Why is the eternal ruler trope so prevalent in anything space related, Veeky Forums?

This.

Yeah, I remember EU stuff about the Star Wars written by some calculusfag that says that an electoral campaign for Padme or Palpatine to become senator would take more time their entire lifetimes. Then again, Star Wars is limited to four planets that you go over and over and over again. This shows that hard scifi and soft scif fantasy like Star Wars don't mix well.

Is that Persepolis Rising? Fuck, I really have to read it.

>Implying that Putin is one man and not an army of body doubles

Yeah, the intro chapter. It's honestly really fucking hard to side against Duarte.

Call me when he's been in office 26 years straight.

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Fuck, those really are completely different people.

To be fair, if your sci-fi setting has like a billion habitable worlds and extremely easy ways to get to them without transcending humanity as we know it, it's a silly space opera. And space operas rarely depended on good sense and logic, it's basically fantasy in space.

Even with terribly convenient FTL technology, there's very little reason for one star system to be in close contact with another. Trading doesn't make any sense, any capable space faring civilization would easily be able to manufacture anything they need using the resources of one solar system. Culture, also unlikely - Earth barely has 10 billion people and there's more distinct cultures than you can count. If you throw in another planet or two and however many space habitats (and if you can build the kinds of spaceships most sci-fi franchises feature, like Enterprise or those big ships in Star Wars, you can build a permanent space habitat. It's same ship but with less engines), all amounting to potentially trillions of people in a single system.

What reason could they possibly have to go to another system at greater expense?

It's because Warhammer is a cultural phenomenon. Nobody ever fucking read Dune.

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I'm with , it has made it a strong trope.

I think it's also that in many space scifi settings we're talking about long periods of time over vast distances, and having a single ruler makes it simpler than having one that's replaced every few decades, bringing whole new politics with them.

Remember when 40k Tau were suppose to be short lived and Farsight was an anomaly for being few centuries old? Well, now they all live centuries through drugs and stasis pods.

But you're aware of the Dune and the god-emperor of it, right? Even I am, and I've only read one of the prequel novels.

>Warhammer is a cultural phenomenon
>this is what 40kfags actually believe

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Short of some kind of all-devouring malicious hiveminds, there are limits to usefulness in hierarchical societal organization. It makes sense on Earth because resources have always been limited. If you're in space, and settled in to the point of being able to waltz between stars, you no longer have a severe resource shortage. Want metal? It's basically everywhere. Want lighter elements? Same. And you don't even need to kill any natives for it or worry about pollution, nobody will care about some rocks in space.

Even in a space opera setting it makes sense for distinct systems to stay in a loose alliance, mainly for information exchange, without being under a unified formal government.

Go drink fucking hemlock, Plato

>become senator
But they only represent their planet, not a swathe of the galaxy.
And besides, you don’t actually *have* to go on a two year election trail like you get in America. Or an equivalent thereof

Dyson Swarms should be the only ones doing interstellar trade and warfare due the energies at their disposal and more scale of their needs. Then again, transition to a Dyson Swarm K2 civilization it is thought to be almost the inevitable conclusion of any civilization.

Depends on the writer. If Star Wars had any sense of scale and the senators represented just one planet, they would need a whole planet-senate.

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Probably not actually.
Considering that in Star Wars (as in most settings that fall in the softer side) most planets/races have one hat. Maybe two.

So the average planet is going to mostly consist of people who believe very roughly along the same lines. Or two sets of people.

As such, they get a vote, one of two senators or some shit.
Also I mean, planets DO have their own governments, as we’ve seen before.
So perhaps the people vote their government and then the government vote and appoint a senator.
Like an ambassador or something, but to the galactic debate.

Either way, you certainly don’t need a person to campaign trail forever.
That’s just stupid

I'd say, with bigger empire, and slower ships, It's natural to rely on some type of stable Empire or Oligarchy.

Imagine multi-system election, or drastic changes in law, then flying from borders of the Empire to earth takes five years.

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They would probably need several planets worth of administrative staff. Just consider current governments and keep in mind that you'd probably need way more and way bigger government departments in a space opera setting.

Modern (20th-21st century) conception of government doesn't scale up indefinitely and it's dumb to assume that it would.

Iain Banks the Culture setting kind of solves the problem by essentially removing any semblance of democracy on the top. Just wise, ruthless, nearly all-knowing but also pretty friendly AIs.

It is mention in one of the cross-sections books, the Attack of the Clones one. I think she represents the sparsely populated sector Chommell with 36 worlds, 400,000 colonized dominions and 300 millions sterile stars.Then again, this is technically EU stuff.

>putin and merkel both serving fourth terms
>putin directly elected
>merkel never elected
>hurr durr putin is a god emperor

CNN is rotting your brain.

The Emperor being alive...

good post your son will maybe get a job on the goverment if you keep this up vlad

It gives personality to what would an otherwise be an unfathomable faceless monolith of a society.

this

>Whataboutism

>Whataboutism

A good complain for academic discussion where it is a logical fallacy and ad hominem. But this isn't an academic discussion. It's a political discussion with different rules.

Whataboutism is a legitimate defense against another different propaganda technique: framing. In a point-scoring political debate, the side that succeeds in making its description of the situation stick is often the one that wins.

Russian democracy is an oxymoron and always has been

youtube.com/watch?v=MSX62-uQRa4

Because longer/eternal life seems plausible in the future so it's a common sci fi trope.
Rulers have often wanted to live longer so they could realize their full imperial dreams, so it's not a big step.
Remove every instance of it, dune emperor, 40k emperor, and it would start cropping up almost immnediately anyway, it doesn't rely on a reference to any of the predecessors.

>>putin directly elected

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You're an oxy moron

>this is what 40kids actually believe

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Breitbart is rotting yours.

first phot putin still has hair and gorbachev is around, so it is like 35 years ago.
Last photo putin is old and full wrinkles.

What is your point?

It's understood in the German democratic system that electing enough members of a given party will result in that party's leader becoming Chancellor, unless smaller parties band together to form a coalition (I think, some of the details of their parliamentary system are fuzzy to me). An undesirable party leader would gradually result in the party in question getting fewer votes. What's your point?

Real life shows that strong leaders who have held on to power for decades are good for their countries (e.g. Merkel, Putin, Qaddafi, Assad, Saddam, Franco etc).

In fact, some countries with long-term leaders, like the Saudi royal family, will never seriously negotiate or deal with short-term 2-4-6 year prime ministers and such. It's pointless and a waste of time to discuss with a nobody who won't be around soon.

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>Well, now they all live centuries through drugs and stasis pods.

They don't really "live" that long, though, and it's far from the norm. Only very, very important people get their lives expanded or thrown in stasis pods except for space travel, and even that is hit or miss. They still live very short lives compared to humans.

Actually, I'd really like to see a story detailing a T'au - especially a Fire Warrior - somehow having its live extended beyond "natural" means, possibly even against its will, and having to mentally cope with living for far longer than it was ever supposed to live.

This but unironically

Personally I justify it under the concept of "inevitability".

At some point some ayylmao and some planet is going to figure out how to become immortal. And at some point some ruler is going to find or create that ability, and at some point there will be a ruler so strong that they can't be overthrown without monumental effort.

Ergo; the emperor in power now is there because it's inevitable and once he's in there you can't get him out.

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Nigga your ears and nose continue to grow and change throughout your entire life. It's the same guy.

>smooth-brains can't even see obvious sarcasm

>Nigga your ears and nose continue to grow and change throughout your entire life
It's actually that the non-cartilaginous parts of your head shrink, which makes your nose and ears look bigger as you get older.

That's pretty cool.

>What reason could they possibly have to go to another system at greater expense?
Space-Christian missionaries want to spread the word of Space Jesus, maybe?

Nigga it is right on my fucking nightstand, are you stupid? You're either baiting or pathetic.

Space future tech requires more resources as time goes on.
Mineral exploitation has diminishing returns in a single system, so you can get more shit expanding to others.
Desire to get the fuck away from current system government.
Desire to spread your cultural hegemony by conquering groups that took the previous option.
Another group is expanding and capturing systems, your group bands together to defend shared space.
Weird market fluctuations produce overabundance of certain resources. Merchants take advantage by moving between systems buying overabundant resources and selling whatever they have already bought.
Space god tells them humanity will only reach the next level of enlightenment once all are brought together in harmony.
Scientists discover systems can go nova much unpredictably. Humanity spreads out to reduce risk of everything getting wiped out. No system is overdeveloped in fear of it being lost.
Some horror out of space starts invading. Humanity flees before it, seeking refuge in other systems in a long running retreat.

I have an question why new world order is so prevalent at scifi settings?

I mean new world order theories are considered so bullshit that if someone say that he believe at it he will be called "crazy" or whateaver, but at scifi settings something that is so impossible is the norm.

You are considered less crazy if you believe time travel is possble than if you believe NWO, yet, NWO is ultra common

Because you can't have a stable far reaching galactic empire if your emperor is replaces every 60 or so years.

Generally a feature of scifi settings is that they are bigger. If you suppose a NWO exists, it gets a lot harder to hide when it is in control of multiple planets.

On the other side, scifi still wants a unified badguy to hate. Rationally at the scale of these settings you would have a bunch of nations for each planet. A conspiracy group can easily spread to control a lot of stuff.

If the NWO is aliens, and space travel is possible, then people will probably be less freaked out by meeting them. Also it is harder to avoid accidental meetings when people aren't all on the same rock. Coming out acts as a way to control the message.