The Republic/Empire was space based and something repeated over and over was that planet-side they were an analogy to the American experience in Vietnam where t

The Republic/Empire was space based and something repeated over and over was that planet-side they were an analogy to the American experience in Vietnam where the villages pretty much do what they want in between being destroyed, but there's not really an area of influence on the ground. Meanwhile in space before the death star very little could stand up to the fleet and after the death star they had ultimate total stellar control. Likewise this is why blowing up one, admitted very big, battleship, meant the rebellion won. They had already won planet-side for all intents and purposes and now that the empire had little to no space superiority... Star Wars is very cross genre (come on, knights in shining armor and sword fighting monsters and wizards?) and part of the middle ages fantasy is an economic system of mercantilism. So the empire is not going to be amused with smugglers and they're gonna be very interested in regulation and taxation of interstellar trade etc. Another novelty is that HN is culturally extremely urbanite. In the US there are urbanite areas that are extremely crowded and everyone wants to live there solely because everyone wants to live there. However outside urbanite areas the "company town" is a meme that still exists even in post-industrial era. Most small cities or towns have the one big employer and everyone lives off them directly or indirectly. For many state capitals and state uni towns the "big employer" is the government itself. Very few people on HN will know that outside SV and NYC there are many towns that do virtually nothing but turn trees into paper or cast plastic into molds or refine oil or whatever their one big task is. Not unusual for the town to be the grain elevator and railroad, or its the manufacturing plant, or some kind of resource extraction site. If you spread humanity thin across the galaxy you'll end up with "the refinery town" being the only town on an entire planet. It has certain interesting implications WRT long term environmental issues. Everything in star wars is smokey and doesn't appear to be overly ISO9001 driven, unlike star trek. Several billion people living like that on a planet will screw it up pretty quickly, but maybe a thousand living in one town can maybe live that environmentally sloppy until the star novas in a couple billion years. You could live downwind of a cattle stockyard if you want, but if space travel is cheap enough, you'll end up with nothing but one cattle stock yard on a planet, because, why live there of all places?