Benevolent dictator is an oxymoron. The most benevolent thing a dictator can do is dismantle their dictatorship.

This. Expect to see feminist, environmentalist, Communism, and queer coded characters make a big comeback as movie villains. It’s the 80s all over again!

It’s also established that’s he’s an accelerationist. He’s intentionally baiting the Empire to crackdown more brutally on dissent in an effort to forment rebellion among the common people of the galaxy. He fears that if he does not do this, there will be a day when the Empires grip is too tight to escape.

“It will burn… Very brightly”

In the end, he was right. The Death Star vindicates his methods. Without Luthen laying the groundwork for the Rebel Alliance, the Galaxy would have been a boiling frog and the Death Star would have led to its brutal oppression for generations.

That’s why I dislike these kinds of memes that say, “Oh, I shouldn’t be working all day; I should be living a life of leisure and free to create”.They feel like the conservative strawman of the “lazy leftist who just envies the rich”.

Living as the meme describes inherently requires the exploitation of labor. Unless a society becomes technologically advanced enough to achieve fully automated post-scarcity, meeting a person’s needs still requires a certain amount of human labor. The issue under capitalism is that some people do live as the meme describes, and they do so by exploiting the labor of others through capital. As a result, the rest of us struggle even more.