I generally agree, though mostly as a failure of storytelling. An actual plague pushing things to the absolute limits isn’t implausible. Adjust things so the main character is freaking out about landing a cargo 20% over standard safety limits etc.
That said, what allows us to make such criticisms is an understanding of the physics and economics involved. We can’t reason about what say Iain Banks’s Culture is going to do on economic grounds because things aren’t fleshed our enough to make such judgements. Bat at least we can reason about distances involved. Even softer in say the Star Wars universe economics and physics is such an afterthought that we can’t objectively judge if say the Death Star was a sound use of resources or a pointless vanity project. Worse, because hyperspace lanes are so hand-wavy we can’t even reason about movement speeds and and distance.
That said, what allows us to make such criticisms is an understanding of the physics and economics involved. We can’t reason about what say Iain Banks’s Culture is going to do on economic grounds because things aren’t fleshed our enough to make such judgements. Bat at least we can reason about distances involved. Even softer in say the Star Wars universe economics and physics is such an afterthought that we can’t objectively judge if say the Death Star was a sound use of resources or a pointless vanity project. Worse, because hyperspace lanes are so hand-wavy we can’t even reason about movement speeds and and distance.