To conclude our list of challengers, Wonder Woman stands apart from other heroes not just because she’s a woman, but because her inspiration is to fight war and evil, guided by wisdom and love (Moulton and Peter, 1942). Wonder Woman brings a civilizing touch to the world of mostly male superheroes. But don’t be fooled, Wonder Woman is a force to be reckoned with. She has incredible strength, and in the mid-1980s she ditched her invisible jet and was given the ability to fly. Her lasso works as a truth detector that demands whoever is bound by it to reveal their deepest, darkest secrets.2 Wonder Woman’s biggest limitation for being the greatest is the fickle nature of her writers. The Amazon pincess’s history is filled with retcons that are utterly bizarre. The most distressing of these was the silver age decision to have Diana Prince give up her powers to remain in the world of men, where she opened a boutique and attempted to become a fashionista. A wizened mentor appears to train her in martial arts, and she enters the world of espionage as a non-powered, super-secret, super spy. Still, Wonder Woman has a lot going for her, especially these days as she is depicted as the direct descendent of Zeus. Her philosophy that love conquers all makes her mission of peace believable, until she punches your lights out.
Right Makes Might
Staying on the philosophical road for a little while longer, the great heroes are guided by an unquestionable pursuit of right. Brenzel (2008) notes that “to be a plausible character at all, the super-powered individual must choose to be good, and must go on being good in some broadly recognizable way” (p. 149). This is manifested in an exchange between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin. Goblin asks Spider-Man why he bothers trying to protect people who hate him. The reply is that it is the right thing to do (Spider-Man 2, 2002).3 While a reluctant hero might make for an interesting storyline, constantly dragging someone out of their self-imposed exile can get exhausting. Similarly, the anti-hero has a niche in the comics, but because their integrity, or lack thereof, borders on the profane, they can’t be part of the pantheon of greatness. To bring our analysis into focus, we need to examine the motivations of heroes a little more carefully. What drives them to do good in the first place?
Layman (2008) suggests that one reason to be good is to avoid unintended consequences. Henry Hazlitt (1979) emphasizes the unintended consequences of actions, particularly when policy goes amok, in his classic work Economics in One Lesson. Policies are designed to change people’s behavior. Consider a policy that almost everyone agrees on: People who work hard deserve a fair wage. To some, that translates as a higher minimum wage. The problem is that if the minimum wage is raised to a high enough level, it provides an incentive to business owners to consider alternatives to labor. A very low minimum wage can be increased without having much of an impact on how many workers get hired. This is because a negligible mandated wage is likely to be below the wage set by the market. However, if the payment to workers is forced up by fiat, then options that were not previously cost-effective to employers become so. Self-serve kiosks at restaurants allow patrons to order off of a digital menu and then use their credit card for payment. This eliminates the need for an employee to run the register. That’s one fewer worker the store needs to pay. Other workers may lose hours because the kiosk doesn’t need a break (or benefits). Now, because the wage is artificially set higher than what the market can bear, fewer workers are employed. Thus, the unintended consequence might be that while wages go up, there are not as many people working. Even more nefarious though, the unintended consequence may be that young workers have fewer entry-level job opportunities and find it more difficult to gain the valuable work experience that will allow them to be hired for better paying jobs in the future. This isn’t the intention of legislators who pass higher minimum wages, but it is something that should be considered when a wage hike is being debated.
In the comics, unintended consequences happen frequently. Sometimes they occur because heroes are standing up for what they believe in. In Marvel’s Civil War (Millar and McNiven, 2009), the fighting hero teams end up killing Goliath. The fighting wasn’t supposed to kill anyone, but in his zeal to win Tony Stark didn’t have full control of some of his technology. Other times, unintended consequences reveal themselves when you don’t do what you can to stop crime. In a fit of selfishness, the criminal goes free and someone you love dies. Just ask Peter Parker about this. In these two circumstances, being good would have avoided the undesired results, and in both cases Parker ends up in the middle. Gripped by remorse, Parker assumes the mantle of Spider-Man to help people. Gripped by determination not to lose to Captain America, Tony Stark enlists criminals to help his cause and nearly kills Peter Parker.
Waid (2008) provides what might be the best insight for understanding hero motivation. While his focus is on Superman, this could apply to any hero. By being heroic, Superman is “acting in his own self-interest” (p. 10). Regardless of why they do it, superheroes receive an internal benefit from saving the day beyond any gratification the public might bestow. They do it because it is part of their being and to not act heroically would yield less happiness. This idea of self-interest underpins all motivations for economic activity. Adam Smith notes in Wealth of Nations that “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest” (Smith, 1994, p. 15). That doesn’t mean that the butcher is a bad guy, although he might be. What it means is that the reason the butcher is in business is because it allows him to provide for himself and his family. It is in his self-interest to provide a quality product at a fair price. If he doesn’t then the consumer will go elsewhere and the butcher will be out of business, which is not in his self-interest. Being good is its own incentive. If they are good, the hero derives more satisfaction from their actions.
Utility Assemble!
Satisfaction or happiness can be difficult to attain, but it is even more difficult to measure. While utility means happiness, because we live in a world beset by scarcity we can’t have unlimited happiness. We haven’t yet talked about how happiness is restricted, and make no mistake, it is restricted. Limits on happiness are typically examined through the prism of a constraint. For example, having a beachfront house might make you happy (increasing your utility), but unless you are able to pay for it you aren’t going to be able to buy the house. Income is a constraint. It limits the level of utility you can reach. While heroes have abilities that allow them to accomplish great feats, even heroes are limited. As noted in Chapter 5, heroes need an income so they find a job. Additionally, there are some things a hero just cannot do. Sometimes this manifests itself in a power a hero doesn’t have. Deadpool can’t fly, and perhaps that is a good thing, but if he could fly, some of the crazy things he does, such as throwing himself off a bridge to follow a criminal, wouldn’t have the same impact (no pun intended). The lack of flight inhibits his superhero work. Similarly, those non-powered superheroes—Batman, Green Arrow, Hawkeye, Iron Man, et al.—are prevented from achieving levels of proficiency because they don’t have powers. It is these constraints that keep some heroes from being as great as others. And of course, no hero has unlimited time.
Because superheroes are incentivized by being good, we can develop a set of utility curves for them and perhaps answer the question motivating this chapter. Utility curves are graphical representations of happiness. Faced with a budget constraint, meaning you can’t have all of everything that you would like, we must make choices—that’s why most of us live where we do, rather than on a beach. A utility curve represents all the potential combinations of two goods you could acquire that would make you equally well-off.
Right away you have probably identified a problem. Are we talking about the two goods again? Why only two? This is to make the analysis simple. Remember the multiple dimension problem of illustrating a production possibilities curve from Chapter 8? It applies here, too. You can make the category of goods as broad as you like though, so this isn’t that restricting of a
n assumption.
Another thing to note about utility curves is that there are lots of them and they never cross. Any level of utility will have its own curve but they must remain parallel. For the mathematically inclined, this involves the notion of transitivity. If A equals B, and B equals C, then A must equal C. A combination of goods identified by point A can only yield the same utility as that at point C if the lines cross at point B, and that is a big no-no for utility curves.4 The problem here is that A should never equal C because A can be a combination where you have more of both goods, and C a package where you have less of both goods. Those two things cannot be equivalent.
Finally, the most preferred utility curve is the highest one you can reach. As you will see in Figures 10.1 and 10.2 below, the higher the curve, the happier you are. This means that you are getting more of what you want. Regrettably, getting to that highest curve may not be possible because of the constraints the actors face. For you that might be income, for heroes that constraint is going to be their powers.5
Figure 10.1. Hero Utility Curves.
Figure 10.2. Optimal Hero Work for Ant-Man and Superman.
To build a utility curve we first need to determine what the two goods will be. For heroes, I am going to broadly define these as hero work and a personal life. The hero would love to have a better personal life, that is to be further to the right on the horizontal axis; however, given a predilection to heroic deeds, a hero won’t trade crime-fighting for peaceful evenings on the couch. We see this inherent behavior in the comics all the time. Peter Parker and Mary Jane’s marriage is falling apart because Peter just can’t quit being Spider-Man (Mackie and Byrne, 1999). Storm’s involvement in the X-Men places a significant strain on her marriage to Black Panther, which ends in separation (Aaron and Kubert, 2012). Tony Stark’s assistant, Pepper Potts, marries Stark’s bodyguard (whose name is Happy but that’s just ridiculous so I won’t mention it). Happy (whoops I mentioned it anyway) is punch-drunk on being the stand-in for Iron Man, so he isn’t the supportive husband Pepper had hoped for. They divorce and try to reconcile but Happy eventually dies from injuries sustained while fighting the Spymaster (Knauf, Knauf, and Zircher, 2007).
Because of the obsession with saving the day, the utility curves for a typical superhero are flat, as shown in Figure 10.1 below. This means that at any given level of good deeds, no personal life is as satisfying as a great personal life. The curves are mapped upwards, so that the preferred line is higher regardless of how much of a personal life is possible. U2 is preferred to U1, and U3 is preferred to U2. Notice, the curves never cross. This outcome indicates that the hero will give up a spectacular personal life if it results in more hero work. Point A on utility curve U1 is less preferable than point B on utility curve U2, even though B includes no personal life, because heroes derive more utility from hero work than anything else.
The only real issue now is upon which utility curve the hero finds themself. They want to be on the highest one, in the graph that would be U3, but that is dependent upon the constraint. Once we have that constraint in place, we will be able to determine the utility curve and the optimal amount of a personal life they should have. And most importantly, we will be able to identify the best hero.
Normally, the constraint facing an economic actor is their budget; however, in the case of heroes, the constraint will be physical. Heroes want to do as much as they can, yet their ability to do so is subject to some physical limitations. Most heroes must recover at some point. They need to eat, sleep, and heal. Even characters with rapid healing powers, such as Wolverine and Deadpool, need a little time to recover now and then. After all, stab wounds and bullet holes don’t repair themselves instantaneously. To determine the optimum point at which the hero reaches the highest utility curve, we locate where the constraint just touches—or is tangent to—one of the utility curves. Now we have an answer to the question of “who is the greatest superhero.” The answer is “whoever can reach the highest utility curve taking into account their physical constraints.”
Figure 10.2 compares two heroes: Superman and Ant-Man. Even though he has some great tech to work with, Ant-Man has far more physical limitations than the Man of Steel. His main ability is to shrink, and while that’s pretty cool, it does hinder the extent of his work. As a result, his optimum point occurs on utility curve U2, as shown by the white dot. Superman faces fewer physical strictures, and as a result he reaches U3, as shown by the black dot. Superman’s constraint shown in Figure 10.2 is labeled SM, while Ant-Man’s is labeled AM. Based on this we can reach the conclusion that Superman is a better hero than Ant-Man. Sure, heroes have abilities that allow them to accomplish prodigious deeds, but at some point even heroes are limited. There are just some things a hero cannot do. Those constraints keep some heroes from being as great as others.
Superman’s optimal personal life involves more downtime, presumably with Lois Lane and his son, than Ant-Man’s. This is identified by dropping from the tangency of his utility curve and ability constraint, the black dot, down to the “Hours of personal time” axis, which lands at SMPT. This is to the right of Ant-Man’s optimal hours of personal time, AMPT, found by dropping down from the white dot. Supes’ ability to discern true emergencies might play a role here. Also, the original Ant-Man had a lot of issues, including being an abusive husband (Shooter and Hall, 1981). Perhaps Hank Pym, Ant-Man’s alter ego, never destined to be a great hero, is also so troubled that he would never achieve a great personal life.
And the Winner Is???
So, who is it? Which hero is the greatest of all? Well, it probably isn’t Ant-Man. But that isn’t the real question, is it? Why was Ant-Man involved in the first place? Shouldn’t the comparison have been between Superman and Thor or Wonder Woman? Here’s the problem. There is one significant shortcoming with the utility analysis. Like comics, utility is a fabrication. It is a figment of an economist’s imagination. Let me explain. Economists are fond of saying you cannot make interpersonal utility comparisons. In other words, there isn’t a universally accepted scale for how many utility points you get from eating an ice cream, or reading a comic book, or saving someone from a burning building. The concept of trying to measure such a thing is almost as preposterous as Spider-Man’s Clone Saga. How you measure happiness won’t ever compare to how I measure it. The only real thing we can say when comparing utility is that something makes you happier or less happy, not by how much or how that change in happiness improves your life relative to mine. Regardless of how economists have tried to measure utility, there is no firm and fast rule on how much joy each util (remember, this is the way utility is measured) brings. That means that while this is certainly a helpful tool with which to establish motivations and whether to increase or decrease the amount of an activity—like how much hero work to do—we have to apply this to one person (or hero) at a time.
Wait a minute! Am I saying that utility curves are just a ruse—and not even one worthy of a cheesy 1960s villain? This sounds like a ploy. What kind of writer puts his audience through the idiosyncrasies of a crazy notion like utility only to pull the rug out from beneath their loyal readers’ feet? Truthfully? One who doesn’t have an answer to the question of who is the greatest superhero. Do I think that utility analysis provides the answers to this age-old question? Actually, I do. Sure, utility analysis is fraught with measurement issues, but it does provide a valid framework for breaching such a debate, and it is at least as legitimate as the arguments made at the bar, although I would suggest you don’t actually talk about utility when debating superhero greatness at a bar. While economics has a lot to offer in terms of understanding what motivates people, even when those people are wearing capes and spandex, it isn’t always well-received.
Nevertheless, as we have seen in the preceding nine chapters, many of the curious questions that arise in comics have an ancillary in economics. But economics is not perfect, just as our comic heroes are not perfect. In the case of heroes, the flaws they exhibi
t make them more human. Understanding the flaws in economic analysis might make economists more human as well. As social scientists, economists try to understand the choices that people make, the career paths they follow, why they fight, or what causes them to don the masks they hide behind. While this is a noble effort, it should not be undertaken lightly. In the real world, economists are often thought of as possessing considerable powers, yet, as in the comics, those powers can be used for good or for evil. By pulling on a cape and exploring fictional worlds, we may begin to see far more similarities between what is imaginary and what is real, and that can lead us to a more complete understanding of what makes our world tick, which might just help us wield those economic powers with considerably more responsibility.
Endnotes
1. At least this is the presumption. Kenneth Arrow (guess what? That’s right. He’s a Nobel Prize winner, and sadly he will be the last one mentioned in this book), among others, has championed the competitive market, casting monopolies as he who should not be named. Others aren’t so sure monopoly is the great evil. Most famously, Joseph Schumpeter (1942) said that non-regulated monopolies would result in at least as much innovation as a competitive market, if for no other reason than they wanted to maintain their monopolies. The debate goes on regarding the validity of these positions, and alas, the empirical evidence is not clear for either position. Blundell, Griffith, and van Reenen (1999) and Etro (2004) provide interesting analyses of this question.
2. Although if you’re crazy you may not know the truth, or even comprehend the meaning of the question Wonder Woman is asking you, in which case your insanity plea not only holds up in a court of law but it makes the lasso moot.
Why Superman Doesn't Take Over the World Page 24
