Star Wars Episode 2conomics

See how I added "...conomics" to that? That takes skills.

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So we learn in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones that The Republic and all its Jedi buddies decide to utilize a previously-unknown-to-them army of clones of Boba Fett's dad in order to fight off the massive robot army of the separatists, who apparently are under the control of Darth Sidious, the alter ego of the guy that controls the Rupublic Senate and its clone army, chancellor Palpatine.

Do I have this right?

So on the well-written side we have a guy, Chancellor Palpatine AKA Darth Sidious AKA Darth Vader's Master AKA The Emperor, who is secretly orchestrating a war between two different factions that he controls, trying to destroy all the Jedi Knights.

But on the dark side of the script we have a lack of understanding of economics.

Of course.

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Human beings that fight wars on Earth are valuable. Each life lost during a war (or any time) represents a substantial and costly loss. This is why wars are often relatively short - they are fought between two or more controllers of expensive, nearly irreplaceable resources that try to destroy each other's resources to get the other side to stop fighting.

But not in Star Wars.

In Star Wars, apparently, one side purchases a bunch of robots, and the other side (the Republic) purchases a bunch of clones of Jango Fett. In a universe where the gains from trade are literally astronomical, one would not think that the monetary resources necessary to purchase robots or clones is much of a strain in the slightest.

In fact, why purchase clones anyway? Supposedly they're better warriors than stupid droids, but they take more than 10 years to fully mature!

As I always say, fight robots with robots. Why does the Galactic Republic not simply purchase more droids to fight off the huge droid army of the separatists? I guarantee they have the money. In the real universe, they would do exactly this.

But there's a problem: Imagine you are a Galactic Senator. Even in relatively peaceful times, you know that any of your potential enemies might go out one morning and buy a whole droid army simply for the hell of it, and try to take over your Galactic Senate. Simply due to the threat of this possibly occurring, you have to have a huge droid army available (or even clones, if you feel like it) at your disposal any time of the day or night.

But how big must your robotic or clone army be?

If your enemy has a million droids, you must purchase and have on hand a million droids + an Imperial Walker. But your enemies will then just get 2 million droids, an imperial walker and a fleet of any of these:

The page I got this from is full of useful information...
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So if you follow this logic to its conclusion, any real war fought in the Star Wars Universe must be shockingly large. So large that there would be a battle consisting solely of converting the most resources into military 'units' until almost all of one side's resources are used up. And I mean thousands of planets, trillions of humanoids, and a nearly infinite amount of raw goods with which one could produce an infinite number of quirky robots with annoying voices and terrible senses of humor.

But, of course, we can assume that the threat of an "infinite resource war" such as this would prevent any one side from taking aggressive action in the first place, can't we?

Again, not in Star Wars.

I believe the answer depends on the number of planets actively participating in the universe's federation of planets. This is why Star Trek is believable, and Star Wars is your toddler's bullshit fantasy. In the universe, no matter where you are or however much of a long, long time ago it happens to be there is no Force, and physics do not change so much that there is noise and fire in space and Jedi "Knights" - who can stop laser fire with swords! - can't seem to hop into military cargo aircraft properly on one end of the universe, and on our side of the universe space is boring and vacuumy, and even my grandma knows that when you're trying to escape a surrounding droid army's laser fire you get the fluck into that fluckin' cargo aircraft as fast as fluckin' possible.

Watch that scene in Attack of the Clones - you'll see what I'm talking about.

Oh, but my point was this: With too many planets within such short [time] distance from each other, the barriers to interstellar trade are minimal, and "infinite resource wars" are either entirely too likely, or constantly threatened, and will inevitably occur. But if your universe happens to be only sparsely populated with planets and intelligent life, and droids and clones are apparently difficult to come by (There's only one Data! ...Or two...?), wars are determined by dedication and diplomacy. Or lack thereof, I suppose.

So now I think I have the right to propose the following Rule of Future Space Wars:

If there are enough planets, resources and humanoids readily available to produce a large number of droids with crappy senses of humor (which is evidence of their very low cost [because if you're adding wit into your droid's programming, the droid market must be a very competitive and established market]), then you will have one universal government.

In fact, this happens to be the case in Star Wars. Hefty interplanetary trade leads to one or two super-powerful governments, The Galactic Republic followed by The Empire.

But in Star Trek, there are multiple, competing, powerful governments. (The Federation, the Romulans, Borg, etc.) This is what you get with high barriers to trade. Borg!

So listen up, people: If you don't want your great, great, great grandchildren to have to fight for freedom against giant moon-sized, laser-shootin', planet-explodin' Death Starish space battle stations, you'd better hope the laws of physics and limitations of travel below 185,000 miles per second hold up.

If the rules of physics don't hold, then pass this warning on to your children, to pass along to their own children, and so on:

The minute your droids start making wise cracks, start preparing for a big ass war.

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Follow that logic?