10,000 years of disaster and incompetence

Name another human empire that lasted 10,000 years and didn't get fucked.

Name another human empire with laser guns.

Name another human empire with bio-engineered super soldiers

Name another human empire with mile-long space battleships

Name another human empire with a pseudo-God as their leader.

Name another human empire with legions of gigantic robot castles

Name another human empire with motherfucking chainsaw swords.

Name another human empire with technology worshiping cyborg wizards

Name another human empire that has techno-monkey mechanics.

Name another human empire that takes its crippled soldiers, puts them on life support, seals them in giant steel caskets attached to guns, and sends them back to the battlefield to smash their enemies with giant robo fists

This is 100% true, and I wish more 40kfags got this.
The Imperium exists in a shitty universe where bad things happen. They've taken that to heart, and now use brutality as a basic policy even when they don't have to. They also have massive logistics/corruption issues, and much of the government is so riven with factionalism that they spend as much time plotting against each other as they do fighting their enemies.

Name another human empire that is lead by thousand year old half-cyborg nincompoops who serve a corpse (aside from the USA).

>c-c-combo BREAKER

Most of the Imperium's problems have to do with a overworked bureaucracy. A thousand Administratums with a thousand worlds each would be more beneficial to humanity than one Administratum with a million worlds.

The Empire in Masamune Shirow's Orion.

I know you're memeing but there have been dozens of empires that thought their leader was a god, like Aztecs, Persians, and Egyptians

Or by Pseudo god did you mean like an actual god?

>Name another human empire with a pseudo-God as their leader.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_been_considered_deities#Imperial_cults

By pseudo-God I meant somebody with God-like powers.

And more importanly, a God-like lifespan. That's the real kicker: a single ruler that has no term limits or appreciable lifespan that could end his rule and will stick around to guide their vision and agenda indefinitely is a game-changer.

Are humans in 40k modern baselines humans, or are they the genetic offshoots of the underclasses of the Dark Age of Technology?

They're likely widely different from modern humans, but the good (future medical tech, adaptation) and the bad (shit living conditions) kinda balance them out to be not too much different from modern humans.

Incidentally, say what you will about the living conditions in the Imperium, and no OSHA, but at least if you lose a limb robot replacements seem to be dirt cheap, as even dregs are depicted as having them.

True, but one thing people forget, is that the fractured nature of the Imperium actually plays in their favour A LOT, and is well suited to survive the horrible universe it exists in.

You can't really look at the Imperium based on any real life political system simply due to scope. The actual political day to day on planets are irrelevant. Just what they contribute to the greater Imperium. This means most planets are pretty independent, and the Imperium runs mostly on peer pressure. If one planet goes to chaos, its neighbours beat it up. If one IG regiment goes rogue, everyone around it is trained to smack it down. The only thing stopping retarded Inquisitors is other inquisitors.

The Imperium keeps itself functioning by constant war not just against its enemies, but against itself.

Arthur C. Clarke insists that large galactic governments are impossible because of their intolerable complexity. This is based upon a simple truth: As population grows arithmetically, the number of possible interactions rises geometrically.The best human organizations have spans of five subordinates per supervisor. Using this figure, a galactic empire controlling ten billion planets having ten billion inhabitants each would require at least 21 hierarchical levels. It is well known that human organizations with more than 6-8 levels become excessively bureaucratic.

Even with all this mechanized assistants, the Emperor will have absolutely no contact with non-interstellar personnel. His relationship with his magistrates would not be unlike those between the United States President and the mayors and city managers of American cities. To the Galactic Emperor, the starkeepers, each responsible for 100 worlds, will seem much as U.S. citizens appear to their President - with only a very rare audience being granted. Planetary governors are "the rabble."

Yes but i think that's where the Imperium succeeds with a highly federal approach. Of course, they're rife with incompetence because their record keeping methods suck, but if you focused very much on tiering the government systems you'd have a decent shot.

Of course, 40k also suffers from the issue of having a very dangerous and unreliable form of interstellar communication via Astropaths. In a more technologically sound civilization communications could be much more reliable.

Colonialism is the closest thing to how the Imperium works.

The Republic from Star Wars?

>Republic

The Republic didn't have a military until the Clone Wars. The Empire on the other hand.

I think the Republic relied more on militias and (before they got too uptight) their friendly order of fucking lazer space wizards.

>(aside from the USA)

Because nobody has a better alternative and the state of the galaxy means anyone who tries to break away inevitably gets destroyed by somebody else.

The galaxy needed uniting because the Tyranids have arrived and the Necrons are awakening. An un-unified galaxy would have no chance at all against that scale of threats.

Before the Great Crusade the human worlds that even had warp-travel were divided into tiny empires and fiefdoms. Many were prey to xenos of all stripes, and large portions of the Crusade was involved in liberating them.

Another benefit of the crusade was the remapping of stable warp-passages and establishing interstellar trade routes, along with reconnecting Forge Worlds with Mars to increase the technological base of the Imperium. You ca't over estimate how much The Age of Strife really knocked humanity back, and the Great Crusade had to work very hard to bring it all back together.

The modern Imperium is like the late stage Holy Roman Empire. De facto it's a fragmentary clusterfuck of different polities who are each fully independent from one another in all things except in that they send tribute to the same crown. Each sector, each forge world, each space marine chapter, each explorator fleet, and so on sets their own domestic and foreign policy with impunity, up to and including declaring war on one another. What binds the Imperium together is a shared hatred of outsiders that exceeds their hatred of one another, and that's it.

What you're describing is in no way a benefit. It's a horrible, crippling flaw. It's also a necessity of the long travel distances from one sector to another, but the idea that the Imperium wouldn't be better off if it were more centralized is nonsense. It would be way better if, when a planet turns to Chaos, the entire Imperium showed up to kick their ass instead of their one neighbor who is close enough to know what's going on and do something about it.

The Republic has been around for about 25,000 years, but only demilitarized for about 2,000 years prior to the Clone Wars. Before that, they had a standing army. When they demilitarized it was because there were no more significant external threats in the entire galaxy, and after the New Sith Wars they realized that having tons of soldiers lying around really just meant that a charismatic Sith could drum up an army just by convincing enough regiments to go rogue. At that point, better to not have regiments in the first place and keep galactic firepower down to the level needed to deal with organized crime. This backfired eventually, but it worked out pretty good for a while.

People tend to get swept up in 40k - similar to the "they're doing their best" argument - with the idea that there could only be constand militarization and war.

Some enemies you HAVE to fight - Orks, Tyranids, Chaos. But the level at which the Imperium is militarized, and the way it conducts its military and manufacturing strategy is grossly inefficient.

This seems like the appropriate thread.

What the fuck is all this shit in the Horus Heresy Books with the Imperium Secundus?

I collected them all first edition up to about Angel Exterminatus, stopped reading about Prospero Burns though (need to read Outcast Dead at least really). Anyway, I was on the Black Library website and it mentions "The Emperor Sanguinius in Ultramar". Has it devolved into even further levels of fanwank than previous?

The Imperium Secundus was Guilliman's backup plan. He was gonna start his own empire if the Imperium ended up collapsing - I think he nominated Sanguinius as the emperor because everyone likes Sanguinius.

Of course various issues towards the end of the Heresy kinda fucked up the plan.

Makes sense. Operate under the assumption: the Emperor's dead. Terra is burning. Huge warp storm blocks off contact outside of ultramar.

Fort up and when the storm passes, kick everyone's ass with what loyal strength you have to re-establish the (second) Imperium. Post up some statues of dad, while you're at it.

What are you talking about? Those are merely terms of classification.

>the level at which the Imperium is militarized, and the way it conducts its military and manufacturing strategy is grossly inefficient.

Yup, that's the Imperium that we all know and love.

When you step back and look at the main bits of fluff, you can't help but me amazed at what humanity's become; millions of planets are overseen with the most grotesque, bloated and corrupted administration system ever. Technological innovation has become reduced to scavaging for old tech, religious zealotry is back in fashion and the whole thing is overseen by a council of selfish aristocrats that barely pay homage to the near-dead Emperor they claim to serve.

It's scary satire.