It's not really trying to manage the collapse, it just acknowledges that the collapse is inevitable. From there, it tries to figure out how to bring things back to proper civilization as quickly as possible. It's been a while since I read it though, and I don't properly remember how they dealt with the Mule.
I use "manage" loosely. But yes, it's all a conspiracy. We can presume that the empire has quadrillions or pentillions to spend on researching mind control at the society level (psychomathmatics) and they use because they don't trust people to make decisions for themselves, they assume that people need a strong galaxy-wide empire to take care of them.
It's not really trying to manage the collapse, it just acknowledges that the collapse is inevitable. From there, it tries to figure out how to bring things back to proper civilization as quickly as possible. It's been a while since I read it though, and I don't properly remember how they dealt with the Mule.
I use "manage" loosely. But yes, it's all a conspiracy. We can presume that the empire has quadrillions or pentillions to spend on researching mind control at the society level (psychomathmatics) and they use because they don't trust people to make decisions for themselves, they assume that people need a strong galaxy-wide empire to take care of them.