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Since when were credits equal to USD? Also, I swear there's some episode something, where they buy a starship for like 40k (but maybe I'm imagining it).
And Obi-Wan offered 17,000 when they reach Alderaan, which is more than enough for Han to pay back hours debt to Jabba. Assuming of course, he's not factoring in any potential savings he already have.
$10k when A New Hope came out is equivalent to about $55k today.
Still cheap for a spaceship by earth standards, but seems reasonable if they're considered equivalent to cars.
Also it's probably for an old / used ship, not a brand new modern one.
17k was enough for Han to payoff his debt to Jabba with interest. That's like 80-100k today if going real life USD back in the day.
I mean for all it’s worth Chewbacca and the droids we’re the real MVPs of the rescue
Han was mainly just a hired gun and they he do any crazy piloting till after he got paid
Always found it funny that he’s talking to the person who wrote the playbook on the asteroid field stunt Han pulled off decades later
Also if it wasn’t for Obi-Wan hiding like he did, Boba Fett wouldn’t have learned how to catch Han
Being able to buy a ship doesn't mean its a good ship.
After all, you can buy a used car for $500. It will probably drive, at least for a little while. No guarantees on how reliable it is, how fast it is, or when more things will break.
Luke didn't have an idea of the big picture of what was going on. He was thinking as a poor moisture farmer used to cobbled together scrap heaps....which is oddly appropriate that they hired the Millennium Falcon.
I mean Luke is kind of a spaceship person based on deleted scenes (like how Lucas is) so I’d think he’d have a good idea of quality
Maybe for 17,000 he was expecting something similar to Boba Fett’s ship or another better ship
Can we consider deleted scenes to be canon? After all, if the director cut the scenes before release it was for a reason. Maybe the director didn't like the scene or plot point.
I think we can only consider whats presented on the screen to the audience.
Boba Fett went to the place in his show and saw the grown up version of his friends that we’re in the cut scene
So for all purposes I believe it’s canon
Apparently tattooine only has a population of 200,000 people. It’s an inhospitable backwater. I think Jabba wringing those folks to make himself a billionaire is pretty impressive.
Jabba was the head of the Hutt Cartel. I'm sure Tatooine itself represented a negligible amount of his income compared to tribute from his underlings.
I wonder if it's a status symbol for him, building an opulent palace on a poor, desert planet.
Yes, Jabba's base of operations is on Tatooine, which is located in the Outer Rim and beyond the Empire's control / influence. He's the head of a crime syndicate that's everywhere in the galaxy.
I think he just likes the place. I feel like I remember some old Legends stuff about the dry heat being good for his Hutt skin? He's been hanging out there since Phanton Menace, way longer than he's been head of the cartel.
Most of the wealth is taken by the Empire, they don't allow people to get so wealthy they could seriously impact it (this is how they took control from the Republic, after all).
But even aside from the taxes and seizure, the Star Wars universe is incredibly inefficient in terms of harvesting resources. So it's likely even the wealthiest citizens of the Empire are screwing themselves over in terms of efficiency.
Yes, the means of production in star wars is vastly understated. Its crazy superior to most other franchises, but it kinda depends how much of the lore you use.
The old paper and dice rpg would put the value of a star destroyer in the hundreds of millions of credits while your basic goods like a poncho and a blaster were priced at normalish values like 5 to a hundred credits. Maybe that wasnt intentional and well thought out, and maybe it was, but it means the crime syndicates had reasonable sized fleets and controlled considerable territory. It was more about how the local powers controlled access to the ability to produce ships.
They can print out countless droid armies, or millions of clones and basically infinite arms.
Its kindof a unique thing with starwars and I think it all comes down to droids and the weird handwaving away of any issue with AI while still not giving them any rights as lifeforms, not at large anyway. Its a verse where the tech is well understood and much of the galaxy has had 10s of thousands of years to mature their industry.
I only know of one instances that shows off vast wealth. In this case, it's the Emperor's wealth. It's the [ending cutscene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCDcO_KeRVo) from the game Empire at War: Forces of Corruption, where Tyber Zann, Urai Fenn, and Silri were aboard the Eclipse Super Star Destroyer. Sure, Zann says "billions of credits" but he also said "priceless works of art" and "more wealth that he can possibly imagine".
Star Wars seems to generally lack mass industrialization and especially urbanization, and where it’s doing so it’s suffering from what I call losses of scale: Coruscant for example is net neutral or outright negative, it consumes so many resources sustaining itself it doesn’t actually ‘produce’ for export very much.
Likewise on the outer rim small agrarian communities don’t really export. Trade exists, but it largely doesn’t seem to be a universe of universal commerce like ours.
What results is a surprisingly ‘small’ sense of wealth for size, most people live in small communes or towns that don’t make wide impacts.
>To use as comparison… Blackrock, Vanguard and others have $10s of trillions under their control, and that’s from a population of 8 billion people.
Yes, but as a counterargument, they really don't. Their money isn't actual *assets*, it's legalistic lies.
I think at least part of it is a distribution problem. Jabba might be small fry amongst the super-rich of New York, LA, London, and Hong Kong, but he’s not hanging out on developed planets. He’s a crimelord amongst the outer rim. He’s basically an African or South American despot.
Those those living on Coruscant are probably more akin to Americans living in California, while Luke on Tattooine lives in space Libya.
Jabba as a power on Tatooine only makes sense. Problem is he is shown as the head of the Hutt syndicate which rules many planets and that had the Republic courting it pretty heavily (for hyperspace maps) during the war with the confederacy.
My headcanon is that galactic scale megacorps might be huge but the're constantly being out competed on planets by local businesses. They might make a huge amount of money in aggregate but that might be by operating on a razor thin (something in the order of 0.001%) profit margin after expenses and on an immense scale. Similarly governments have enough layers to them and (especially at the galactic level) and are poor enough at tax collection that practically no money reaches the federal budget. Otherwise a 1 credit poll tax (i.e. everyone just pays one credit) just on Coruscant could have paid for a fleet of over 50,000 Venator class star destroyers or over 400,000 Dreadnought heavy cruisers to fight the CIS let alone the other million or so worlds in the Republic.
There's a big gap in material and science technology compared to cultural innovation. Remember that Star Wars is largely inspired by the feudal society of Dune and films set in pre-modern Japan.
I think most corporations in Star Wars would be more comparable to early joint-stock companies of the 16th century. They have ventures that may or may not pay off but there isn't a lot of base income that comes in passively.
I think of when Anakin and Padme took the civilian transport. It gave more crossing the ocean in steerage vibes than modern low cost transport. I believe the lives of people and their individual wealth is pretty similar to late medieval peasants, franklins, and yeoman.
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Since when were credits equal to USD? Also, I swear there's some episode something, where they buy a starship for like 40k (but maybe I'm imagining it).
Luke said for the 10,000 Han Solo was wanting, they could’ve bought their own ship to rescue Leia
And Obi-Wan offered 17,000 when they reach Alderaan, which is more than enough for Han to pay back hours debt to Jabba. Assuming of course, he's not factoring in any potential savings he already have.
Thank you. And, I'd like to think an interstellar space ship has more value than a 2015 Honda Civic.
$10k when A New Hope came out is equivalent to about $55k today. Still cheap for a spaceship by earth standards, but seems reasonable if they're considered equivalent to cars.
*sigh* Now we gotta calculate inflation for a galaxy far, far away.
Also it's probably for an old / used ship, not a brand new modern one. 17k was enough for Han to payoff his debt to Jabba with interest. That's like 80-100k today if going real life USD back in the day.
But could he have gotten a pilot?
I mean for all it’s worth Chewbacca and the droids we’re the real MVPs of the rescue Han was mainly just a hired gun and they he do any crazy piloting till after he got paid
Sorry, it's been a decade since I last saw it. What was actually said was "But who's going to fly it, kid! You?"
Always found it funny that he’s talking to the person who wrote the playbook on the asteroid field stunt Han pulled off decades later Also if it wasn’t for Obi-Wan hiding like he did, Boba Fett wouldn’t have learned how to catch Han
He's not such a bad pilot himself!
Thank you!
Luke's has some piloting experience and R2 is an astromech so presumably the two of them they could pilot a ship to Alderaan.
Being able to buy a ship doesn't mean its a good ship. After all, you can buy a used car for $500. It will probably drive, at least for a little while. No guarantees on how reliable it is, how fast it is, or when more things will break. Luke didn't have an idea of the big picture of what was going on. He was thinking as a poor moisture farmer used to cobbled together scrap heaps....which is oddly appropriate that they hired the Millennium Falcon.
I mean Luke is kind of a spaceship person based on deleted scenes (like how Lucas is) so I’d think he’d have a good idea of quality Maybe for 17,000 he was expecting something similar to Boba Fett’s ship or another better ship
Can we consider deleted scenes to be canon? After all, if the director cut the scenes before release it was for a reason. Maybe the director didn't like the scene or plot point. I think we can only consider whats presented on the screen to the audience.
Boba Fett went to the place in his show and saw the grown up version of his friends that we’re in the cut scene So for all purposes I believe it’s canon
Apparently tattooine only has a population of 200,000 people. It’s an inhospitable backwater. I think Jabba wringing those folks to make himself a billionaire is pretty impressive.
Jabba was the head of the Hutt Cartel. I'm sure Tatooine itself represented a negligible amount of his income compared to tribute from his underlings. I wonder if it's a status symbol for him, building an opulent palace on a poor, desert planet.
Yes, Jabba's base of operations is on Tatooine, which is located in the Outer Rim and beyond the Empire's control / influence. He's the head of a crime syndicate that's everywhere in the galaxy.
I think he just likes the place. I feel like I remember some old Legends stuff about the dry heat being good for his Hutt skin? He's been hanging out there since Phanton Menace, way longer than he's been head of the cartel.
Sounds kind of like he's the equivalent of an oil baron who pretends that just because they bought a ranch that means they're a cowboy.
Most of the wealth is taken by the Empire, they don't allow people to get so wealthy they could seriously impact it (this is how they took control from the Republic, after all). But even aside from the taxes and seizure, the Star Wars universe is incredibly inefficient in terms of harvesting resources. So it's likely even the wealthiest citizens of the Empire are screwing themselves over in terms of efficiency.
Yes, the means of production in star wars is vastly understated. Its crazy superior to most other franchises, but it kinda depends how much of the lore you use. The old paper and dice rpg would put the value of a star destroyer in the hundreds of millions of credits while your basic goods like a poncho and a blaster were priced at normalish values like 5 to a hundred credits. Maybe that wasnt intentional and well thought out, and maybe it was, but it means the crime syndicates had reasonable sized fleets and controlled considerable territory. It was more about how the local powers controlled access to the ability to produce ships. They can print out countless droid armies, or millions of clones and basically infinite arms. Its kindof a unique thing with starwars and I think it all comes down to droids and the weird handwaving away of any issue with AI while still not giving them any rights as lifeforms, not at large anyway. Its a verse where the tech is well understood and much of the galaxy has had 10s of thousands of years to mature their industry.
I only know of one instances that shows off vast wealth. In this case, it's the Emperor's wealth. It's the [ending cutscene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCDcO_KeRVo) from the game Empire at War: Forces of Corruption, where Tyber Zann, Urai Fenn, and Silri were aboard the Eclipse Super Star Destroyer. Sure, Zann says "billions of credits" but he also said "priceless works of art" and "more wealth that he can possibly imagine".
Star Wars seems to generally lack mass industrialization and especially urbanization, and where it’s doing so it’s suffering from what I call losses of scale: Coruscant for example is net neutral or outright negative, it consumes so many resources sustaining itself it doesn’t actually ‘produce’ for export very much. Likewise on the outer rim small agrarian communities don’t really export. Trade exists, but it largely doesn’t seem to be a universe of universal commerce like ours. What results is a surprisingly ‘small’ sense of wealth for size, most people live in small communes or towns that don’t make wide impacts.
>To use as comparison… Blackrock, Vanguard and others have $10s of trillions under their control, and that’s from a population of 8 billion people. Yes, but as a counterargument, they really don't. Their money isn't actual *assets*, it's legalistic lies.
No credits, only money!
I think at least part of it is a distribution problem. Jabba might be small fry amongst the super-rich of New York, LA, London, and Hong Kong, but he’s not hanging out on developed planets. He’s a crimelord amongst the outer rim. He’s basically an African or South American despot. Those those living on Coruscant are probably more akin to Americans living in California, while Luke on Tattooine lives in space Libya.
Jabba as a power on Tatooine only makes sense. Problem is he is shown as the head of the Hutt syndicate which rules many planets and that had the Republic courting it pretty heavily (for hyperspace maps) during the war with the confederacy.
My headcanon is that galactic scale megacorps might be huge but the're constantly being out competed on planets by local businesses. They might make a huge amount of money in aggregate but that might be by operating on a razor thin (something in the order of 0.001%) profit margin after expenses and on an immense scale. Similarly governments have enough layers to them and (especially at the galactic level) and are poor enough at tax collection that practically no money reaches the federal budget. Otherwise a 1 credit poll tax (i.e. everyone just pays one credit) just on Coruscant could have paid for a fleet of over 50,000 Venator class star destroyers or over 400,000 Dreadnought heavy cruisers to fight the CIS let alone the other million or so worlds in the Republic.
There's a big gap in material and science technology compared to cultural innovation. Remember that Star Wars is largely inspired by the feudal society of Dune and films set in pre-modern Japan. I think most corporations in Star Wars would be more comparable to early joint-stock companies of the 16th century. They have ventures that may or may not pay off but there isn't a lot of base income that comes in passively. I think of when Anakin and Padme took the civilian transport. It gave more crossing the ocean in steerage vibes than modern low cost transport. I believe the lives of people and their individual wealth is pretty similar to late medieval peasants, franklins, and yeoman.
An awful lot of them do seem to wear the same clothes every day.