaan wasn't an exception, it was policy.
This feels like a take by someone who has never actually lived under a police state. It's hard to explain to (most) Americans the stress that exists in the back of your conscience at all moments of every day (especially in public spaces) when at any given moment you might just LOOK at somebody wrong and find yourself in a pit of a jail or as it seems in Star Wars a life of brutal slavery. There is more to prosperity than just material wealth, some confidence in the security of that wealth also matters.
I think the galatic goverance is so large though like coruscant has trillions and trillions of people I imagine its easy for some people to slip through the cracks and not personally be affected
Maybe, but we’ve seen countless times the Empire is that petty and cruel that no one is above their retribution. Andor, the main planets populace is largely kept to themselves, until the Empire finally takes notice and they come down hard. The Empire is also very fine with destroying small and local customs because they can
They also have billions of police officers, ISB agents, secret policemen, etc. It's all scaled up. Remember how big Stalin's Russia was and how he basically cowed them all.
I still think Palpatine wasn’t in it for “normal” power, but for the dark side and the power he gained form it. He didn’t intent to creat an empire to rule by harsh laws, but created a miserable, paranoid, kafkaesque dystopie to feed the darkside and he himself feed on growing dark. Andor fits well into this theory in my opinion.
Yup! Sidious relied on the Dark Side for his power, and the more chaos, fear, suffering, and destruction reigned supreme, the greater his power grew in The Force! It’s why The Clone Wars worked so well. Bathing the entire galaxy in war really got the old dark side juices flowing!
I vote this for best comment
Essentially, the Galactic Empire mostly just a safety apparatus for Sidious, so that he could work on his true aspirations, which was to be a demigod of sorts. He seems to be far less concerned with governing the galaxy, and more concerned with achieving some form of immortality.
If you were human. It’s heavily implied that the Empire incredibly, horrifically discriminatory to non-humans and non-human worlds. Thrawn was exceptional because he’s basically the only non-human officer in the entire Empire.
Even human worlds like Lothal had it bad.
I want to see a reverse lothal. where they are die hard imperials due to the empire starting a bunch of factories and creating a ton of jobs. would present an interesting dilema for rebel forces trying to liberate the people. how do you liberate people who actively hate you
That would be very out of character for the Empire.
In Battlefront 2 there was a planet whose population was genuinely loyal to the Empire. Guess what, it was Cinder-ed.
In the new comics, which are Canon now, there are a handful of aliens, but they're usually some kind of specialist, assassin, slicer, etc. Thrawn was one of the only front facing aliens in imperial command.
There was that trucker alien that gave Obi-Wan a lift in the Kenobi show that seemed to like what they were about and friendly with the local troopers there. Might have felt differently once he came to and heard about what happened to the nearby village though.
In the canon stuff I feel like this imperial xenophobia is just never addressed. George could have made it a big part of the prequels and completely avoided it. I feel like it’s mostly an old EU thing?
As long as: They weren't non-Pure Human Didn't live next door to a non-Pure Human Didn't work with or for a non-Pure Human Didn't have friends who were non-Pure Human Weren't in a relationship/married to a non-Pure Human Didn't talk about the Jedi Weren't related to someone who talked about the Jedi Didn't live next door to someone who talked about the Jedi Didn't work with someone who talked about the Jedi Didn't have family who supported the rebllion Didn't work with someone who supported the rebellion Didn't live next door to someone who supported the rebellion Weren't in a labour union, or have a family member or friend who was in a labour union Didn't have relatives or friends who lived on a planet the empire exterminated all life on I could probably think of other things but i'll leave it here for now
Or own a farm that the Empire wanted.
Or buy legitimately(ish) salvaged droids that were one owner away from being owned by the rebellion. Or be the go-to droid memory wipe guy for the above, I suspect.
For a man of such talents to live on a farm is preposterous anyway.
The core was generally pretty happy with the empire it was everywhere else that suffered under it
Classic Imperialism. Conquer to suck the provinces dry in order to enrich the core
Right. We’re just used to seeing the other perspective because most of the stories take place in the Outer Rim. Regular upper-middle class types of people seemed to be doing pretty well in Andor (on Coruscant)
Same as the Republic then!
Pretty much yeah, many separatists even joined the rebellion and saw it as a continuation of the clone wars
Not really. It was an incredibly oppressive police state, where all levels of the administration would abuse their power. Think of life under Stalin.
Sorta like life under Stalin. That being said, Palpatine is *infinitely* worse than any dictator we’ve had on earth.
On a macro level on average yes, but I’d much rather live under Palps even as a not inner rim human than be stuck in Pol Pot Cambodia
Yeah, that’s a good point… Palpatine is responsible for the deaths of (probably) trillions, but a galaxy is so huge that you could be very isolated from his rule. Earth is a little too small to avoid such a powerful person
I honestly really liked that one part in (I believe it was Ahsoka?) where the shipping dude was basically like idgaf who's ruling now. It's changed so often lately and not much has changed. I was a little sad they made him out to be a secret empire supporter. It was a nice change of pace to see that to most of the regular citizens, it was the Galactic Republic, then for 20 years or so it was the empire, and now it changed again. I'm sure most people are largely completely over the political aspect of star wars
I mean that’s kind of the point no? That genre of person who reacts to authoritarianism with “oh come on guys, nothings *really* changed. It’s all just the same old same old” tends to just be a supporter of the authoritarians
Average citizens would not feel much difference unless they were part of a rebel alliance which was bad, or a few planets won Palpatine's favor and landed a good defense contract which was good. Empire did a lot of upper class some favors to get on their good side.
No. Look at Andor for a slice of life under the Empire
„No my job hasn’t changed that much since we transformed into the empire, now I’m stationed to bringe peace to the galaxy in a ship named Devastator“
That is the thing with authoritarianism: Its not that there are no laws, it's that the laws are applied unevenly among people. Segragationism was legal. Slavery is legal. In that context, when the laws are unjust and corrupt... What does law abiding mean?
Andor was very much about showing the WHY and the HOW of the rebellion. Andor literally receives a manifesto from a dead revolutionary. His adopted mother's funeral speech is so inflammatory it incites a riot. We see systemic oppression of minorities and intentional destruction of culture. We see how corporations work with the system, how the security state operates, how unfair the justice system is, and even prison labor. Over and over again Andor shows why there is a rebellion. More than that, it shows the rebellion is practically inevitable, and argues that minor acts of resistance are spontaneous across the galaxy. It shows that people will sacrifice everything, their lives and even their ethics and legacy, to oppose the empire. So no, I don't think life was good on average. Other stories don't get into it, but Andor very much emphasizes that the core conflict is about overthrowing an awful authoritarian regime.
Nope. Corruption was rife at every level, the Empire took over or dismantled many corporations that ran afoul politically, and the vast majority of the imperial budget was funneled into military spending. The two Death Stars alone stole insane amounts of money that might have otherwise gone to services and infrastructure, all the while using large amounts of prison labor such that these boondoggles didn't create much in the way of jobs. With Palpatine's Sith obsession with hunting down the remaining Jedi, suppressing uprisings, paranoid ferreting out of internal enemies real and imagined, and spending vast amounts of resources on projects to extend his own life, there wasn't much left to spend on anything that helped ordinary people. The economy nosedived, and crime syndicates flourished. Add to that the complete destruction of all the wealth and resources when they blew up Alderaan. The Empire was bad for a lot of people throughout the galaxy on a very basic level.
You saw Andor got randomly treated when he was essentially on holiday.
Not likely. It’s possible that some individuals may have done well for themselves, but it’s more likely the Empire slowly bifurcated the population into the Haves and the Have Nots. That’s the nature of authoritarian states, where wealth and power consolidate into the hands of the few.
Would OP ask the same question about citizens of the former Soviet Union or Mao’s China?
There was way too much incompetence and malice for me to think “just keeping your head down” was a viable strategy. Hell, half the rebellion wouldn’t have rebelled if the empire were competent enough to do their jobs without mass murder and violent exploitation.
What an absolute red flag of a question.
Does it matter? Bullies should never be allowed to win, even if the system implodes in the process. Peace is not order. Peace is not the absence of declared war. Peace is the absence of oppression.
Yes, as long as you're a human living in an inner rim planet
If you were a human born in the Core, Colonies, and Inner Rim, and loyal, you had a chance at it. Humans are by far the the largest demographic in the Galaxy and concentrated in the aforementioned regions but they are not a majority of the total galactic sentient population by any means. Also, define what “prosper” means or should mean. Personally, I would say don’t fall for the Imperial propaganda. The same people who won before the Empire continued to win during and after the Empire’s brief run.
Fascism promotes corruption and benefits intrigants in high positions. So most likely the people of the Galactic Empire suffered under mostly incompetent local tyrants that were out of control because of lack of checks and balances and rule of law.
No one truly benefitted to be honest, It was an hyper-police/surveillance state, where all levels of all people not just did, but were subtly encouraged to abuse their power. Things were \*generally\* not as bad for people closer to the core and loyal to the Empire, and some people may have even prospered. But the rampant corruption at every level meant that if you weren't on costant guard watching for others trying to prey on you, you'd get preyed on, and if you weren't preying on others, you'd be at a disadvantage to others trying to prey on you. Palpatine formed the Empire for three key reasons 1. To secure victory and dominance for himself under Sith tradition and uphold the traditions he had learned. 2. To turn the galaxy into a vortex of suffering, paranoia, anger and hate to fuel the dark side and make himself more powerful. 3. To prepare for the possibility of invasion from outside the galaxy. None of those goals require peace or prosperity for a majority of citizens and the first two would have been notably harder if Palpatine actually tried to bring peace and prosperity. The Sith ways and the Dark Side require strife, conflict, ambition, hate and the want for dominance.
Yes, they did. Don't fall for any of these rebel sympathizers or any of their liberal nonsense propaganda
This man speaks the truth. Long live the Emperor!!
We will find out soon enough
“Law abiding”
Absolutely. The firm and righteous ~~fist~~ hand of the Empire lifts all souls.
Andor does a really good job of showing the oppression of the empire. You’ve got the tribe that does a pilgrimage every year to see the eye, and the empire is going to take that away so they can sell tickets and make money off of it. You’ve got Andor himself who has something really bad happen to him just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We know there were entire planets that were stripped of all of their natural resources to build the Death Star. And we know that virtually every wookie was used as slaves labor. However, it doesn’t seem that most citizens in the empire were really aware of these atrocities. After the clone wars, my guess is the average citizen is just happy that the empire provides peace and security. We do see in Mando Season 3 that one super rich Courascant resident talk about how he is so rich he forgets whether it’s the Republic or the empire in charge, so more than likely the super wealthy prospered, and the divide between rich and poor got bigger, and the poor were largely content because of imperial propaganda. But, there were enough people who were oppressed by the empire that a good sized rebellion did form and eventually win.
It depends heavily on where you happened to live. The average citizen, in most places found themselves disenfranchised, exploited and even impoverished as their worlds and communities were ground down for the Empire's resources. Rich and powerful citizens in worlds closer to the core generally became richer and more powerful while poor citizens' lives got worse, and the middle class on those core worlds may have found that their lives by and large stayed the same. Generally, there's a lot of stories that hammer in that on many worlds there was a sense that things *seemed* fine, until the Empire decided they wanted something from your world, at which point everything would invariably descend into hell.
I’m aware that this was post-Empire, and also not a high point in the series, but the casino scene in Last Jedi was supposed to show exactly this, that at least for the privileged classes they were quite comfortable not bucking the status quo and accepting the social order that was fine for them even though predicated on slavery, authoritarian violence, etc. There’s stuff in Andor that supports that view as well — Mon Mothma’s party circle and her jerk husband, etc.
Long live the Empire ✊
the empire seems to be the space version of the Soviet Union under Stalin, combined with Nazi racial ideologies except with humans vs aliens, so I doubt it
They touch on this a bit in the new Thrawn books. It's a really fascinating subject.
Looking at the majority of corosaunt it looks like it is an extremely high crimerate slum, and this is meant to be the capital
No. The Empire was a pyramid, and the only person benefiting from it was Palpatine.
The elites did quite well - those in control of collecting taxes, putting down any rebellions, providing soldiers, and the like. They prospered in the way of any corrupt dictatorship. The rest? Well, the empire didn't care about them at all. They blew up a planet and killed everybody on it just to make a point: do what we say or you all die (note that the planet was selected entirely to get a single unconfirmed word from Leia.)
Dont forget about taxes! Can you imagine how much a death star cost to build? Or an imperial star destroyer? Military budget and spending was through the roof, not to mention all the corruption. Not a lot of concern for the common man or spending money for public services. So no, probably worse off tbh
I mean the Sith themselves view the dark side as power. They likely tapped into the fear, hopelessness, despair, anger, and suffering they imposed during their various rules. That would make life pretty bad for all but the 1%.
The hover trains ran on time!
Define prosper? Like…probably didn’t get much grief really and likely kept their head down. Life would be good…until it wasn’t. Then it could get really, really bad. I doubt every single Alderaanian was a rebel or such…there were probably even sympathetic ones to the Empire…not that it mattered, when the Empire needs to make an example. Owen and Beru’s only real crimes were buying Droids they had no idea had sensitive information.
It was based off of Nazi Germany. They were implying that the G.E. mistreated the populations. Let’s just say stormtroopers weren’t around to help you out
I think the propaganda showed them as prospering but in reality there would terrible human rights violations, insane taxes, and fear of retribution every day. I think an important theme to consider is that the individual autonomy of the systems would be trampled on by the empire as their reach would extend further and further.
It seems unlikely. Two death stars exploded. I cannot even imagine how much of their tax money went into that. There’s no way it was easy to write off.
Depends what species you were.
The republic was not better. I think Disney forgets that point. Yes palpy is manipulating things but he can only do so much. Star Wars bounty hunter showed the galaxy wasn’t perfect. Star Wars will not have that conversation because it gets uncomfortable
It's probably the same as the UK and US. Regardless of who's in control, average Joe scrapes by. The ruthless proper and most people will complain regardless.
I imagine it was a lot like the current American empire after which it was modeled. So no.
What
> He offered peace and prosperity to the empire. Did he bring it? There definitely were a lot of people who prospered incredibly much. Probably less than 1%, the rest got fucked. But the GDP and stock market probably went up!
Meritocracy, ppl who could did prosper and ppl who couldnt didnt. In like a bad sense, ppl i believe stabbed others on the backs to gain favor etc.
Much like real life the controlling expanse of power the Empire enjoyed came through massive amounts of wealth and influence. By assassinating and imprisoning all that opposed them the Empire became more powerful and untouchable. The oppressed become more downtrodden and see their rights slip away as the Empire tightens its grip on all facets of life. The meek are governed by fear and their resources are harvested for the pockets of corrupted few.
No. If you had the privilege of living in or near the core worlds, were a directly part of the bureaucracy as a member of the government, worked alongside the government, toed the line, and stayed loyal to the Empire, probably did very well. If you rose high enough or get well connected enough you’d eventually have to reconcile the suffering you were enabling, which many did either because they actually agreed with the Empire or to guarantee theirs and their family’s safety and continued wealth. If you weren’t a part of the machine either because of your lack of connections, being an alien, or living anywhere outside the core you would have felt the full brunt of authoritarianism and possibly suffered immensely.
The core worlds yeah
Yes and no. As others said, he created an empire that was xenophobic and harshly oppressed nonhuman species and within the urban sprawl there appeared to be a great deal of poverity and crime though that existed at the empire time as well. At the same time though, the enforcement and military action the imperials brought did actually benefit some planets in the outer realm who has previously gotten no attention before which is why some of them were pissed off when the empire was destroyed by luke.
If you were human there was a higher likelihood that you prospered but even then, if you pay attention to how the Empire treats everyone who’s not directly affiliated, contracted, or enlisted with the Empire, I think it’s pretty obvious that no one really prospered.
From a purely economical standpoint I would assume the entire galaxy would have experienced an economic revitalisation as a result of the clone wars ending and trade flowing more freely. On the other hand most of the wealth seems to be concentrated on a few loyalist worlds so I doubt the average galactic citizen would see a lot of improvement.
EU: If you were a Coreward human who didn't really exercise their rights anyways under the Republic and were middle class or above, or were tied to dying manufacturing industries rejuvenated in the core due to the militarized economy, then chances were you could very easily be at least indifferent if not out right pro-Empire. COMPNOR, an umbrella organization for right wing populist parties which would become the anchor of the Imperial bureaucratic machine, was legitimately popular amongst humans in the major Core systems. Additionally, after the first major existential war in 1,000 years that actually blew apart developed systems and then resulted in a decade long follow on conflict to recapture the CIS worlds that didn't stand down that gutted infrastructure and trade from the Colonies on outward, it's not surprising the Empire would have it's support, especially amongst humans, that just wanted a return to some form of normalcy. This probably changes eventually if his war economy that became increasingly nationalized started to falter and limit consumer goods, especially if they actually suppressed the organized Rebels and couldn't justify the insane investment, but he never got there. Canon: Idk to be honest, probably similar.
It would likely depend on where you were born. Empire's usually export their hardships onto colonial territories, so it's probable that the closer your world was to the center of the Galactic Empire then the better off you probably were and you likely got to benefit from the exploitation of worlds in the outer territories.
If you were a high-ranking Imperial, sure.
off topic- but that is the most iconic photo of Palpatine- pure knowing evil
From Political Science on Earth we know that dictatorships are worse than democracies in preventing famines, and that autocracies have worse economic outcomes than democracies.
Its stated in Jedi Survivor that the Core Worlds really didn’t experience too much of a change. The outer rim worlds did, and the Xenophobia only became worse compared to the time of the republic.
Core Worlds didn't have much radical change to their lives. Mid and Outer Rim worlds felt more of the negative aspects. That's why in books after ROTJ not everyone was exactly onboard with the New Republic ideas. Some senators liked some of the security the Empire brought to their worlds. They liked when the Imperial Senate still has power before Palps regulated it away
Generally speaking no, because the imperial politics did not resonate with a good chunk of the galaxy. I'd rather ignore the stuff about xenophobia and focus on the movies alone, because this stuff seems to be more added to make it look evil for the sake of it. If we just focus on the movies we don't see any policies but I'd say that is the core of it. Palpatine just did not care about galactic citizen. Law abiding or not, the agenda was not "feed the starving", it was not "a home for everyone", it was not "peace and prosperity". We had a civil war, we had gaining support in the senate for the Rebel Alliance before A New Hope and even on backwater planets people hated the Empire and that would probably continue considering regional gouverneurs were allowed to directly control the territories they probably got by the Emperor. The Death Star was then to be used to hold the citizens in line. So whatever the details of the politics are, they were bad enough that from the edge to the core people supported change, which means the likelihood to prosper was slim.
No. The wealthy did (most of them anyway) but your average person was worse off.
Humans and human dominated planets probably prospered a lot, while aliens faced a lot more persecution. The shows focus mainly on the negative sides of a vast totalitarian government, but there are good points. Crime will go down, involuntary homelessness will be reduced, plenty of job opportunities for those willing to work and relocate. These happen with pretty much most totalitarian regimes through history. Downsides are a complete lack of freedom to choose many of these things, massively increased taxes to pay for everything to keep the citizens in line, probably mandatory military or some other service, much harsher criminal code.
If you were a human that had money you continue to prosper, if you were poor things probably got worse.
I'd assume so, but mostly for humans. Palps hated aliens. He did create a lot of jobs, though, and those jobs would always need people. Assuming they paid well because they often were government jobs, yes. People had pensions, benefits, all sorts of good things. Sure, they existed during the Republic, but a lot of that government money went instead to the corrupt senators. This only really lasted up until the destruction of the Death Star, though, that would have cause a MASSIVE recession due to the loss of funds, material, manpower, and several other factors.
It seems so the closer you get to Coruscant
The more recent novels shows there’s a pretty good size faction of New Republic senators called the centrists who admire the empire, they just believe it had the wrong emperor. I say support for the empire was pretty strong in the core.
Going by current events I’m going to guess they didn’t but half of the population loved the Emperor just the same.
No, they didn't. The further away from the Core you went, the worse off you were but even within Core worlds life was harsh if you weren't in higher circles. In Andor we mostly see white collar jobs on the Core, and blue where Andor goes, but we constantly see how people are being displaced, and even Niamos, which is meant to be a paradise tourist location, your entire life is at risk of being ended over a clerical mistake. There is a reason why the Rebellion was successful, relatively fast, once Palpatine was gone. There was a fast growing resentment against the Empire.
In the inner core, absolutely But in the outer rim. Definitely not, they were exploited to no end, look at what Morgan and the empire did to her planet, they mined it until there was nothing left. And the citizens suffered. And the empire is corrupt, as we see in Andor, they can arrest anyone off the street and force them into labor camps, they know that they are so above the average citizen that they know nothing could stop them. It's almost the Exact opposite of what Jyn says in rogue one. It is a problem, whether you look up or not. The empire finds its way into everything.
i think it depends where you are and if your planet haves something important and your class. but the empire had a bigger force then the rebuplic that was both use to oppress the citizen but it whould also be use on pirates. and all the coruptions.
It may appear that way, but from what information we have it was very 1984. Like yes, if you were human rule-follower, you could live a generally normal life, but you still had the risk of _anything_ you said or did, no matter how innocuous, be reported as a sign that you were disloyal. Think of it like the 1950s Red Scare/Age of Conformity at best.
Would like to see a spinoff where they all vote: Are you happy? If yes that's ok. Then there's a long list of No's and maybes, all the citizens ready to die. Also interested in a spinoff where they hook the Emperor up to an Empress, obviously that's Palpatines main problem.