The point here is that partnerships often have multiplicative effects. They enhance the status and success of individual actors. For a while at least, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, to an extent that even if individual members despise each other they will continue to perform together because they know the alternative is to flounder alone.3 We can look at the service entertainers provide and be thankful for what we get, all the while wondering what makes such talented people resent each other, or we can consider the way those partnerships work and what makes them successful. This being a study of economics, we will do the latter. Reflecting on some of the pairings or groups we have thus far mentioned, it is relatively easy to pull them apart and see what each participant in the group has to offer. Let’s instead dissect the Beatles. The Fab Four; John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr formed what is arguably the most famous rock and roll band ever. They have sold billions of records, hundreds of millions of albums, and spent over a thousand weeks at the top of the Billboard charts. Despite the dysfunction in the group by the end of their run, and the sad ending of John Lennon who was murdered in 1980, this was an incredibly talented group of musicians. While Lennon got the band together, it was McCartney who was probably the most gifted. He composed music, wrote lyrics, sang lead, played electric, acoustic, and bass guitar, piano, drums, and a variety of other instruments. He sat in on songs for Ringo, who himself was an accomplished drummer. Which leaves us to consider, why did McCartney need the Beatles? He wrote most of the successful songs the group performed and could play all of the instruments. The answer is the focus of this chapter, a mysterious concept (though not quite as mysterious as the Beatle’s relatively bizarre song Revolution 9) called comparative advantage.
How I Learned to Stop Brooding and Love the Sidekick
To answer the question about the Beatles and put that to rest, we simply need to consider the logistics of a band on stage. McCartney might have been better at everything, a more competent musician, singer, and songwriter, but to go on tour as a solo act would have been a problem. He couldn’t physically perform all of the instrumentals to back himself up as a singer so he has a band. He finds competent musicians to help him out and the Beatles sell out stadiums and concert halls around the world. But how does this explain Batman and Robin?
Robin was added to the Batman storyline in an attempt to make the protagonist more accessible and to buoy sales by appealing to teenage boys who might see themselves participating in the adventures of the Caped Crusader. Robin’s first appearance was in Detective Comics #38 (Finger and Kane, 1940). The readers liked the new character and sales rose significantly. The original Robin, Dick Grayson, was a member of a circus family. His parents were training him in the family business. As an acrobat on the flying trapeze, Dick was unknowingly developing the skills he would use to fight alongside Batman. Dick’s parents were killed in a trapeze accident, coordinated by a mobster, during a performance. It so happened that Bruce Wayne was in the audience at the time. Seeing a bit of himself in the now orphaned boy, Bruce took the lad on as his ward. Dick spent the next forty years as Robin in the comics, eventually growing up and adopting the persona of Nightwing. Interestingly, Batman found that he liked having a Robin around, so when Grayson left another soon took his place.
Jason Todd, another circus acrobat, assumed the mantle of Robin in the mid-1980s. His character was quickly rebooted as a rebellious, teenage street kid who tried to steal the tires off the Batmobile. Todd was more impetuous than Dick Grayson and many fans found him to be loathsome, so much so that when offered the chance to kill off a member of the Bat Family, fans voted to kill off Robin. As a legacy to this, the writers of Batman have used the death of Jason Todd to drive Batman’s plot line. Todd’s murder scarred the Caped Crusader almost as much as the death of his parents.
The next man up was Tim Drake, who used his powers of deduction in a way very few had. Drake was in the audience when Dick Grayson’s parents were killed. He noticed the way in which Wayne consoled Grayson and put the pieces together, figuring out the identities of Batman and Robin. While Bruce was falling into a depression over the death of Jason Todd, Drake approached him with the offer to become the next Robin. The proposal was accepted, but not until Drake’s mother was killed and his father crippled by a villain. While physically skilled, Drake became the hard-working, techy sidekick who used his brain as much as his brawn to help defeat crime in Gotham. He retired early, essentially fired by Dick Grayson who briefly took over as Batman,4 opening the door for a new version of the boy wonder.
The next Robin wasn’t a boy at all. Stephanie Brown, daughter of the criminal Cluemaster, stepped into the red and green tights for a brief stint (Willingham and Scott, 2004a). While somewhat helpful on the detective side of crime-fighting, Stephanie lacked the physical skills required for the job, and while she briefly dated Tim Drake, it wasn’t enough for the demands of her employer and Batman fired her. The first female Robin was relegated to the unemployment line (Willingham and Scott, 2004b).5
The current Robin is perhaps the most alienating of all. Damian Wayne made his first appearance in the graphic novel Batman: Son of the Demon (Barr and Bingham, 1987). He is the son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul of the League of Assassins. Damian is a problem child par excellence. While undeniably skilled physically, his attitude toward the position of Robin is one of privilege and his disdain for the rules that Batman plays by is evident. The relationship between father and son is rocky at the best of times, and downright hostile in the Injustice series, where Damian accidentally kills Dick Grayson and actively fights against his father.6
So that’s the background on the most famous sidekick in comic history, but again, what about this mysterious economic concept, the one that explains why Paul McCartney tolerates Ringo? How does that idea explain why Batman endures Robin? The marketers may want a new character to sell comics but would Batman really adopt someone to help him with his work? Bruce Wayne is a distant, introverted, conspiratorialist, paranoid hot mess. Accepting the help of a teenager, no matter how tragic the kid’s backstory, seems entirely out of character. How is this going to work? It’s time to reveal the mystery—it is called comparative advantage.
Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better, But That Doesn’t Mean I Should
Comparative advantage is one of the most important, yet misunderstood, concepts in economics. Any confusion with the concept typically stems from the somewhat tedious exercises economics professors force upon unsuspecting students. The mathematical calisthenics, while fun in their own right to those perverse enough to enjoy that kind of thing, wear out the less numerically inclined. Beyond that mild torture, comparative advantage reveals something that even the dearly departed Adam Smith couldn’t recognize.7 Comparative advantage explains why the Scottish produce whisky, not wine; why the French make wine, not whiskey; and why, unbeknownst to Smith or anyone else at the time, Batman continues to hire Robins.
So, what is this great insight? To start off, let’s give credit where credit is due. David Ricardo developed this idea in the early 1800s in his influential book Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817/1996). He was interested in the question of why a country like his, England, didn’t produce all the things it needed and wanted. To him, the answer presented itself as an issue of resource allocation. If one country can produce a good, say battle maces, with fewer workers, or fewer machines, or if the production process itself was less expensive than the same process in another country, then it was clear that the maces should be produced by the country that can do it most cheaply. But it wasn’t just a financial issue to Ricardo. The other costs involved in production were just as important. What if producing a mace meant you had to give up the production of something else? In other words, what is the opportunity cost of producing a mace? Let’s say that in order to produce a mace you have to give up a Mjolnir—you know, a Thor-sized hammer. Thus, not only do you have the expenses involved in producing
a battle mace but you also have an opportunity cost because you have to give up something you could have made with the resources used to make the mace. These opportunity costs are the basis for comparative advantage. According to Ricardo, if you can make a mace at a lower opportunity cost than someone else, then you have a comparative advantage.
How does that fit into the Batman and Robin narrative? Well, think about it this way: Batman is really good at a lot of things. He’s considered by some the greatest detective since Sherlock Holmes. He’s so skilled in fighting that he probably has a double kung fu, black belt in taekwondo and Brazilian ju-jitsu.8 He can invent weapons that make the military industrial complex drool. He has the technical acumen of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineer and he knows how to use it. Batman is really great at just about everything related to crime-fighting. The question is, if he’s so good at what he does, why would he need a sidekick? Superman doesn’t have a helper, neither does Wonder Woman. Maybe Batman isn’t such a great hero after all. Or maybe he has a little economic superpower up his sleeve called comparative advantage.
Yes, Batman can prosecute a criminal investigation like no other, but even he has limits. One of the significant restraints he has to deal with is that, like anyone making choices, he has opportunity costs. If Batman is chasing the Joker, it means he can’t be hanging out in the Batcave working on an antidote for the Joker’s laughing gas. If he is trying to deduce the answer to one of the Riddler’s puzzles, he has to give up the chance to pursue some illicit activity being undertaken by the Penguin. Here’s where a sidekick comes in handy. By picking up some of the tasks Batman would try to complete on his own, Robin can be of immeasurable assistance, and this is the magic of comparative advantage: Robin can help, even if he is worse at everything than Batman is.
Think about it. All of the Robins are much younger than Batman and far less experienced in all walks of life. This is one of the things that makes the angst-ridden Robins, Jason Todd and Damian, all the more detestable. Do they really think they are better than Batman at anything? As readers, we know this will never be the case. Usually, being the misunderstood, rebellious punks that they are means only that these Robins get themselves into trouble, from which Batman must inevitably save them (except in that one case where Jason gets himself killed—and there was much rejoicing!). Shut up young Robins! You know nothing!
But I digress. Batman puts up with the insolence, nonsense, and flagrant disrespect because he knows that, despite these hang-ups, he can get more done with help. Batman is great at everything, but even so there are things that Robin can do for him at a lower opportunity cost. Suppose at one end of Gotham there is a series of suspicious break-ins that Batman wants to investigate. Meanwhile, back at the Batcave, the Batcomputer can be used to hack into the networks of crime syndicates. This would be important for halting the flow of drugs into Gotham. What should he do? The answer is simple: Put Robin to work. But which task should he assign the Boy Wonder? The answer to that depends on where Robin’s comparative advantage lies.
This is found by considering, at the time the decision must be made, how many causes of the break-ins Robin can determine relative to hacking the crime syndicates. Batman’s computer skills are highly advanced. During the course of the night Batman can hack into five of the crime syndicate’s networks and scuttle their plans. In the same time, he could investigate ten break-ins. Robin is also pretty good on a computer. He can hack four networks but, because it takes him a lot longer to put the pieces together, he can only determine the cause of four break-ins. This means that Batman must give up solving two break-ins for every hack he attempts, while Robin only gives up solving one break-in for each hack. Since one is less than two, we say that Robin has the comparative advantage in hacking. He doesn’t have to give up as much of some other crime-solving activity to conduct a covert cyber war on the bad guys. That’s why Batman leaves Robin in the Batcave to spend a lonely evening with the Batcomputer while he heads out onto the rooftops of Gotham to conduct his investigations. It’s elementary, my dear Robin. Comparative advantage explains why you stay employed.
What About My Friends?
Sidekicks are just one example of how heroes employ the concept of comparative advantage in the story arcs. As even casual fans of the comics are aware, there are other ways that teaming up manifests itself, and these teams are almost always more capable because of the way in which they use comparative advantage.
Rarely does a comic hero remain stuck in the vortex of isolation. Word gets out that some new super-powered person is roaming the streets or the skies and the old-timers swing by to take a look. In the X-Men, Professor Xavier is constantly on patrol for new mutants. His intentions are, of course, benign. He wants to help them understand and control their powers, to protect the mutant and those around him or her. There is no direct intention of making the newbie a part of the X-Men, but if they happen to have powers that would be of service, all the better. There are certainly skill sets for which the X-Men have a need. Keeping the new mutant on the straight and narrow path, out of the clutches of some evil force that might bend the malleable youngster, is an added bonus.
In Justice League of America #9 (Fox and Sekowsky, 1962), we learn the origin of the Justice League. An alien that threatened to capture the heroes was only defeated through the power of teamwork. The 2011 version of the Justice League indicates that the heroes meet up with each other, trying to stop an alien invasion coordinated by the supervillain Darkseid (Johns and Lee, 2011). The group bands together in solidarity as they are being condemned on all sides as vigilantes, despite their intention to save the planet. The Avengers first get together to fight the Hulk, who has been framed by Loki. Ant-Man notes that “each of us has a different power! If we combined forces, we could be almost unbeatable!” (Lee and Kirby, 1963, p. 22). He’s right—mainly. Whether they are unstoppable depends on how they divvy up the responsibilities of a mission.
In most cases, the formation of a team of superheroes is inspired by the success the group finds through the power of teamwork. Whether teaming up for an issue or two, or creating a full-time partnership, when heroes work together the message is that they will almost always come out on top. When they fight amongst themselves, really bad things happen. Of course, this is the message that cartoons and kindergarten have sent for decades. To quote that seldom remembered group of paladin, pre-school animals, the Wonder Pets, “What’s going to work? Teamwork!” To quote the vastly more important, yet far less read, Adam Smith (1776/1994), “The division of labor, however, so far as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionable increase of the productive powers of labor” (p. 5).
Now that’s some serious eighteenth-century English! What does this gobbledygook mean? Smith is saying that by dividing up a task among teammates, each worker becomes more productive. Ant-Man must have been channeling his inner Adam Smith (or his inner Wonder Pet, if you prefer). Each member of a superhero team has a different set of skills. In the Justice League, if you want some help from the sea, you ask Aquaman. If you need something done really quickly, call the Flash. If you were to ask Aquaman to run off and get the team some coffee, you might be waiting a while, whereas Flash will be back before you can get the words “double espresso latte” out of your mouth. Batman organizes things and works as the brain, whereas Superman out-muscles the bad guys. Wonder Woman gets the truth out of the villains with her magic lasso. Each has a role to play, and by completing the tasks, they get the job done.9
The specialization of labor is made more evident in the Justice League stories when Cyborg joins the team. Now there is a tech specialist to help navigate the increasingly complex technological systems the Justice League needs in order to keep track of world events. This is a common practice in the comics when putting teams together. Because of a character’s skill set, they are added to a team, maybe for one story arc, or even one episode, to help complete a mission. While the Avengers begin with a handful of heroes,
the team variously expands and contracts depending on the operation at hand. The earliest addition is Captain America, once he is freed from the ice floe into which he was frozen (Lee and Kirby, 1964). Even Cap notices the variety of skills the members of the Avengers possess as he positions himself for an invitation to become part of the team. In The Avengers #9 (Lee and Heck, 1964), Hawkeye, an accomplished archer, demonstrates his skills and joins the team, which is later augmented by Quicksilver, a speedster, and Scarlet Witch, who has magical powers. These three begin their shifts as Avengers and provide proficiencies that were not previously represented in the group. This allows the Avengers to complete missions that would have been more difficult with only the original members.
This foundation of specialization is what makes comparative advantage so propitious. For instance, Brazil has a comparative advantage over Germany in the production of coffee. The climate for growing coffee beans is far more suitable on the hills of the rain forests than the rocky crags of the Alps. Correspondingly, Germany has a comparative advantage over Brazil in the production of cars. Even if we don’t know much about how coffee beans move from a plantation in the Sul Minas region of Brazil to the bottom of the cup in a bistro in Stuttgart, we know that Brazil produces coffee at a lower opportunity cost because, well, if it didn’t, Brazil wouldn’t be in the coffee business. Markets determine who has the comparative advantage through the price mechanism. If you are able to produce something at a lower opportunity cost, that information will be reflected in the price consumers pay. It isn’t that Germany can’t produce coffee beans, it’s just that if they did, it would be really expensive. That might be OK for coffee snobs who delight in drinking an exotic cup of java, but for the majority of people looking for a caffeine fix in the morning, the Brazilian blend is just fine.
Why Superman Doesn't Take Over the World Page 7
