Is Imperial xenophobia justified?

[Beniboybling]

Yes, because their government is poorly designed and requires deconstruction.

 

Well, grabbing slaves is certainly easier if you have no moral compass, but that says nothing about long-term profitability or stability (though I will say it's disgraceful that the Republic has allowed the Hutt Cartel to survive for this long).

 

Vitiate's only use for the Empire is as a tool for killing off the galaxy, so I really don't think you can call him good at much related to governance.

1. I agree with you, but that's a whole other debate.

 

2. I see nothing that suggests it isn't profitable in the long term, after all the Sith Empire having being doing it for thousands of years and its made them quite rich and prosperous. The majority of Hutt activities are perfectly legal, even slavery is not outlawed in the Outer Rim where the Republic lacks presence. And partly for that reason the Hutts can and have proven powerful allies - nor should you believe the Republic beneath such alliances.

 

All in all though the Hutts are too powerful, wealthy and elusive for the Republic to destroy and any "war" mounted against them would probably end in embarrassing failure. It would be waging war on the underworld and then some.

 

3. But regardless he kept it under control for over 1,000 years, masterminded the Great War and created a very powerful personal powerbase. As I said aside from his madness the Emperor has proven a very effective ruler indeed.

Edited February 12, 2014 by Beniboybling

[Xilizhra]

1. I agree with you, but that's a whole other debate.

 

2. I see nothing that suggests it isn't profitable in the long term, after all the Sith Empire having being doing it for thousands of years and its made them quite rich and prosperous. The majority of Hutt activities are perfectly legal, even slavery is not outlawed in the Outer Rim where the Republic lacks presence. And partly for that reason the Hutts can and have proven powerful allies - nor should you believe the Republic beneath such alliances.

 

All in all though the Hutts are too powerful, wealthy and elusive for the Republic to destroy and any "war" mounted against them would probably end in embarrassing failure. It would be waging war on the underworld and then some.

 

3. But regardless he kept it under control for over 1,000 years, masterminded the Great War and created a very powerful personal powerbase. As I said aside from his madness the Emperor has proven a very effective ruler indeed.

It can be profitable, it's just not necessary. And the problem is that the Republic is run by politicians; the Senate is far too powerful and its members don't have enough incentive to not just worrying about feathering their own nests and those of their constituents. This is one area where I believe the Jedi should have more power, and to be more proactive in spearheading an attempt to bring justice to other parts of the galaxy that have lacked it for too long.

 

If we'd only been able to keep the Foundry's droids... if Revan's conditioning from the Emperor could have been broken, we probably could have stopped the extermination from happening, then used the droid army to stop the Empire altogether. And then turned on the Hutt Cartel once the Empire was no more.

 

And given what the Emperor's maintained about its political system, I wouldn't call him an effective ruler at all.

[Beniboybling]

It can be profitable, it's just not necessary. And the problem is that the Republic is run by politicians; the Senate is far too powerful and its members don't have enough incentive to not just worrying about feathering their own nests and those of their constituents. This is one area where I believe the Jedi should have more power, and to be more proactive in spearheading an attempt to bring justice to other parts of the galaxy that have lacked it for too long.

 

If we'd only been able to keep the Foundry's droids... if Revan's conditioning from the Emperor could have been broken, we probably could have stopped the extermination from happening, then used the droid army to stop the Empire altogether. And then turned on the Hutt Cartel once the Empire was no more.

 

And given what the Emperor's maintained about its political system, I wouldn't call him an effective ruler at all.

Bah! Your true allegiances are revealed! Republic scum...

 

I kid, I kid. You raise an interesting point concerning the Jedi. Though we should remember that when the Jedi were given too much power (pre-Ruusan Reformations) they became decadent and lost their way. So a balance is vital. I feel though in some ways the Republic is a little too bloated and lacking in unity to act in such an effective way.

 

As for the Foundry, I'm surprised the Empire have yet to capitalize on that yet. That's a little something that irks me about the game that we see all these assets that never get used, the Silencer and the Crystal Fleet to name a few. I just hope we see further mention and involvement of Isotope-5 and the newly allied Hutt Cartel...

 

But again, allies, the Republic have actually allied with the Hutts. That seems proof that they need them.

 

And yeah, from a certain point of view. But that's again like saying Chancellor Saresh would do a better job.

[Xilizhra]

Bah! Your true allegiances are revealed! Republic scum...

 

I kid, I kid. You raise an interesting point concerning the Jedi. Though we should remember that when the Jedi were given too much power (pre-Ruusan Reformations) they became decadent and lost their way. So a balance is vital. I feel though in some ways the Republic is a little too bloated and lacking in unity to act in such an effective way.

 

As for the Foundry, I'm surprised the Empire have yet to capitalize on that yet. That's a little something that irks me about the game that we see all these assets that never get used, the Silencer and the Crystal Fleet to name a few. I just hope we see further mention and involvement of Isotope-5 and the newly allied Hutt Cartel...

 

But again, allies, the Republic have actually allied with the Hutts. That seems proof that they need them.

 

And yeah, from a certain point of view. But that's again like saying Chancellor Saresh would do a better job.

If I had to guess, HK-47 probably slipped some kind of virus into the Foundry's systems that would make the whole thing break down if the Empire tampered with it, and Malgus and others are too embarrassed by that failure to make it public. If not that or something similar, the Empire not having used it so far makes no sense.

 

And we may have allied with the Hutts for now, but that doesn't mean we can't crush them once all this is over. And I have faith in Saresh, really.

[Nydus]

TL;DR - Aliens are all slaves, they are therefore crappy and stupid! Maybe...

 

P.S. I'm not proposing a moral debate here. I'm approaching this purely from an RP perspective of a Sith/Imperial

 

What you've outlined is probably what very low-brow imperial citizens believe.

 

In terms of the "leadership", I've always interpreted it as part of the power structure they've set up. How do you make the citizenry accept being treated poorly by the military and Sith hierarchy? Convince them they are inherently (i.e. biologically) superior to most in the universe!

 

Seriously, humans naturally form out groups (i.e. "others" that are not "like us") and if you can convince them of this external threat, they are willing to take an awful lot of punishment from their own leaders.

 

Many politicians have exploited this tendency, and I view the Sith in that vein.

 

- Acada

[Beniboybling]

What you've outlined is probably what very low-brow imperial citizens believe.

 

In terms of the "leadership", I've always interpreted it as part of the power structure they've set up. How do you make the citizenry accept being treated poorly by the military and Sith hierarchy? Convince them they are inherently (i.e. biologically) superior to most in the universe!

 

Seriously, humans naturally form out groups (i.e. "others" that are not "like us") and if you can convince them of this external threat, they are willing to take an awful lot of punishment from their own leaders.

 

Many politicians have exploited this tendency, and I view the Sith in that vein.

 

- Acada

That would only prove effective if all but the military and the Sith were alien. But they are all either Sith or Human, so claiming superiority of Sith and Humans only aliens will only prove justification for slavery, not for Sith taking a hardline against their own people. Aliens are generally not permitted to be Imperial citizens at all.

 

In terms of Force Users, it could definitely work, but the Sith do actually believe themselves superior.

[Allronix]

My Imperial character (Bounty Hunter) is a non-human (Miraluka). The sneering atttude and flagrant racism is a HUGE part of the reason I not only won't bother feigning loyalty to those clowns, but actively want to sabotage them. Then again, the Imperials do such a wonderful job of sabotaging themselves, they hardly need my help in the matter.

 

The Empire is an efficient meritocracy? That's a pile of bantha $#!* - if you aren't the "right" midichlorine count, you're stuck groveling for the Sith. If you just want to do your job and not sleep or stab your way to the top, you'll get sabotaged by some twit whose only talent is ruining others. If you aren't the "right" species, then your talents are going to go completely untapped while you rot on the auction block. The Empire is inefficient, chaotic, and completely rotten/insane to the core.

 

I've pointed this out before; the Star Wars galaxy has roughly 20 million sentient species. It is the height of idiocy and self-sabotage when you only allow two (maybe three if you want to count their thin tolerance of the Chiss) species to gain any kind of education or contribute to a society. Slavery is expensive and inefficient. Dromund Kaas (the capital planet) is woefully underdeveloped. Slave camps are in a constant state of revolt. "Loyal" slaves will only work the bare amount needed to keep the lash off their backs. And "loyal" slaves can knife you in the back when you're least looking (can think of an excellent example on Balmorra, and the creep richly earned it). Not helping is that the slaves are building momuments to Darth egos instead of roads and buildings. So much for the infrastructure needed to move troops and supplies!

 

You have a Twi'lek with a gift for engineering or a Sullistan who can cook up battle plans? In the Republic, that Twi'lek can get her own lab, cooking up war droids, weaponry, scientific equipment, starships, vehicles. The Sullistan can enlist and rise through the ranks, maybe even go on to train other soldiers to outthink their enemies. All of that will help the Republic win wars.

 

What hope will they have in the Empire? Well, the Twi'lek's engineering skills will probably be limited to removing her slave collar or undoing the chain attaching her to the master's bed. If she's really really lucky, she'll be the flunky to some human or Sith idiot who will take the credit for all her hard work. The Sullistan might fare better; he'll be leading slave revolts until he's shot dead. The Supreme Chancellor of the Republic giving the Imps hell right now is a Twi'lek who started life as an Imperial slave, and it's not a question of if she wants revenge on the Empire, it's how many pounds of flesh she is going to carve out of their shebs! (She and Zenith would probably get on smashingly.)

 

Darth Malgus (probably one of the only Sith who can think past his lightsaber tip) knew the Empire was crippling itself with this idiotic policy, and half of his revolt was in shoving this fact in their faces. Doesn't stop the False Emperor questgiver from making some snooty speech about how the Empire has to be kept "pure." The Empire's loosening its racist restrictions, but only because the Republic is handing them their butts on a silver platter. Sure, they get the money pit of Taris (good luck with the rakghouls!), but they lose Balmorra with its infinitely more useful droid and weapon factories. And Corellia was a crushing defeat. When you lose 10% of your troops in a single battle when you can't afford attrition tactics to begin with? Yeah, they're reforming only out of desperation. They might get a Hail Mary pass with Makeb, but I ain't holding my breath, given the track record of sqandering resources.

[Euphrosyne]

The fact that slavery exists and constantly resurfaces in Star Wars lore for non-entertainment purposes and all in all is a profitable business suggests otherwise. I think if droid labour were more profitable, the Sith would be more than happy to simply exterminate these supposedly inferior species of whose presence is probably repulsive to them.

 

The SWTORE even talks of a need for slaves and reveals the Empire have been trading with the Hutt Cartel.

You can't derive an 'ought' from an 'is', so you might wanna stop right there.

 

Also, you can turn that around. The Republic possesses droid and wage labor systems; the Empire employs wage laborers, droids, and slaves. One might argue that the only reason that the Imperials even bother with slaves is not because they are comparatively efficient but because they are necessary due to an undersupply of efficient droid labor. It's certainly plausible that the Empire lacks droids in the numbers that the Republic does because the Empire does not possess the manufacturing heart of the galaxy in the Core. Easy way to explain what we know, but the exact opposite conclusion from what you drew. Alternatively, efficiency may have nothing to do with it at all, and the Empire simply takes slaves for sociomilitary reasons: put crudely, taking slaves gets Sith and Imperials hard. Again, an effective explanation of the data that doesn't require that slaves be more efficient than anything else.

 

The simple fact of the matter is that we don't have productivity statistics, we don't have comparisons of wage to compensation to maintenance, we don't have any economically relevant data whatsoever. We don't even have sweeping statements by uninformed in-universe sources about what does and does not work.

 

Look: real historians have been furiously debating the efficiency of slave labor compared to wage labor since the early nineteenth century, before the American Civil War even started. These days, they still haven't managed to come to consensus; witness the acrimony surrounding the publication of Time on the Cross a few decades ago, and how that book has supporters and detractors even today. These real people have access to scads and scads of real data, and they still can't come to a generally acceptable conclusion. With SWTOR, we have zero data; what makes you think we can come to such a conclusion?

Edited February 16, 2014 by Euphrosyne