Economics and empire

For the true Star Wars fan, a question: How did the second Death Star get built so fast? If you don't understand the question you can skip this post. The first Death Star took decades to build, the second only a couple years. That question was put to Zach Feinstein, a financial engineering professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Some of his points:

* The first one was built when the rebellion was weak, meaning during peacetime. The second was built during war, with all the much larger resources of a wartime budget under the direction of a dictator.

* Part of building the first Death Star included designing it and designing and building the manufacturing infrastructure. That didn't need to be done the second time.

* Luke Skywalker joined the rebellion because he was bored with his farming job. Spending a fraction of the cost of the Death Star on an irrigation system would have kept Luke busy on the farm. Luke was living with Darth Vader's step-family. Vader wasn't able to get a pork-barrel spending project for them? Incompetent.

* Spending on the infrastructure of Tatooine would have boosted its depressed economy, making its citizens less interested in overthrowing the emperor. It was a misunderstanding of economics that brought down the Empire, not the return of the Jedi!