Does the Death Star make economic sense?

I am a Star Wars geek. I know far more trivia about the Original Series, Prequel Series, and Expanded Universe than is healthy for me. And Wardo, CRChair, and Sean can attest that we've had more than our share of conversations about the minutiae of George Lucas's universe. But I am not sure we have ever had a discussion quite on the level of this analysis of the economics of the Death Star (WARNING! There's some salty language in spots) which uses various economic and political theories to analyze whether or not the Emperor's pet project - THE DEATH STAR - really makes sense on a macro-economic scale.

The more you spend on bureaucracy, the less control you have directly over your Empire. The less you spend on bureaucracy, the more you have to tighten your grip, and the more star systems slip through your fingers.

So, the Emperor and Tarkin focus on making one really huge, high-impact investment: The Death Star. They throw in Alderaan as part of that investment. This doomsday weapon will supposedly free up their resources to spend less on administration, personnel and infrastructure, and continue to function without a Senate. It seems like a big investment until you realize how much they save by not actually having a functioning government.

This is an attractive option even today, as politicians look to pay for tax cuts and handouts to core constituencies by laying off or cutting salaries and benefits for bureaucrats and government workers, as well as by skimping on infrastructure.

The problem, of course, is that it doesn’t work. The underpaid, undermotivated, poorly managed stormtroopers can’t even track down the Empire’s most wanted fugitive androids in an extremely sparsely populated area where they have undisputed control. If Tatooine still had meaningful senatorial representation and local government, Luke never would have gotten off the planet.

If you love Star Wars, I must say this article is a must-read piece.

Do I resemble that remark?

From SheldonComics.Com.

I believe the expression is "Ouch!"

Apple acquiring Adobe would be a bad thing

As I was perusing Slashdot today I came across this article that proposed that Apple should purchase Adobe. On first blush this sort of makes some sense and the author makes most of the sensible points pretty convincingly. I use Apple and Adobe products everyday - several thousand dollars worth of each every day - so I'm very familiar and biased towards the goodness of each. My problem with this idea of Apple buying Adobe isn't with the concept of two great companies working together as one, but rather that it eliminates some of the market. I am by no means an expert on market forces or economic competition and I don't play one on tv, but it seems that taking Adobe out of the mix would push Apple less and would push Adobe to innovate less.

As a case in point, a couple of years ago Adobe purchased Macromedia - the makers of fine software like Dreamweaver and Flash (both the best of their breed in their respective niches). Before the purchase Adobe was working on competing products GoLive vs. Dreamweaver and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) vs. Flash. All four were great products, but Dreamweaver and Flash were definitely the better products. So what did Adobe do, they bought the competition. So now GoLive is history and SVG has been left to the open source world to possibly enhance. Dreamweaver and Flash have gotten better, but not noticeably so - despite the fact that Flash is almost inescapable in our current web environment.

The question is then, would Adobe get better if Apple purchased them? Adobe's flagship programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, Indesign and the previously mentioned Dreamweaver and Flash) are already without competition. Sure there are other products that try to do the same things, but hardly any of them are nearly as good or compete any more - with the possible exception of Quark even though they're pretty stagnate in terms of market share. At this point Adobe and Apple are pushing each other to be better - especially in the area of pro-photography with competing programs Lightroom (Adobe) and Aperture (Apple). If they were to become one company the market forces that make each of them have to innovate to retain the creative professional market would disintegrate and they would be worse for it. So, I think this would be a bad thing as much as it might sound great from an Apple/Adobe devotee perspective.

Coolest geeks on TV

I came across this list this morning of the 7 coolest geeks on television. I tend to agree with most of them, though I'm not so sure how much the South Park guys fit into the genre - though the author makes some good points for them. Are there any omissions that you can think of?