In this episode, we talk about the cost of being The Batman. How much would the Batmobile cost? How much would the Batsuit cost? What about a grappling hook?
These are all fun and fascinating questions. But they’re also not super relevant to the real world, unless you happen to be (1) Elon Musk and (2) looking to price grappling hooks.
There are, however, more relevant questions that a vigilante like Batman raises. Is it a good thing for a society to have vigilantes? Is Batman making good use of his wealth by being an anonymous cop/detective? What might he do with that wealth that would benefit society more?
To me, these questions are far more interesting and relevant to the real world, because although we don’t have many real-life Batmen, we DO have a lot of real-world analogs for Bruce Wayne. There are about 2,700 billionaires as of the writing of this article, and their collective net worth is around $12.7 trillion dollars. About 7.9 billion people currently live on our beloved little planet. So if all the billionaires got together and gave away their net worth, each person would end up with roughly $1,607 dollars.
Now, if you’re reading this blog, it’s highly likely that you’re in the United States and you’re doing pretty well financially. So for you, getting an extra $1600 in your pocket would be a fun bonus, sure, but it would very likely not change your life in a significant way. But if you’re someone who lives on, say, the average salary in India which is equivalent to about $428.50 per month, then $1,600 will be a significant boost to your income and might allow you to pursue a bigger dream like investing in a small business or obtaining some form of license or education you need to advance to a higher-paying job.
So would having all these billionaires give their money away be a good thing for the world? Well … potentially.
There have been studies demonstrating that just straight-up giving people money is often the most effective form of altruism. After all, YOU know what YOU need right now better than anybody else in the world, right? Maybe your hot water heater just went out or you want to go back to school or you need to put new tires on your car. Or maybe you live in far more modest conditions and you need to put a new roof on your house so it doesn’t leak terribly every time it rains. Or you need shoes or a water filtration system or mosquito netting. Only YOU know. And that’s why giving people money directly can be so helpful. If you went up and down a random city block, there is literally nothing you could give away that would be more inherently useful to people than money.
Usually, people have a negative gut reaction to the idea of just giving money to people as a way of trying to improve the world. You’ll hear things like: “It’ll just go to drugs and alcohol!” Or “they’ll waste it on a big TV!” Obviously, if you gave every person in the world $1600, some of them would spend it on frivolous or even dangerous things like large quantities of drugs. But also – many of them wouldn’t.
Study after study shows that giving people cash is often the most effective form of altruism. Homeless people are often able to make good use of the money to find stable places to live. People use their cash gifts with no strings attached in almost innumerable ways. And that’s the whole point. Cash is fungible, so it lets people take whatever steps will help benefit them personally in the most impactful way.
I generally think a capitalist society is pretty fantastic. It keeps power from concentrating too heavily in the hands of people who decide who gets what wealth. If you haven’t whipped out your old high school copy of Animal Farm in a while, give it a quick read. It’ll take you a couple hours and is a good reminder of what can happen when people (or pigs, as the case may be) get too uppity and certain that they know what everyone else needs and can “equally” hand out resources. Inevitably, because we humans suck, this leads to corruption in the highest degree. So since communism doesn’t work, capitalism seems like our best realistic option. And if we demanded all the billionaires give their money away, we’d be creeping dangerously close to communism. So I don’t advocate it.
But I do know (hope) that if I were in Elon Musk’s shoes, I would feel uncomfortable knowing I had that much wealth available to me and was keeping it in case I wanted another yacht someday (or Twitter) while other people died of starvation, preventable disease, and lack of basic resources. So even if society doesn’t dictate giving the money away, I would feel a moral obligation to give much of it away.
In any event, I think we can pretty easily conclude that the real Bruce Waynes (aka billionaires) of the world, would be far better off making cash donations to people in need rather than spending on fancy Batsuits and Batplanes and Batmobiles and grappling hooks. No matter how many fancy gadgets he has, Batman is effectively just one cop policing for bad guys. And billions of dollars can do a lot more good than one cop. So next time you watch a Batman movie, enjoy the craziness and revel in the fun. But also know that if this were real life, we would be shaking our heads at such a waste of funds when real needs are going unmet all around us.