I guess freedom of movement isn’t a big thing, financially or legally, in Star Wars. Like the real world, really.
What do space empires fight over?
that seems like a reason to fight.
what is holding those people down on Tatooine that nobody's hauling in blocks of ice from elsewhere in the star system (or farther). How much could be hauled in to re-water the planet?
Who is stopping that? Who is stopping Uncle Owen from packing up and going to a nice moon like Endor?
Is any of that useful for your little war (assuming the like in your universe)?
true. but then they didn't take up arms?
Morrus is literally looking for reasons to fight, and "you need to stay here on this crap planet." seems like a good one.
No, the posited setup in my OP isn’t anything like Star Wars.
werecorpse
Adventurer
Same as always, the personal profit and the greed of the ones making the decisions. Profit isn‘t about the fact that a resource is plentiful or rare its about getting it for less that you sell it for. How much less? That’s the billion credit question.
The question isn’t why have conflict over plentiful resources it’s can a profit be made by getting the resources via a conflict from someone else rather than via no conflict to gather them themselves?
Say a CEO gets a 2% annual bonus if they can get their hands on a trillion already mined and smelted kilos of X resource by pillaging a couple of semi abandoned but culturally sensitive space cities for an estimated pillaging cost of between $4.50 and $5 a kilo rather than the $5.10 a kilo it currently costs to mine it, and all they have to do is work out a way to send a couple of dozen warships into the system along with their haulage vehicles.
I mean the warship actual costs arent paid for by the company so the only cost to the company is the bribes to the local military leaders/politicians. Easy money baby.
So the space company pays $100 million in setting up a false flag attack by those pesky people in the other empire, and some bribes to some admirals or more likely politicians. Then it makes say $100 billion in extra profit and more importantly to the decision maker the CEO gets an extra $2 billion in bonus (and self justifies it and to the board by saying they made the company more profitable for the shareholders, who tut tut about the violence while buying a new grav sled with their dividends)
And of course history suggests that for some there is no amount that answers the question “How much is enough?”.
Its not that we don’t have enough resources for everyone to live peacefully and well it’s that there is no profit in it.
Plus there might be a space military industrial complex with groups of rich individuals at the top who only sustain their wealth position if their company keeps making money.
The question isn’t why have conflict over plentiful resources it’s can a profit be made by getting the resources via a conflict from someone else rather than via no conflict to gather them themselves?
Say a CEO gets a 2% annual bonus if they can get their hands on a trillion already mined and smelted kilos of X resource by pillaging a couple of semi abandoned but culturally sensitive space cities for an estimated pillaging cost of between $4.50 and $5 a kilo rather than the $5.10 a kilo it currently costs to mine it, and all they have to do is work out a way to send a couple of dozen warships into the system along with their haulage vehicles.
I mean the warship actual costs arent paid for by the company so the only cost to the company is the bribes to the local military leaders/politicians. Easy money baby.
So the space company pays $100 million in setting up a false flag attack by those pesky people in the other empire, and some bribes to some admirals or more likely politicians. Then it makes say $100 billion in extra profit and more importantly to the decision maker the CEO gets an extra $2 billion in bonus (and self justifies it and to the board by saying they made the company more profitable for the shareholders, who tut tut about the violence while buying a new grav sled with their dividends)
And of course history suggests that for some there is no amount that answers the question “How much is enough?”.
Its not that we don’t have enough resources for everyone to live peacefully and well it’s that there is no profit in it.
Plus there might be a space military industrial complex with groups of rich individuals at the top who only sustain their wealth position if their company keeps making money.
MarkB
Legend
Maybe moisture vaporators are just cheaper and safer than trying to land comets on the planet without putting holes in it. Maybe the existing ecology provides some lucrative resources (bantha milk, womp rat hides, krayt dragon pearls) so the locals don't want people messing with it by just adding water.
Or maybe George Lucas didn't think it through much!
MarkB
Legend
Well, obviously. That's our job as science fiction geeks.
Bedrockgames
Legend
All you have to do is look at real world history to see it is plausible. Humans have settled arid regions on earth and there are all kinds of reasons why they end up there and not other places. For all we know Tatooine wasn't always arid. But maybe it is, and so it is cheaper to reside there, if you can survive as something like a moisture farmer.
Ryujin
Legend
Historically, the downtrodden rarely take up arms by themselves, because they don't have time to look up from the dirt. It generally takes someone with more privilege, a "rabble rouser", to stir the pot.
... Monty Pythons Anarcho-Cynicalist Commune notwithstanding.
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