Star Wars and the Sanctions Regime
“Welcome, my Jedi friend, to the anarchist society of Tatooine,” said Watto.
“Riiiiight,” said Kenobi.
“What’s with the sneery voice?”
“It doesn’t look like anarchy.”
“That could be because it isn’t really an anarchy, or it could be that your ideas about what anarchy looks like are wrong. After all, I’ve never lived in a social-democratic welfare state. I’m sure I have all kinds of misconceptions about them.”
“You have a “Tatooine Council” that does everything governments do.”
“The Tatooine Council is a voluntary community organization, no different than the churches or social clubs of your planet.”
“Yet it has an army slash police force?”
“It is an armed people’s militia.”
“Which collects taxes from your people?”
“Subscription fees from people who voluntarily sign up for protection. People are free to refuse, though, given the tendency of some of our people to violence, most refuseniks soon change their minds.”
“And what if someone wants to organize an alternative ‘armed people’s militia?’”
“Probably they’d get shot. But there’s no law against it.”
“If it walks like a duck, it talks like a duck…”
“Well, your own Galactic Senate doesn’t recognize us as a government. The Tatooine Council can’t build embassies; our people don’t get diplomatic immunity, and so on. Back when we did claim to be a government, you went around calling us the ‘so-called government of Tatooine,’ the ‘self-declared illegitimate government of Tatooine,’ the ‘Tatooine Junta,’ and so on.”
“So why did the Tatooine Council stop claiming to be a government?”
“Your Galactic Senate passed a law saying you can’t trade with or invest in any planet whose government permits slavery. We like slavery. Have you ever had to deal with paying your employees? It’s a giant hassle.”
“You wouldn’t like being a slave.”
“Of course not. And if the slaves were to rise up and put me in chains, I wouldn’t hold it against them. I’d be unhappy about it, granted. But I wouldn’t feel morally wronged in any way.”
“I know you’re proud of your oh-so-clever rules-lawyering. But it hasn’t worked. Are you not aware that the Galactic Senate kept the sanctions even after you started the ‘government without a government’ charade?”
“Oh, sure, I know. But does it enforce the sanctions? Why is Mos Eisley a thriving spaceport? Why are you here, Mr. Kenobi, looking for slaves to buy? Shouldn’t that lead to the fining of your illustrious organization?”
“This is an emergency. We landed here for repairs.”
“Riiiiiight.”
“I’ll show you the damaged hyperdrive.”
“Sure, whatever, I believe you. The point is that we have a ready-made response to anyone whining that so-and-so corporation buys our copper. We can say, hey, if you care so much for the poor, wretched slaves, come here and liberate them yourself. We’re not going to whine about “foreign aggression” or our “sovereignty” or anything like that. But you would rather sit in the air-conditioned coffeehouses of Corosaunct and philosophize about the ‘theory of justice’ than come out here and free the slaves.”
***
“So, what do you think about the Kamino 4 Theory?” Obi-Wan asked.
“Crackpot idiocy,” Yoda said.
“You sure?”
“Yes, yes. These theories keep getting stupider and stupider. With the assassination of Anetano, at least the motive made sense. A lot of people had reason to want him dead. But why hide the existence of a planet? What is there to gain?”
“I don’t know; I puzzle over it. Why does it appear in so many old encyclopedias and reference books? Usually, there’s just one or two lines about it, Kamino 4, ‘ocean planet,’ and that’s it.”
“It began as a copyright trap by the makers of the Encyclopedia Galactica. They knew others were pilfering them and created the fictitious Kamino 4 planet to prove it. They apologized and fessed up to it after people started the conspiracy theory.”
“But they never sued anyone or said anything publicly for 90 years?”
“The company’s spokesmen have never explained that. It’s true. But there could be many explanations. Maybe they didn’t think they could afford the legal fees. Maybe they thought admitting they knowingly published false information would damage their reputation with their readers. Maybe they were a fractious bureaucracy that couldn’t agree on anything and so didn’t do anything.”
“Yes, perhaps. But consider this. Of the billions of star systems in the galaxy, nearly all of them are viewed, head-on, by at least one telescope large enough to detect a planet by the radial velocity or transit method. Just 33 star systems are like Kamino, where you couldn’t detect a planet without actually going to or near the star system. Why would EG choose Kamino for their copyright trap? Shouldn’t they have chosen something that is easily falsifiable in court?”
“Well, we have sent expeditions there just to be sure. There is no Kamino 4 planet.”
“Others claimed they went there and they saw it.”
“They’re just trying to sell books.”
“And you could reply that the people who claimed they saw the planet are just trying to get invited to cocktail parties with the Galactic Republic’s elites.”
“I know Moer Jorrei, and…” Yoda paused. “I supposed he is the cocktail party type, very craven around the Senators. But the problem with conspiracism is that it asks its adherents to be selectively cynical. It points out that humans are naturally dishonest. It proclaims itself opposed to the ‘naivety’ of the ‘sheep.’ But then its cynicism is only ever directed at the targets of the theories, never at the theorists themselves.”
“I am cynical about the theorists,” Obi-Wan said. “Many are just jumping on the bandwagon, looking for clicks. But here’s the thing. Before it was ‘proven’ that Kamino does not exist, there were many elaborate, detailed journal articles published on Kamino, about its weather and astrobiology and so on. Some of those who published these articles later became ‘conspiracy theorists.’ Most have since renounced their articles, said they were ‘jokes’ or were young and immature and fell in with the wrong crowd on the internet. Or they were lazy and were just making stuff up. All the articles have been retracted. But the explanations seem strange. ‘Jokes’ on who? Was it a selectively known fact that this planet that was in all the encyclopedias does not actually exist? And why is it that the people who published these articles, often luminaries in their field, were not punished for their ‘fraud?’ In most cases of academic fraud, you don’t get to just go, ‘I did it, sorry, clean slate.’ Yet all of them have been given this clean slate. All of them, of course, except for the ‘conspiracy theorists.’”
“Who knows?” said Yoda exhaustedly.
“Well,” Kenobi said. “Most believers in the Kamino 4 theory live on the lower levels of the Coruscant. They will never go to outer space, let alone Kamino. But I’m headed to Alderan next month. Wouldn’t be hard to ‘accidentally’ pass through the Kamino system.”
Yoda was silent for some time. “Suppose you don’t find a planet there. What happens?”
“I’ll tell people I saw no planet.”
“The conspiracy theorists will just decide you are part of the conspiracy too. These people are fanatics. They’re not going to update their beliefs based on new evidence. ”
“Almost certainly yes.”
“And what if you do find a planet? Will you scream it from the rooftops?”
“No. I don’t want to harm my career progression. Most will just think I’m unintelligent and low-class. But I’ll tell you. I’ll tell my closest friends.”
“As one of your closest friends, I think we would be better off not knowing what’s in the Kamino system.”
***
“I just have trouble believing in it,” said Anakin Skywalker. “The Force, I mean.”
Obi-Wan raised his eyes up from the book he was reading. “You’ll understand, with time.”
“You see, that’s exactly the problem. I keep questioning it and keep getting these non-answer answers. ‘The Force works in mysterious ways.’ ‘Human minds can never truly understand the wisdom of the Force.’ It seems like it’s always an appeal to stop thinking.”
Obi-Wan looked frustrated. “Well, I was going to share this with you later, when we’ve gotten to know each other better. But I don’t want to lie to you. I don’t believe in the Force either.”
“I knew it,” Anakin declared triumphantly.
Obi-Wan shot him a hostile look.
“Alright, I didn’t know it,” Anakin admitted. “But it makes perfect sense. You’re very intelligent and…” he trailed off, not knowing what to say. “What about the others? Yoda? Windu?”
“Most are true believers,” said Obi-Wan.
Anakin was disappointed.
“What about the Senators and the other elites? Do they believe?”
“For the most part, they do not.”
“Then why do they pretend?”
“I’ll answer your question with a question. Who are the experts in Chemistry?”
“Chemists.”
“And who are the experts in physics?”
“Physicists.”
“And who are the experts in medicine?”
“Doctors.”
“And who are the experts in the Force?”
“The Jedi.”
“Right. And so anyone who’s not a Jedi is told they need to defer to the experts in the field. Sometimes a physicist or a statistician will start criticizing us. We go, ‘you are a dilettante, with no training in the field, who hasn’t read the relevant literature,’ etc.”
“So all the Force Skeptics need to do is get a credential from the Jedi Order, like you did.”
“Yes. They need to dedicate years of their life to studying a bunch of arcane jargon. They need to surround themselves with people they see as dupes at best and liars at worst. They need to lie about what they think and believe for years, then convince a council of Jedi to grant them the credential. Few Force skeptics care that much about it to go through that much trouble. They go into other fields and quietly roll their eyes. As for me, I lost my belief in the Force after I became a Jedi. But that’s a story for another time,” said Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan seemed pained when he said it, and Anakin thought he may never share the story.
“So the other fields, chemistry and physics and medicine, are they bulls*** too?”
“No,” Obi-Wan said. “Though medicine used to be bulls***. For hundreds of years after the scientific method was invented, they did no systematic experimentation, they just knew what worked and what didn’t. But young doctors, raised by the older generation of dogmatists, gradually began applying scientific methods. Eventually they made this mandatory, doctors had to cite scientific evidence to justify their behavior. If the Force existed, we’d do our best to learn about it. But, alas, it doesn’t.”
“So why are you still a Jedi?”
“What else am I going to do?” Obi-Wan asked. “Work as a janitor? Or apply to college? Imagine me, a forty-two-year old man, in college with all those nineteen-year-olds.”
“But you’re smart…”
“That doesn’t count for anything. It’s all about having the right credential.”
Anakin looked at Obi-Wan skeptically. “You know, I’ve been wondering about quite a few things, but remained silent because I didn’t want to offend you. For instance, why are you the one who is training me? You selected me to join as a Jedi Apprentice. You are presumably responsible for my performance reviews. Management theory advises against this, since studies have found that bosses are biased in favor of employees they chose to hire.”
Obi-Wan smiled. “I do think I made the right decision. We are aware of those studies. But advocating that policy would show a lack of respect to us as Jedi masters. We don’t like that.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be ‘humble?’”
“Personally humble. But we can practically worship the Jedi Order itself and Jedi Masters as a class.”
“What about the Sith? Are they real?”
“There are a few real Sith. Mostly LARPing teenagers. But not Palpatine and the Trade Federation execs.”
“So why do people accuse them of being Sith?”
“For some it’s merely a slur, used as a synonym for ‘evil’ and not meant to be taken literally. For others, it reflects a failure to model the mind of someone who isn’t a Force believer, who only cares about the here and now, the real world. They see people who don’t like the Jedi, who obviously aren’t Force believers in the Jedi sense. But they can’t grok it, so they explain it by them being believers in the ‘dark side of the force.’”