Cost Effectiveness of the Jedi Order, or, Why the Jedi are the Good Guys

[chimericoncogene]

I have always wondered why the Jedi were good for the Galaxy. However, as arguments crystallize, it appears that during much of the Republic, the Jedi Order may have been an extremely cost effective means of enforcing Republic rule on the Galaxy.

For a thousand years, the Republic was reasonably stable, a stability enforced by the Jedi and relatively small local military forces, which needless to say was good for business and prosperity, and therefore good for the happiness of the galaxy.

But other means of maintaining stability exist e.g. Star Destroyers. What is the point in keeping around a police force of inhumane ideologically-closed mind-controlling monks temptingly close to the centers of power? The Jedi did't even try to commercialize or disseminate their knowledge of the Force. At least the Sith built big machines to harness the power of the Dark Side, and plumbed the depths and pushed the limits of Force technology. Imagine the medical benefits of widespread use of Force Tech. The health benefits of a mass immortality industry! Did the Jedi agricorps actually make anything as groundbreaking?

But think about it: A few thousand ascetic monks are cheaper than twenty thousand Star Destroyers, and you'd be screening midichlorians galaxy wide anyway if you wanted to commercialize Force tech. And Force tech seems to be unpredictable - look what happened to the Rakata Infinite Empire. OTOH, surely we are smarter than the Rakata, and workarounds will eventually be found. I'm an optimist!

The reason the Jedi Order was good for the Galaxy was because it provided stability at low cost, leaving more resources for economic growth and thus generating sapient happiness.

[FaxModem1]

I have always wondered why the Jedi were good for the Galaxy.

Things like this, even while doing other stuff, is a key example. It's nice charity in line with their order. Such things can have positive ripples as well. This drug dealer might become a functional and productive citizen. Or at the very least, stop trying to sell illicit chemicals to other people.

What is the point in keeping around a police force of inhumane ideologically-closed mind-controlling monks temptingly close to the centers of power? The Jedi did't even try to commercialize or disseminate their knowledge of the Force. At least the Sith built big machines to harness the power of the Dark Side, and plumbed the depths and pushed the limits of Force technology. Imagine the medical benefits of widespread use of Force Tech. The health benefits of a mass immortality industry! Did the Jedi agricorps actually make anything as groundbreaking?

Okay, please elaborate on this.

1. How are the Jedi inhumane and ideologically closed minded?

2. What is appealing about 'commercializing and disseminating their knowledge of the force'? What does this mean exactly? Should Obi-Wan have been the Holonet equivalent of a televangelist? "You can reach the Light Side and become one with the force if you send us your credits."

If you mean have non-force users learn bliss and self control through meditation, akin to Buddhist temples, maybe. That would depend on if the same manner of meditation works with the, for lack of a better term, muggles. If it does, then yes, teaching people such things might be useful. If not, what purpose would it serve?

A better question would probably be why should the Republic take exception to the Jedi existing? Is the Republic legally or morally obligated to stamp out the Jedi Order for some reason? Why?

[chimericoncogene]

(Death of the Author follows)

If you want, scratch the bit about inhumanity and close-mindedness. That's my biased opinion of the Jedi Order and not very relevant - regardless of the faults of the Order, it was clearly providing cost-effective stability to the galaxy.
(no wives, no kids = inhumanity; no exploring the Dark Side, no building cool shiny giant pyramids of doom = ideological close mindedness - but of course there are reasonable reasons for these things, I guess. I just don't like the Jedi.).

I believe that regardless of what they say about the Force, it can fundamentally be viewed as a technology, and can be harnessed as all technologies can. The Force-powered hyperdrives, Star Forge and other technologies of the Rakata Infinite Empire are a testament to the power of the Force-based technology. With "modern" techniques and technologies buttressing study of the Force, surely additional applications must exist. One can only speculate whether Palpatine's immortality tech, if found to be scaleable, might service millions of the galaxy's wealthiest, and thence be further expanded to provide immortality services to the majority of the population. But no, the Dark Side is "evil", so this was not investigated further. One also wonders whether it is possible to contain or treat the negative side-effects of the Dark Side with psychiatric medication, brain-neural interfaces, and other similar technologies lowering the risks associated with any such investigation.

[FaxModem1]

(Death of the Author follows)

If you want, scratch the bit about inhumanity and close-mindedness. That's my opinion of the Jedi Order and not very relevant - regardless of the faults of the Order, it was clearly providing cost-effective stability to the galaxy.
(no wives, no kids = inhumanity; no exploring the Dark Side, no building cool shiny giant pyramids of doom = ideological close mindedness - but of course there are reasonable reasons for these things, I guess)

Doylist answer: The Jedi are a combination of Buddhist monks meshing with Knights of Chivalry. So of course they're not building evil towers or kicking puppies. They'd also lose what makes them such things if instead of monks or Knights, they were scientists in lab coats trying to use it for a fuel source, as it'd remove the fantasy from the franchise, and instead make it more akin to a fantastic science. It's very much about being the noble heroes who have achieved enlightenment and because of that, are doing the wise, good, thing.

Watsonian answer: The Jedi have gone through multiple permutations over the vast millennia it has existed, and the things they do know are that it's better to acknowledge and let go of the dark side rather than to embrace it for the immediate power grab. Better to try and do what good you can, for both everyone else, and for your own spiritual/emotional growth. Doing an Anakin, and being so emotionally immature that you can't face the idea that others may not agree with you, and/or that grief will happen, causes you to engage in selfish behavior due to lack of understanding about the greater world around you. How they interpret this depends on the era. The key thing to remember is that the Jedi are a religious order, so that being a Jedi is a choice. One can leave the order, and have a family and kids if they want to. Anakin could have safely left the Order, married Padme, and retired on Naboo. He chose not to.

I believe that regardless of what they say about the Force, it can fundamentally be viewed as a technology, and can be harnessed as all technologies can. The Force-powered hyperdrives, Star Forge and other technologies of the Rakata Infinite Empire are a testament to the power of the Force-based technology. With "modern" techniques and technologies buttressing study of the Force, surely additional applications must exist. One can only speculate whether Palpatine's immortality tech, if found to be scaleable, might service millions of the galaxy's wealthiest, and thence be further expanded to provide immortality services to the majority of the population. But no, the Dark Side is "evil", so this was not investigated further. One also wonders whether it is possible to contain or treat the negative side-effects of the Dark Side with psychiatric medication, brain-neural interfaces, and other similar technologies lowering the risks associated with any such investigation.

Ah, so we're dipping into Legends then.

Such things were also bad because they were, if I remember right, consuming the force and using it as fuel. This is probably what caused the plague that made the Rakata extinct. Similarly akin to how Shinra in Final Fantasy VII was using the planet's Gaia to fuel a city. IE, great for cheap energy, bad for everyone else due to the devastation such things inflict on everyone as a whole. Kreia so hated the fact that the force was affected by and did affect the universe that she sought out to kill it, even knowing that such actions would kill a sizable amount of the Star Wars galaxy's population as a whole. In Star Wars, the force is there, and affects people's actions to an extent. It's part of their lore.

The force is something that is harmed by sizable amounts of deaths and negative emotions. Using it as fuel source is a bad idea.

[chimericoncogene]

And Force tech seems to be unpredictable - look what happened to the Rakata Infinite Empire. OTOH, surely we are smarter than the Rakata, and workarounds will eventually be found. I'm an optimist!

Way ahead of you, man.
Like I said, I am optimistic solutions will eventually be found.

[Lord Revan]

We should also remember that for all the development of Force based tech the dark siders weren't really intrested in benefitting the greater good, in both the current EU and in legends the dark side was aggressively selfish.

To a high ranking Sith Lord people would be filed under 2 categories tools to be used to futher their own goals and obstacles to be crushed, in fact this black and white way of seeing things tended to cause Sith Empires to implode due being essentially in a constant state of civil war as the high ranking Sith fought for the position of the "top dog". At least this was how it was in the legends.

So the Jedi were the good guys because their goals were to maintain the peace and order in the Republic. Could the Republic have existed without the jedi, probably, but the Jedi did exist and it would be beneficial for the Republic to keep them at hand to prevent a Dark sider from infiltrating the Republic heirarchy and brining the system down from the inside to serve their own goals and yes I'm aware that it's exactly what Palpatine did now think how much easier that would have been if Palpatine didn't have worry about being discovered by the Jedi Order. Jedi aren't the only ones with mindcontrol abilities after all.

EDIT:The Jedi distaste for the Dark Side wasn't just a strictly unproven philosophical way of thinking but rather even in current EU the Jedi did have proof that Dark Side=bad for everyone in form of the Sith Empire that had fallen 1000(give or take) years before TPM.

[JI_Joe84]

One thing the Jedi do that some deem to be evil or at least unethical is their method of procurement of new Jedi.
Some say taking children is unethical but consider what trouble a force wielding little kid could get into if they really started pushing their Force power's instead of treating them like some latent 6th sense they always had.
What if (I think his name was) Watto was more unscrupulous and decided to train a group of kid slaves as a pic pocket gang to boost his income and get back at people he didn't like or what ever excuse dirty rotten people like that use to justify their actions? Can you imagine how much more they could do with the force?
How does a normal cop deal with a criminal that can wave his hand and say, "these are not the pic-pocketing kids you are looking for" and poof they are off the hook?
The Force poses a much greater implication than just look cool I can grab things from across the room or push with out having to touch it. It is a clear and present threat to stability and order that any self respecting Gov. would require just to operate.
That's where the Jedi could step in and say, "ok look we will take these kids, we will teach them manners, teach them to be good little space wizards and they will grow up to be good people and then you don't have Force wielding retarded street thugs running around, sound good?"
I mean who could pass that up?
On top of that you get a Force wielding peace Corps for the Republic, they could even come to see the kids as "our little corner of the galaxy contributed to this cause" kind of like how people are proud of that one cousin who serves in the military.
What about that you guy's?

[chimericoncogene]

How does a normal cop deal with a criminal that can wave his hand and say, "these are not the pic-pocketing kids you are looking for" and poof they are off the hook?
The Force poses a much greater implication than just look cool I can grab things from across the room or push with out having to touch it. It is a clear and present threat to stability and order that any self respecting Gov. would require just to operate.
That's where the Jedi could step in and say, "ok look we will take these kids, we will teach them manners, teach them to be good little space wizards and they will grow up to be good people and then you don't have Force wielding retarded street thugs running around, sound good?"
I mean who could pass that up?
On top of that you get a Force wielding peace Corps for the Republic, they could even come to see the kids as "our little corner of the galaxy contributed to this cause" kind of like how people are proud of that one cousin who serves in the military.
What about that you guy's?

How does a kid learn to control the Force? AFAIK, force-sensitives usually don't discover their powers and figure out that they can use them unless they are pretty exceptional (Palpatine did it, apparently, but got the real nasty stuff after a few exchanges with Plagueis). Anakin wasn't going around mind-tricking people at 9, nor was Luke.

No, my guess is without an organization dedicated to Force training, the Force is latent, and most of its powers are not unlocked.

And I'm still not sure how common high Force-sensitivity is. Recall that in a galaxy of >100 quadrillion people, there are under ten thousand Jedi. Assuming a bunch of parents said no, that still gives you <1/billion people with exceptional Force-sensitivity.

As to "rar dark side evil"... surely it'll work out for the best this time.

[ray245]

How does a kid learn to control the Force? AFAIK, force-sensitives usually don't discover their powers and figure out that they can use them unless they are pretty exceptional (Palpatine did it, apparently, but got the real nasty stuff after a few exchanges with Plagueis). Anakin wasn't going around mind-tricking people at 9, nor was Luke.

No, my guess is without an organization dedicated to Force training, the Force is latent, and most of its powers are not unlocked.

And I'm still not sure how common high Force-sensitivity is. Recall that in a galaxy of >100 quadrillion people, there are under ten thousand Jedi. Assuming a bunch of parents said no, that still gives you <1/billion people with exceptional Force-sensitivity.

As to "rar dark side evil"... surely it'll work out for the best this time.

Luke, as the son of the chosen one lived 19 without realising he had force powers. Neither does Leia.

[Broomstick]

Scenarios where learning to use magic or psionics or The Force or whatever requires years of dedicated, careful training for even the most inherently talented always make me wonder how anyone learned how to use the thing in the first place. After all, someone had to be first. How did that person figure it out?

[ray245]

Scenarios where learning to use magic or psionics or The Force or whatever requires years of dedicated, careful training for even the most inherently talented always make me wonder how anyone learned how to use the thing in the first place. After all, someone had to be first. How did that person figure it out?

Maybe they figured out one skill/use of the force, and the skills that the Jedi had by the time of the Republic is thousands of generations of Jedi discovering new skills and sharing it with others?

So the skills we saw is the accumulation of knowledge, rather than one person discovering everything you can do with the force? Even dark side skills takes effort to learn apparently. In real life, just because someone has the potential to become an engineer, and being able to discover entire engineering concepts on their own does not mean this is how most engineers learn their skills.

[JI_Joe84]

Scenarios where learning to use magic or psionics or The Force or whatever requires years of dedicated, careful training for even the most inherently talented always make me wonder how anyone learned how to use the thing in the first place. After all, someone had to be first. How did that person figure it out?

Maybe they figured out one skill/use of the force, and the skills that the Jedi had by the time of the Republic is thousands of generations of Jedi discovering new skills and sharing it with others?

So the skills we saw is the accumulation of knowledge, rather than one person discovering everything you can do with the force? Even dark side skills takes effort to learn apparently. In real life, just because someone has the potential to become an engineer, and being able to discover entire engineering concepts on their own does not mean this is how most engineers learn their skills.

Yeah I second this. It started out simple like little Annie and his podracing. Remember he said he had the best reflexes and could see the very near future (read: crashes) just before it happened which allowed him to survive even though he is just a little kid.
Also the Rakkatta Empire built machines to harness the Force long before Jedi or Sith were a thing. They could have picked up a few pointers after stumbling onto one of their worlds.

[JI_Joe84]

How does a normal cop deal with a criminal that can wave his hand and say, "these are not the pic-pocketing kids you are looking for" and poof they are off the hook?
The Force poses a much greater implication than just look cool I can grab things from across the room or push with out having to touch it. It is a clear and present threat to stability and order that any self respecting Gov. would require just to operate.
That's where the Jedi could step in and say, "ok look we will take these kids, we will teach them manners, teach them to be good little space wizards and they will grow up to be good people and then you don't have Force wielding retarded street thugs running around, sound good?"
I mean who could pass that up?
On top of that you get a Force wielding peace Corps for the Republic, they could even come to see the kids as "our little corner of the galaxy contributed to this cause" kind of like how people are proud of that one cousin who serves in the military.
What about that you guy's?

How does a kid learn to control the Force? AFAIK, force-sensitives usually don't discover their powers and figure out that they can use them unless they are pretty exceptional (Palpatine did it, apparently, but got the real nasty stuff after a few exchanges with Plagueis). Anakin wasn't going around mind-tricking peworlds.so9, nor was Luke.

No, my guess is without an organization dedicated to Force training, the Force is latent, and most of its powers are not unlocked.

And I'm still not sure how common high Force-sensitivity is. Recall that in a galaxy of >100 quadrillion people, there are under ten thousand Jedi. Assuming a bunch of parents said no, that still gives you <1/billion people with exceptional Force-sensitivity.

As to "rar dark side evil"... surely it'll work out for the best this time.

So the Jedi only took in 10k out of the whole galaxy, maybe the Republic has them on a budget? Or maybe they are not interested in every single Force Sensitive, just the most powerful I.e. all the excitement over Annie's midiclorian count?
Still I will give you it does not seem common by any means.
Though "rar let's just hope every thing turns out ok" is the exact reason why Jedi should insist on taking in EVERY force sensitive if only to ensure they instill good values/keep the youngster from going dark side on their little village/family/ any one else they don't like.

[Lord Revan]

It's possible that the Jedi have ways of telling who becomes strong enough with the Force to be a potential threat to society. The way I understood it is that every living being is Force aware to a degree but for most it would take decades or even centuries of constant training to even do basic "Force powers" and even with Force sensitivity there was levels and those taken as Jedi were the best potential candidates.

That said even if the legends there were other Force user organizations just none of those were individually as strong or wide spread as the Jedi Order.

It's possible that those with enough sensitivity to learn Force powers by themselves would be fairly rare, though the 10000 Jedi number is somewhat miss leading as it includes only Knights and Masters IIRC not Padawans or members of the agricorps or other "lesser" banches of the Jedi Order.

[chimericoncogene]

It's possible that those with enough sensitivity to learn Force powers by themselves would be fairly rare, though the 10000 Jedi number is somewhat miss leading as it includes only Knights and Masters IIRC not Padawans or members of the agricorps or other "lesser" banches of the Jedi Order.

Still not likely to go beyond the 50k mark. The bulk of the Jedi Temple is 500m x 500m x 250m = a sixteenth of a cubic kilometer. Dunno how far down it goes, but I don't think you can cram more than 25,000 people in a building like that (they all have little apartments, apparently) before it gets too crowded.

[Solauren]

In the original EU (pre-Disney), apparently as Galactic Civilization came together, various religious and philosophical orders started exchanging notes, and found alot of commonality. (Basically, with enough data, a pattern emerged.)

A group was formed from them to focus on studying this, and trying to figure it out. While the details were not clear, the Jedi were the result of this.

My guess is, as weird stuff happened, religions and governments contacted this group, and they started bringing in what we now know would have been Force-Sensitives, and via trial and error, sharing information, etc, the Jedi arose from that.

In the modern (DIsney) canon, we saw a kid at the end of 'The Last Jedi' use the force to summon his broom. That's all you'd need, a group studying this 'commonality', and one person to show up with powers.

Just like in real life. If a real life magical or psion ever appeared on Earth, science would be all over it.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Old Republic absolutely relied on the Jedi Order to maintain peace and stability across a galaxy without a strong central government or powerful standing military. And the Jedi were good at it. For all their faults, they managed to sustain a mostly peaceful and united galaxy for a thousand years. The Empire, with all its terror tactics and super weapons, couldn't manage thirty.

Basically, the Jedi are the ultimate in both diplomats and special forces in their setting. As such, they are the ultimate tool for nipping problems in the bud before they grow to existential crises. The Jedi can literally sense a crisis coming before it emerges, dispatch a couple of guys, and then use Force enhanced diplomacy and manipulation to prevent it from happening/escalating, or, if worst comes to worst, decapitate the enemy leadership before the threat grows out of control. They, like the light sabers they wield, are precision tools- more elegant weapons, for a more civilized age.

Of course, even the Jedi can't be everywhere and address everything at once. The Prequels make this limitation very clear. In the Prequels, the Jedi are described as "keepers of the peace, not soldiers" by Windu, who flat-out says that there aren't enough of them to protect the Republic in a full-scale war. The Jedi, then, relied on two things: first, their ability to sense problems before they emerged and head them off, and second, the Jedi reputation of invincibility. Yoda flat-out confirms this as well, when telling Windu that they should not inform the Senate of the shroud of the Dark Side clouding their perceptions: "If known our weakness is, multiply our adversaries will." Recall that in Episode One, Anakin believed Jedi couldn't be killed, and that the Trade Federation was ready to fold in the face of two Jedi, until Sideous put some backbone into them.

This, as I've argued before, means that while a tactical victory for the Republic, Geonosis was likely a catastrophic strategic defeat for the Jedi. Not just because it killed off a good five percent of the Order's entire force in one engagement, soldiers it would take upwards of a decade apiece to replace, but because it destroyed the illusion of Jedi invincibility, and showed that massed conventional firepower could kill Jedi en mass.

The RotS novelization, I believe, also goes into how the Clone Wars were designed in part to spread the Jedi thin, to ensure they could be picked off one by one.

In short, the Jedi were to some extent a paper tiger, especially when the Shroud of the Dark Side clouded their senses. The Republic relied on an aura of Jedi invincibility, and once it was destroyed, the Republic as it had been was doomed.

The New Republic's mistake, meanwhile, was that it tried to replicate the Old Republic, only even more decentralized, without the old Jedi Order, or anything that could fill its role. It was inevitably doomed to failure the moment Luke's new order collapsed, and probably even before.

To me, this was part of the significance of Luke's death in TLJ, as well. One Jedi stood alone against an army and, to all appearances, simply shrugged off everything it could throw at him, then humiliated its commander in front of his troops. And sure, he dies- but no one saw him die. No one knows he died except Leia and Rey, and maybe Kylo. For all the average First Order trooper or Rebel soldier knows, there is an all-powerful immortal benevolent Force demigod out there. And this is portrayed as the spark that will inspire future resistance. The brilliance of that scene, for me, lies in part in the fact that Luke is effectively restoring the myth of Jedi Invincibility upon which the Old Republic relied, and which Palpatine destroyed. This is Luke's final victory over Palpatine- rebuilding the legacy that Palpatine destroyed (which plays into my own interpretation of Luke as, essentially, the Light Side counterpart to Palpatine).

[Adam Reynolds]

If you're out to criticize the Jedi, the BITE model used to identify cults is a pretty good one. It stands for Behavioral, Information, Thought, and Emotional, all as means of control. The Jedi largely of fail all four criteria. Though it unsurprisingly applies to the Sith to an even greater degree.

[The Romulan Republic]

The Jedi habit of taking and indoctrinating young children (sometimes against their families' will, according to the old EU) makes a certain coldly practical sense, given the immense power Force users can wield, and the need to ingrain discipline and self-control early to avoid the corruption of the Dark Side.

Its still utterly evil and indefensible, especially once they started deploying children who'd barely reached puberty as front-line troops and military officers. It also has practical disadvantages, in that it places an extra cost on the Jedi Order (it must be completely responsible for housing, supporting, and educating these children almost from infancy), and it creates Jedi who don't really understand how the world outside the Order works, or how to function in it- especially bad for those who choose to leave, or wash out of Jedi training. And as Luke proves, it wasn't even necessary. Luke was raised by a family, appreciated the value of emotional attachments, and as a result was able to redeem Vader and defeat Palpatine- accomplishing what all 10,000 Jedi of the old Order and an army of millions of clone troopers and a fleet of star ships couldn't.

Also, its pretty dark, and Disney would never, ever acknowledge it in a film, but any look at the history of religion and cults will tell you that a secretive, emotionally-repressed order which gives its authority figures complete control over the lives of children is probably rampant with sexual abuse.

It says a lot about the Jedi, how easily they took commanding an army of genetically engineered slaves and child soldiers in stride.

Ultimately, I think that the old Jedi Order's failing was that it allowed its actions to be dictated by fear. It was so afraid of falling to the Dark Side that it took infants from their families and brainwashed them, and repressed normal and healthy and necessary emotions, and basically put doing what was "proper" ahead of what was right. The irony that fear is a path to the Dark Side, and that fear of falling is still fear, was apparently lost on them.

They could have benefited greatly from FDR's maxim- The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.