It’s cursed because comic writers couldn’t come up with a better way to explain why the city can’t be fixed by the world’s smartest billionaire.

This ^^

True. That is indeed very interesting. Although not limited to comic books. You can spot a similar pattern in movies too. Somehow, in America, the films to become the most popular (or most successful) mostly featured themes portraying powerful people in a positive light, directly or indirectly. While in Europe this trend never really took root.

In a classic, underdeveloped autocracy, the answer would surely be blatant censorship and prosecution of authors portraying different views. However, the American mechanisms for accomplishing the same goals are considerably more complex and intricate. That is, assuming there was or still is such a mechanism, as I’m not sure we can say that definitely. Perhaps it was all just a natural process of people preferring the easier, more convenient narratives?

Doesn’t he do both?

God forbid a man has hobbies

Gothman has syphillis?

Not only that, most fully realized versions of the character channel both the vigilante AND playboy personas to fight crime, using Wayne Enterprises to create welfare programs and jobs so Gothamites need not resort to crime to put food on the table.

There’s a scene where Batman pacifies a room of Black Mask goons without lifting a FINGER - he hacks the projector screen simply shows them a Wayne Foundation advertisement for better, safer jobs. One by one, every man simply drops their weapons and walks out the door as their crime boss irately yells at them to come back.

Gothman is literally cursed from head to toe to be the way it is.

It’s more like, this post is full of people describing why the only way the storyline can stay realistic is by introducing supernatural evil.

If it were not a cursed city and if Batman was really a hero who wanted to help people, he would do the social programs and investment in community, but that would be a pretty lousy monthly comic book for kids to read and buy batman merchandise.

That’s worse. You see how that’s worse, right?

The entire premise of this accursed property is “structural change is definitionally impossible and evil-natured people cannot be helped so let’s see how Batman brutally maims victims of this system to defeat the villain-of-the-day”. This is such a profoundly repulsive ideology to me. It’s not about the in-universe justifications, it’s about the horrible, awful, despicable themes of the stories that glorify hyper-individualism and completely discredit democracy, civic institutions, and community.

The in-universe explanations were just tacked on to those core reactionary ideals. The writers didn’t stumble on a cursed city, they invented a cursed city to justify their need for vigilantism and violence to be the only rational answers to society’s ills.

whenever programs are set up to invest in the public, they’re mostly just stolen from.

I’m reminded of the time Walgreens reported they were raising prices and closing stores because of rampant crime, but later admitted they made it the fuck up.

Where does Wayne’s money come from?

How many hours does Wayne’s day have that he can do millions or billions of dollars worth of actual work while still playing dress-up at night?

Or does his money come from short-changing and underpaying his employees, while hiking the prices for his customers? Or does it come from using speculation and investment to make sure he gets rich off other people being underpaid and overcharged?

How can he be a philanthropist when all his money comes from fleecing other people?

presumably better overseen than the government ones

That’s a particularly post-Reagan presumption, and is the product of the kind of deregulation that the Reagan administration spearheaded. In fact, government programs are especially good at fulfilling their roles, since the Pournelle motivation of survival of the department is actually a weaker diversion than the motivation of profit.

We’ve seen plenty of examples, how California regions that had public power fared better during the Enron crisis in the aughts or how Medicare was stronger and yielded a higher rate of positive outcomes before it was privatized by the George W. Bush administration. A similar thing happened in UK in which the NHS got privatized and reshaped for efficiency over redundancy, creating long lines and more poor outcomes.

Wayne has exactly the same kinds of right-wing biases that Andrew Carnegie did, and Bill Gates does, preferring to make decisions based on his own anecdotal experiences than based on data sets. Sure, he saved a kid from crime, and in the meantime more kids suffer from food precarity, from family precarity, from housing precarity than are getting pushed drugs and bullied by gangs. In fact, the gangsters are coming from the precarious environments of the first group.

Batman is ultimately a fantasy of personal responsibility, that we should each be strong enough to bootstrap our fortunes, even though actual data shows most don’t, especially when there are extenuating factors like not being a non-disabled white dude with at least middle-class backing by family. Batman is glad to let everyone else that doesn’t fit into that category suffer.

Granted DC can write what they want, which is why Batman can have a code vs. killing while still smashing the faces of half of Gotham. IRL bare-knuckle fisticuffs will actually kill, and Batman doesn’t pull punches.

Rubber Bullets. Honest. – Batman, The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller, 1986

it was like that since the O`Neil days if not earlier.

So why isn’t Batman beating up corrupt politicians and judges instead of crippling poor people who have no other opportunity to make money than to work for a villain?

Weirdly, when I watched the first season of Gotham, the GCPD was pronouncedly less corrupt than your typical municipal police department in the United States. The difference is GCPD was on the take by the Falcione family, but IRL police departments are the crime syndicate, themselves.

(This is a product partially of too much fighting with the Prohibition-era mob syndicates through the later 20th century until RICO laws were established, but now the mafia families are vastly reduced in power, the police unions took over. It’s why we shrug off four-to-five officer-involved killings of innocent civilians every day, most of whom are unarmed and not resisting when the officer decides to escalate to unaliving them.)

At that point I realized even Gotham is copaganda, and the Batman/DC Cinematic Universe has little to do with what IRL looks like. Which is a shame, because DC could do better.

Gotham being corrupt should make it even easier for a billionaire like Wayne to control things, because as we see in real life, it doesn’t take all that much money to influence politicians. There’s nothing stopping Wayne from bribing the shit out of everyone to do non-evil things, then once Gotham is in a more stable place, bankroll campaigns for politicians that aren’t corrupt. He could literally drain the swamp by backfilling it with money, but instead he decides to run around at night in his little gimp suit punching poor people

Isn’t that a massive indictment of Batman’s entire modus operandi though? That there can be a terrifying lunatic who will beat you up with his little finger if you even think of doing a crime, and yet crime and corruption is worse than in every other city?

I do think there’s some merit to paying those kids of people enough via the state that they’re less likely to need or want to be corrupt in order to make ends meet.

Of course there are people who would still use that to live their life in luxury at the expense of others but I believe that’d generally be a minority

Also in the DC universe, the equivalent of Lockeed-Martin is Wayne Enterprises. There’s stories where Bruce is conflicted in making weapons, but nonetheless, his fortune is built on the military industrial complex.

Underfunding the government through tax cuts makes corruption more likely. The richer the rich are, the easier it is to manipulate the government for them. Why do you think so much money goes to Lockheed Martin? Who gets government contracts isn’t chosen at random, there are moneyed interests involved.

If the income tax graduations are steep enough then the billionaire class will optimize to minimize taxes by reducing their own income in favor of reinvesting in their business and employees. In theory. In reality I’m sure they’d find some way to squirrel it away while their employees apply for and get denied food stamps.

You’re assuming we’d stop at Bruce Wayne.

The same people willing go after Batman are willing to go after Lockheed-Martin and every politician they paid for.

I think pretty much every study even made has shown taxing the rich and investing in the public reduce crime rates and poverty. It’s the reason the USA had a massive middle class before Reagan and has experienced massive wealth disparity today: differences in tax policy and public investment.

This person is arguing for higher taxation of the wealthy in the real world, not necessarily engaging in detailed analysis of the fictional world of Batman

Oh you’re saying we should tax wealth, and we should not tax work.

For a second I thought you were saying “taxing wealth does not work” like a tribal. Few word sometimes do trick.

2. The Lazarus pit in the city spewing chemicals into the water supply.
3. All the other chemicals likely in the water supply from a wide array of sources, including regular pollution and goofy shit.

Fixing contaminants to the water supply is absolutely something proper taxes should be able to solve.

I mean two of those are pretty clearly regulation issues. Maybe if the city’s Regulatory Agencies weren’t so strapped for cash they’d be more able to address pollution and water safety issues. Also you can always build a new Asylum elsewhere but apparently they don’t have the funds for that I guess? It’s amazing have Bruce Wayne doesn’t use his philanthropy to build one, almost like he likes them being crazy so he has someone to beat up.

In that case, Dr. Strange or whoever should be sealing the hell-mouths. Batman face-punching the victims of all these effects is not helping.

I grew up during the smog-alert era of the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, exerting myself, walking home uphill from school (yes, the had to walk in snow from school story except in my case, it was smog and it was true). No number of batmen or tough-on-crime judges were going to fix that, and heck even the limited smog regulations on cars we have today do enough. (Though switching to unleaded gasoline certainly helped generations after mine by lessening the damage). Only public transit and tighter regs on cars is going to help that.

Don’t justify Batman’s fists by saying there are extenuating pollution circumstances. The rogues gallery are the results of what comes down to poor urban planning and a superfluous layer of white-collar crime. If Batman was going after Pfizer and the Sacklers or Du Pont Chemical and PFOA manufacturers or all the private equity firms, then he’d be a hero. Otherwise, he’s a crazy rich dude who beats up on poor people and has writers who won’t think the problem through.

I think the US has just outgrown the Batman fantasy. I’d hope so, at least.

He could literally call up a couple folks he knows who have absurd, godly super powers to shut all of that down, or pick up the entire chunk of landmass those problems are stuck in and hurl them into the sun.

Meanwhile, setting up huge social programs to raise the quality of life for every Gotham resident which would decentivize crime and the wacky crime lords wearing funny outfits and other gimmicks would suddenly find the city less profitable and harder to hire thugs.

It would take a lot of time and resources, it would be challenging, but eventually it would make a difference enough to help the quality of life for millions of residents. More lives would be saved than a single incident involving a giant bomb being used to threaten a bank or some shit.

edit: wild how much more response and engagement you get when you attack fictional characters than when you talk about real problems.

“Decent people shouldn’t live here. They’d be happier someplace else”