## [D] Would a rationalist Batman/Bruce Wane spend his billions on fixing systemic issues rather than a "Batmobile"?

* Author: u/SaintPeter74 *
* URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LATPfqT4118&feature=youtu.be
* Score: 30

* Created: 2014-10-08T00:12:23

### Post:

[Link to content](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LATPfqT4118&feature=youtu.be)

### Comments:

> **u/Nepene** [+12]  (an hour later)
> 
> Given the presence of numerous powerful men, billionaires, and supervillains with dangerous mass murder abilities it is somewhat necessary to fight and defeat the supervillains above and beyond infrastructure building. Batman is often noted as being a person who funds a lot of charities too, but there's little point funding a charity when someone else injects fear gas into gotham's water supply and makes everyone insane by sending it into the air.

>> **u/traverseda** [+3]  *With dread but cautious optimism* (2 hours later)
>> 
>> X risk task force.

>>> **u/Darth_Hobbes** [+8]  *Ankh-Morpork Guild of Assassins* (3 hours later)
>>> 
>>> That's called the Justice League.

> **u/Izeinwinter** [+5]  (4 hours later)
> 
> Even for the purpose of "Fighting Crime", batman is not very optimal - or, at least, not if any theory we have about the causes of crime is in any way correct. 
> 
> Being busted by batman isn't going to convince the average criminal of the error of his ways because batman isn't an agent of the social order, he himself is in violation of it. Police, courts, and so on all have the aim of making justice impersonal - a Leviathan that cannot be fought or killed because it is more than the sum of it's parts. Batman is just a scary individual, so the response he produces is "If I had more firepower, he wouldn't be a problem". 
> 
> This was unintentionally lampshaded by Gotham Sirens recently when Selene Kyle came up with the lie that "Batman" wasn't a person, it was a training regimen, a job and a uniform. Which... He'd be a lot more effective if that was both the case and known to be the case!
> 
> Uhm. Actual optimal policies? Well, for starters, find out what the fuck is in the water in gotham. Florid insanity rates that high make it pretty darn likely that there is an environmental toxin at work. 
>   Fix police corruption. Better psyc care.

> **u/MugaSofer** [+6]  (7 days later)
> 
> *Edit: Wow, gold! Thank you, kind stranger!*
> 
> OK, so you're Bruce Wayne. Your parents were murdered in front of you, so you taught yourself martial arts until you ran out of masters to beat. You inherited their company, and a few obvious suggestions meant profits are though the roof and new technologies are trickling out of R&D at a steady rate. Life is good. But you *know* that Gotham, that the *world* is sick.
> 
> The obvious first step is to start funding effective charities. Bruce Wayne already has the Wayne Foundation, which you both own and fund, so it should only take a few changes to improve that. Pretty soon your agents have their fingers in every element of infrastructure around, from schools to subways, and they're all improving ...
> 
> ... except for the literal gangs roaming the streets with impunity. And wrecking your stuff. And recruiting the kids your shiny new schools are turning out, and bribing the cops, and stealing from the hospitals and businesses.
> 
> The next obvious step is to set up a working justice system, right? Thankfully, You already have a like-minded friend whose ambition is to do exactly that: good old Harvey Dent. You fund his political campaign, pretty soon he's making sweeping and effective changes. It's slow going, and the mob is fighting back, but it's *working*.
> 
> Then, suddenly, Superman. It's usually assumed that he was he first "out" superhero - a symbol of hope, and all that - and all those rumors are suddenly making a lot more sense. There is a god, and he's American, and he's cleaning up the streets in Metropolis. Turns out, an alien superbeing watching over them is a pretty effective deterrent even though Superman is only physically present at a small fraction of crimes (he's a busy guy.)
> 
> So you back to your company, and you tell them two things: first, start working on superweapons, we can't rely on this one guy to defend the planet from aliens. Second, *start working on superweapons*, we can't trust this random guy to be god. Thirdly, I need this list of parts. For ... research purposes.
> 
> You take your computers and equipment down to the basement - always hated that place - and you start designing an *optimal* superhero. One who may not stop the next alien invasion, but by God can he make teenagers think twice about attacking people on the street.
> 
> You don't have powers, sure, but special effects don't cost that much. You rew some basic knockout gas, dye your old kevlar body-armour from your ninja days matte black, and patch it up into a kickass-looking outfit. You pick something creepy - bats, who doesn't hate bats? - and come up with a signature so people will know what hit them (tie 'em up with bat-shaped bolas, ruin their stuff with bat-shaped charges and knives.)
> 
> You sneak out with your new bat-shaped listening devices - may have gone a little too far there - and start bugging local mob hangouts. Pretty soon you know where some big fish are swimming. You show up at a bank robbery, announce your presence to the world when the cops show up to find it already taken care of.
> 
> More superheroes start appearing, following Supes' lead. A couple of people with alien hypertech - one guy has a magic ring, for Chrissakes - and some people who seem to have been mutated or something by chemical compounds. One or two are openly nonhuman.
> 
> You push more money into research, quietly reroute some ideas to your lab and then declare them failures. Soon you've found ways to counter the most obvious risks. Things are going well. You even have a sweet bat-car, and pretty soon you'll get around to finish those bat-shaped wing designs. The police are co-operating, the mob is falling apart under your dual assault;soon you'll be able to start duplicating your success in other cities.
> 
> And then you catch a small-time crook. He's stealing what you realize, too late, was his competitor's biotech research, and he starts *mocking* you. He knows just what to say, how to needle you. Bastard. You snap, push him off a girder into a vat of chemicals.
> 
> And everything goes to hell.
> 
> Turns out that if he wasn't a psychopath before, he is now. And now he's immune to poison, including your gas, and he's got *ideas* for gadgets of his own. And he's moving into the power vacuum, with startling speed, gathering followers who know the only thing that beats a super*hero* is a super*villain*.
> 
> And he's killing people, of course, whenever it would be amusing.
> 
> He's making up his plans on the spot, changing them whenever he gets bored or has a bright idea. You can't track his organization, because even they don't know what he's going to do next. Of course, he's killing them *too*, but since when have humans been rational? He pulls off a few high-profile crimes without a hitch.
> 
> He - well, he kidnaps Harvey. Mutilates him. Tortures him. By the time you track him down, your friend has been *broken*. Completely insane. You have to fight him hand-to-hand just to stop him hurting anyone. He goes to that new maximum-security asylum you funded.
> 
> More supervillains start moving in, and you're starting to realize that this just *the way things are* now. "Supervillain" has become a viable job opening, a role ready and waiting for anyone who invents a freeze-ray and doesn't have too many moral qualms. This is rapidly becoming your full-time job, but who else is competent enough to *fight metahumans* on their own terms, day after day?
> 
> Eventually you meet Superman, a few of the others, give them a few suggestions. You meet a teenager who remind you of yourself; give him a bit of a leg up into the vigilante business. He survives. You train a few others, hand-picked, but several of them die.
> 
> You start working with metahumans more and more; you make friends, allies. When you propose a "Justice League", a way to give structure and legitimacy to superheroes, you end up running *that* as well. It works. But you still can't keep up. You can only keep fighting, and planning, and hope to hell that it's enough.
> 
> The moment an existential threat is beaten back, the Joker drives his psychiatrist crazy and escapes with her. Just when you track him down, an alien superintelligence tries to assimilate New York for data-collection purposes. Some of your enemies have *died* and come back, more powerful and angry than before. Worse still, our best fighters are so powerful that they're attracting a new class of enemy to this tiny planet; you set up an *extradimensional prison* using hypertech you barely understand, and *still they keep coming.*
> 
> At some point, you stopped calling yourself "Bruce Wayne". You didn't really notice. You're the goddamned Batman, now.
> 
> And then Darkseid shows up ...
> 
> ***
> 
> TL;DR: rational!Batman is the Worm-like story of continual escalation and seat-of-your-pants munchkinning.
> 
> Every time he starts to solve a problem - and he *does*, he's the smartest man alive and also a billionaire with social skills and the body of an athlete - it's only long enough for a momentary lull, before the universe slides another notch toward total annihilation.
> 
> [It's a comic, so we only see *possible* end points - but generally, the whole "Justice League" thing works and super-villainy eventually calms down, I think.]

>> **u/SaintPeter74** [+2]  (7 days later)
>> 
>> I love this.  It all seems so . . . reasonable . . . at the time.  You've just rationalized your way into a world where Batman makes sense.
>> 
>> It's doubly amusing to me that cannon!Batman actually starts at exactly the point I proposed.  Bravo, sir.  Bravo.

> **u/AmeteurOpinions** [+5]  *Finally, everyone was working together.* (an hour later)
> 
> No offense, but this is so far into the category of "Well, duh" that I'm not even sure if there *is* a discussion.

>> **u/alexanderwales** [+3]  *Time flies like an arrow* (an hour later)
>> 
>> Alright, let's turn it around then - is there a world where Batman makes rational sense? Or is there at least a value system that we would recognize as "Batman-like" that results in "Batman-like" actions?

>>> **u/None** [+8]  (an hour later)
>>> 
>>> [deleted]

>>>> **u/Geminii27** [+1]  (11 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> WayneTech does seem to be the premier supplier of stuff in Gotham, and Bats could afford to undercut his competitors if his goal was more to put that blind spot in the police tech than it was to simply make profit.
>>>> 
>>>> An expensive way to buy a weakness in what are ostensibly his allies, though.

>>>> **u/Nepene** [+1]  (18 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> > How the police hasn't managed to catch him, however... maybe during the McCarthy era when he was publicly known to hunt Communists? The Batman story is predicated on incompetent law enforcement, which wouldn't really work as a rationalist backdrop I think.
>>>> 
>>>> The police normally don't make a concerted effort to catch him. He makes a reasonable effort to comply with the law in public and normally has a good relationship with the police that lets them overlook his illegal actions like taking evidence from scenes, doing some iffy citizen's arrests.

>>>>> **u/alexanderwales** [+2]  *Time flies like an arrow* (19 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> It really depends on which version of Batman we're talking about, but I definitely prefer those incarnations where he's working "with" the police, or at least has their public condemnation and private consent. Sometimes he's being actively pursued by the police, which makes the police appear far more incompetent since it's almost never a focus of the stories. I do believe that you could write Batman so that the police are competent and trying to stop him, and he's simply better than them, but I haven't really seen it done.

>>>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1]  (21 hours later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> > I do believe that you could write Batman so that the police are competent and trying to stop him, and he's simply better than them, but I haven't really seen it done.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> That would be *really* hard to believe.  The process of busting Batman pretty much goes like this:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> "Let's see...he only operates in Gotham, so he probably lives around here.  He's male, white (because we can see the lower half of his face), he's about six feet tall, he's in wicked good shape and, oh yes!  he must be *STUPIDLY WEALTHY* or backed by someone who is.  Hm.  Who in Gotham fits those criteria?...Ooh, ooh, maybe BRUCE FRIGGIN' WAYNE???"
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> From there it's an exercise in getting a warrant, calling in the feds, or assassination depending on exactly how corrupt / smart / stupid you think the GCPD are.

>>>>>>> **u/alexanderwales** [+7]  *Time flies like an arrow* (21 hours later)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> The depends on the incarnation of Batman. The only thing that I think really gives away his wealth is the Batmobile or Batwing, neither of which are essential to the character (and indeed, are wholly absent in some depictions of Batman). In fact, there are some incarnations of Batman that don't even have him as rich, and I think you can still have Batman without him having huge amounts of money - he just operates slightly differently. That leaves the police with very little to go on. They'd just be looking for a white male, and there are millions of those in Gotham. (Penniless Batman is basically Rorschach from Watchmen, and I think Rorschach's depiction there was intended as commentary on Batman. A similar Batman-alike without much funding is Big Daddy from Kick-Ass, but I'm not sure how realistic I would call him.)
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> Imagine a fanfic about the police of Gotham looking for Batman. They start not knowing much about him. He stays in the shadows, and interacts almost entirely with criminals, most of whom exaggerate the stories about him or just plain get things wrong. He doesn't leave evidence behind, aside from perhaps a batarang that lab analysis reveals could have come from any machine shop in the city, which in turn leads them down a half dozen dead ends. They monitor the hospitals looking for someone with injuries to come in, but never see anything. They chase Batman, but he's memorized the shortcuts and can traverse the rooftops faster than them - sometimes he uses the sewers. There's never any reason to think that his net worth is exceptional. They set up traps for him, but he never falls for them, or he manages to escape without leaving evidence behind. There are a huge number of rumors about him around the underworld and in the police station - he's really multiple people working together, he's got supernatural powers, etc.
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I definitely think that you could make it work without too much trouble - it's just that most of the time, the writers don't try to hew to a sense of realism.

>>>>>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1]  (22 hours later)
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> Well, some of his toys that I think would be notable for being either specialized or expensive:
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> * Batmobile
>>>>>>>> * Batwing
>>>>>>>> * Thermite
>>>>>>>> * Bat-shaped armor
>>>>>>>> * Gas-propelled grappling gun (which leaves the hooks and possibly the lines everywhere)
>>>>>>>> * Magnetic explosives  (he keeps sticking them to supervillains like Metallo)
>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>> As to a NotRich!Batman...well, sure.  If you take away his money it becomes harder for him to be tracked.  At the same time, that's not really the Batman of legend -- even Adam West had "stately Wayne Manor."

>>>>>>>>> **u/alexanderwales** [+2]  *Time flies like an arrow* (22 hours later)
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> I'm not saying that you *have* to take away his money, I'm saying that it's possible for Batman to behave in such a way that he doesn't reveal his money to anyone, and that it's quite probable that a more realistic Batman would make an effort to do so, mostly so that his cover is much harder to pierce. He can have Wayne Manor and fully decked out Batcave, but present himself to the public (on those few occasions when he can be clearly seen) as nothing more than a vigilante with a cape, cowl, bullet-proof vest, and a few pieces of equipment that could have been manufactured on the cheap, in those rare instances where they can actually be recovered.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> The *reader* knows that Batman is absurdly rich, but even if the police are a lot smarter than they are in the comics, Batman could arrange things so that this isn't obvious to them. Hell, Batman could take money from the criminals he beats up to give him a plausible source of funds and further obfuscate his identity.

>>>>>>>>>> **u/AmeteurOpinions** [+1]  *Finally, everyone was working together.* (a day later)
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> You might as well eliminate the Batmobile altogether. ~~Motorcycles~~ Batbike is where it's at. Alot of his tools were only really useful in situations contrived to show them off, and continuing this kind of rationalization just turns him into a more classical ninja.
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> Edit: In fact he should use his wealth to concoct some sort of flu strain which will incapacitate the mob for a week or two without killing them, for a head start to mop up the city. The vast majority of problems Batman faces have cheap solutions (and as a genius, he can find even cheaper ones) and the insane wealth at his disposal could go a lot farther than a private Skunkworks.

>>>>>>>>> **u/LeonCross** [+2]  (2 days later)
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> Thermite isn't particularly expensive from what I know. A friend of mine has made some from stuff around the house and / or junkyard.
>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>> I haven't actually looked into it, but isn't Thermite just powdered rust + powdered aluminum which you can light with a magnesium sparkler?

>>>>>>>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+2]  (2 days later)
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> > I haven't actually looked into it, but isn't Thermite just powdered rust + powdered aluminum
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> I'll take your word for it.  :>
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> Also, single-detail nitpick of larger list is nitpick.  :P
>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>> EDIT:  Wow.  It [really is easy.](http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Thermite)

>>>>>>>>>>> **u/LeonCross** [+1]  (2 days later)
>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>> Oh, I know. The rest of your points were solid. If we're not going to point out the flaws where we can, what's the point of a rational reddit? :-p

>>>>>>>>>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+1]  (3 days later)
>>>>>>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>>>>>>> Heh.  Ok, valid point.

>>> **u/traverseda** [+3]  *With dread but cautious optimism* (2 hours later)
>>> 
>>> [This](http://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2g6q4d/rt_inviolate_by_scrivener_a_lex_luthor_story/) one gives a pretty good explanation for Lex Luther, as portrayed in the comics. Obviously not as reasonable as your world though. Earth is a weapon storage facility. You never know when you're going to need a particular power.
>>> 
>>> I like to think of the heroes/justice-league as the "X risk task force". It makes a bit more sense if you presume that batman is only doing the whole gotham thing to keep his detective skills sharp in his down time. Considering he can be resurrected/healed pretty easily in the justice league canon.
>>> 
>>> Does cut through his canon motivations.

>>> **u/Jace_MacLeod** [+3]  (3 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Short of giving Batman serious psychological flaws (which would totally be in-character, because Batman), one way to make a super-villain-fighting lifestyle worthwhile is to make the villains rational, too. Or rather, effective. 
>>> 
>>> A mere mass murderer who constantly gets caught? Surely a genius super-villain could do better than that. Let's try extinction level threats, like developing nano-technology or unfriendly AI. Or, if the villain as sense of self-preservation, mind-controlling key world leaders. Alternatively, they can just be so plain *good* that only a genius detective on the level of Batman could have any serious chance of stopping them.

>>>> **u/Geminii27** [+2]  (11 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> Or they could be operating in the grey areas of law, where their sharp lawyers could argue them out of any charge which wasn't rock-solid and backed with irrefutable evidence. Or maybe there simply aren't laws yet which cover what they're doing.

>>>>> **u/Jace_MacLeod** [+1]  (12 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> This is starting to sound like a Batman / Ace Attorney crossover.

>>> **u/fljared** [+2]  *United Federation of Planets* (a day later)
>>> 
>>> Perhaps if we focus on areas outside of Gotham:
>>> 
>>> You're Bruce Wayne, and you want to save the world. You're working on deciding which X-risk deserves your attention the most when Alfred tells you the news.
>>> 
>>> There's a god flying around.
>>> 
>>> A human with amazing powers. Superstrong, superfast, indestructibe- and therefore unstoppable. You immediatly drop all other research and turn to finding out a way to stop Superman if he turns evil. Or insane.
>>> 
>>> And then you hear about the godess. A real demigod this time, from Greek origins. Similarly unstoppable by human forces. You redouble your efforts, and start quietly funding some darker weapons projects.
>>> 
>>> Another appears. Alein life is confirmed. This one can read minds and turn invisible and pass through walls *and* can shapeshift. Your job just expanded by several orders of magnitude. You erase all your notes and start *thinking* in code. 
>>> 
>>> More appear. A chemistry accident gives a man supersonic speed. Another  is a benefactor of some other alein race, who give away supertechnology to random people who fit their blue-and-orange morality's idea of good.
>>> 
>>> Two men have just been given incredible power by luck. What happens when the same occurs to some neonazi or mental patient?
>>> 
>>> Your worst fears become confirmed. Superman was seen battling a upperdimensional being, who only left because Superman beat his childish game. Ares invaded part of Greece before Wonder Woman beat him back. Some monster claiming to be an ancient Wizard appears in Manhatten and levels a city block before being scared into disappearing.
>>> 
>>> You no longer can hope to kill or control them all by force- the problem is too big, and you don't know who can be trusted to help you, given that no-one else is openly tackling the problem. There could be dozens just like him secretly working on it while politly applauding the heroics in public, and you have no way of finding them. And one wrong word may mean a heat-vision death if any of **them** catch wind.
>>> 
>>> You devise a new strategy. You build a suit, and grab some of the weapons you funded. Jump on the streets of Gotham and beat up a few muggers. Tie up a mob boss. Eventually, you get a few superviallians of your own. And the others come by. You team up and fight, giving organization and direction to fights that would cream you if you fought alone. Slowly, you become friends with them.
>>> 
>>> And after a challange large enough, you suggest the idea of a permanent organization. Something official that humanity can look to in times of strife.
>>> 
>>> A league. 
>>> 
>>> You're elected leader, of course: you've made sure you were both the voice of sanity and the leader in any previous team-up. You now have the control and trust of the most dangerous threats to Earth, and all the time you need to find a way to stop them if they ever stop being friendly.

>> **u/SaintPeter74** [+2]  (3 hours later)
>> 
>> Certainly not in this world.  It's a no brainer that he could do more good with investing the money in after school programs or curing cancer or something.  For that matter, his scientific/inventing talents might be better served working for the greater good.
>> 
>> What about in the DC universe, though?  Is masked vigilantism the only/best solution to super villains operating in a completely corrupted system?  Would it be possible/rational to invest in systems or structures designed to improve the lives of the poor if they're going to be killed by some minion over $20 or some hair brained scheme to "take over the world".  
>> 
>> I guess most of the Batman themed villains don't have very rational goals.  Most are insane.  Maybe the best investment would be in a more effective mental health care system.  Arkham Asylum doesn't seem to be very effective and mostly seems to be run by the inmates.

>>> **u/Geminii27** [+2]  (11 hours later)
>>> 
>>> Even in DC, how much would it cost to get one city's worth of corrupt cops and politicians replaced with Batman-approved straight shooters? Is there anyone running for any local office who can compete in dollar terms with Bruce Wayne?

>>>> **u/alexanderwales** [+1]  *Time flies like an arrow* (14 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> > Even in DC, how much would it cost to get one city's worth of corrupt cops and politicians replaced with Batman-approved straight shooters? Is there anyone running for any local office who can compete in dollar terms with Bruce Wayne?
>>>> 
>>>> It's not clear to me that this would work, though it somewhat depends on what time period we're talking about and how much access to information Batman actually has. "Buying" a seat is notoriously unreliable, and there have been a great many cases where a well-funded outsider has lost horribly to an established local. On top of that, you need to worry about the corrupting influence of the established structure, and whether the people you've identified as straight-shooters are actually straight-shooters. That's aside from the difficulty of protecting your ringers - there's a good chance that they'll wind of dead in a ditch somewhere.
>>>> 
>>>> I don't doubt that Bruce Wayne can out-spend any political candidate, or even the entire state legislature and city council of Gotham City. But I'm not entirely sure that this would have the desired result of replacing everyone and fixing the systemic failures.

>>>>> **u/SaintPeter74** [+1]  (23 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> There is a secondary issue of making himself a target.  Actively working to reform an entirely corrupt government would be hard, starting from the bottom.  He may be smarter or stronger than most, but a bullet will kill him just the same.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Also, it's a pretty herculean effort to replace an entire police force.  If you do it gradually, you have a chance for the fresh faces to be corrupted, but if you do it all at once you have chaos during the transition.  
>>>>> 
>>>>> Then there are still all of the corrupting outside influences - the mob, etc. willing to bribe the new officers the same as the last . . and kill those who won't . . .

> **u/andr0medam31** [+7]  (12 hours later)
> 
> >crime is caused by systemic disenfranchisement 
> 
> Stopped listening there. (Not really, but it did strike me the wrong way.) The worst crime is that which has a negative impact on the most people to the highest degree.  Some guy robbing a store hurts the store owner's bottom line for that period.  Some guy shooting a person hurts one person and their surviving family.  (We can say these crimes terrorize all of society, but all crime by definition does that.  Criminal courts are built because crime is viewed as a crime against all of society.)  Okay, both of those examples might be caused by systemic disenfranchisement, or a terrible education, or poverty.  What about Madoff?  What about Enron?  We have criminals who can rob tens of thousands of people at once--and get away with it.  We have people who can wreck an economy and cause millions to lose their jobs, their homes, ruin their marriage and career, jump off a building because their assets turned to junk.  We have people whose companies can poison millions of people and ruin the environment of an entire region, to the point of literally poisoning the waterhole by dumping waste in rivers which contaminates the area's water table.  Those criminals don't lack education nor wealth, and they aren't oppressed, and they have a well paying job.  
> 
> Instead of saying, "poor criminals cause crime because they are poor, and rich criminals cause crime because they're bad people," let's just say all criminals are bad people.  I mean, I know a lot of poor people who aren't criminals, so if poverty leads to crime, why isn't every poor person robbing a bank?  Why do we have to have different excuses for criminals of different income levels?  Where is the line of required income between causing crime due to disenfranchisement and causing crime because you're an asshole? 
> 
> Crime is caused by assholes who think they can get away with it.  Those assholes would think twice if some nut in a batsuit was gonna come break their legs for mugging that dude in the alley. 
> 
> So to answer, a rationalist Bruce Wayne would have the best utility for his education, brilliance, diligence, and cash piles by pursuing white collar megacriminals, the ones whom the law cannot touch. (But beating up people is more fun to read about.) 
> 
> As it happens, canon Batman beats up thugs because his parents were killed by a thug.  (Hired assassin blah blah blah, he didn't know that at the time he donned the batsuit.)  Batman was never supposed to be utilitarian. 
> 
> (An alternative argument is that povertous individual criminals commit crimes BOTH because they are disenfranchised and because they are assholes, and the factors multiply to surpass the threshold of how big a jerk they have to be to cause crime.  In this case, we still need to mention that they cause crime, at least in part, because they are assholes, and not solely because they are poor.)

>> **u/Izeinwinter** [+5]  (16 hours later)
>> 
>> And the prevalence of bad people appear to have a lot to do with systemic issues. IE: Lead pollution and the crime spike in the 80's that had everyone convinced society was heading into a criminal dystopia, the historical examples of out right abusive childrearing practices and constant alcohol consumption that led to so much of the past being an annex of hell, "Starvation, endemic corruption, lacking education, ect" and the current third world crime rates..
>> 
>> So one view of Gotham is that it's Johannesburg, only in the US - Police so corrupt and mistrusted that *nobody* cooperates with it, which leads to enormous crime rates. Or that there is something in the water. In neither case is the batman going to fix things. If the ladder, its better water purification and wait 20 years, if the former, the entire police department needs to be reformed, and reformed in a way that makes the public actually trust it again. Which means it needs to not only be honest, but seen to be honest. Tall order. 
>> Life logging uniforms is the most obvious attack angle.

>>> **u/None** [+1]  (16 hours later)
>>> 
>>> [deleted]

>>>> **u/Izeinwinter** [+3]  (18 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> That does not actually help. If the gpd is to rehabilitate itself association with a masked vigilante is outright hurtful.
>>>>  On the amusing other hand, there are one heck of a lot of people in gotham that all seem to have a very specific set of cognitive distortions - an affinity for violence, a really impressive work ethic, an urge to dress up and organize their lives along a theme, disregard for social norms..  Also high intelligence, but that might actually be a result of the utterly deranged work ethic... Conscientiousness consistently applied over long timescales isn't just a complement to intelligence, I am pretty certain it also increases effective intelligence (because it lets you master more skills)  
>>>> 
>>>> So this could very plausibly all be a poison or a bug fucking with people's minds. Heck, that could also explain why gotham isnt an abandoned ghost town. - if there is something in the enviorment that acts as an anti-akrasia drug and some people have a more extreme reaction to it and turn into the riddler or batman, then that explains why people and businesses don't all run the fuck away. How much risk of being killed by a super-villain would you tolerate to live in a city where you had greatly elevated reserves of focus and will?

>>>>> **u/None** [+3]  (19 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> [deleted]

>>>>>> **u/Izeinwinter** [+1]  (19 hours later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Eh, Gotham, being fictional, has an endless supply of villains so batman has someone to fight. But this is an amusing theory. Amusing enough I might actually commit fiction. 
>>>>>> I mean, "Massive misgovernment" also works as a cause, but I don't find it fun - because that  means all batman is doing is fighting symptoms and letting the real villains of the piece be because they are of the upper classes. ergh. bad taste in my mouth.

>>>>> **u/superliminaldude** [+2]  (18 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> I love this idea.  Gotham turns out to be *Dark City*.

>>>>> **u/RandomDamage** [+1]  (20 hours later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Wouldn't this tend to make the police and courts more effective, rather than less?

>>>>>> **u/Izeinwinter** [+1]  (a day later)
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> It would. And at least some depictions of Gotham do have the forces of law being quite impressive, But if everyone in Gotham is shoved off from regular baseline in a generally Nietzschean direction they are keeping a lid on a really dire problem. It isn't just the out and out supervillains, but the kind of.. errh... loosers that would normally kite checks and shoplift instead having the gumption and appetite for violence to commit bank robbery.

>> **u/SaintPeter74** [+6]  (23 hours later)
>> 
>> > Crime is caused by assholes who think they can get away with it. Those assholes would think twice if some nut in a batsuit was gonna come break their legs for mugging that dude in the alley.
>> 
>> I think this is a pretty reductive argument and not really based on any actual study.  It's easy to group and dismiss anyone who commits crime as "a criminal" as though either a person is just naturally a criminal due to genetics or upbringing, or that regular people magically become "a criminal" when they first commit a crime.
>> 
>> There is a lot of discussion about why people commit crimes, some theories can be found here: https://www.udemy.com/blog/criminology-theories/
>> 
>> I will say one thing - for some types of crimes and some classes of criminals, their crime very much has to do with their circumstances - be it education (or lack thereof), upbringing, or environment.  Those circumstances are amenable to correction by the infusion of money.  These causes are also reinforced by systemic racism or classism.
>> 
>> Obviously you're not going to stop all crimes/criminals, and there are clearly people who are not going to be helped.  That doesn't mean you don't give it a try.

> **u/ZombieboyRoy** [+2]  (16 days later)
> 
> Firstly, let me apologize for bumping up a thread this old. I've been rattling around the idea of a Batman rational fiction in my head and I've put off posting here because of a lacking of confidence in my thoughts on the matter, but untimely decided to post.
> 
> When brought up to my roommates (one of whom introduced me to this subreddit and the fiction y'all have been working on), one of them felt Batman is already a rational character/story and would bring nothing new to the table.
> 
> I had my disagreements and reading much of the debate here reinforced them. Granted the Batman story is told and retold in so many ways from multiple angles so finding a unique approach is stretching it.
> 
> Who's point of view do you take? Edward Nigma for an equally rational but ultimately flawed protagonist following a similar agenda as the Arkham games, or a new GCPD detective on the Batman case, or just Wayne himself in a more introspective role?
> 
> The last one is sort of iffy. On the one hand we've all seen the story told through Wayne's eyes but after reading the points made on here about Wayne NOT being a rational character, I wanted to explore the question of what if he was. Here is my take on a story such as this;
> 
> Bruce Wayne is a rational genius with an remarkable amount of money from his family estate (trust funds left behind?), family assets, and of course Wayne Enterprises (which is always successful but in different industries per story). Despite the wealth Bruce is a person motivated by an unsatisfiable urging to protect those close to him personally. This would manifest in his charitable nature to Gotham, especially to people close to him and ask for assistance (maybe Alfred/Fox could help keep him from donating too much?). This obsession would be the catalyst for his need to protect those close to him and Gotham. 
> 
> So why Batman? It would start with Wayne ski masked sneaking somewhere to stop a crime. A crime directly effecting something Bruce is doing to help the city. Say one of the crime families is really pushing hard in a district which the Wayne foundation is investing in and Bruce himself deducted would help ease poverty and crime in the worst areas of Gotham. The thrill and "ease" of accomplishing these clandestine actions would encourage Bruce to take more actions into his hands to protect the city.
> 
> This is also why Bruce would NOT stop at first. His impulse to personally intervene, even if he figures out that his actions are causing more mentally disturbed criminals to pop up, would keeping him in a mental loop thinking 'if I stop him/her/them HERE then I can stop all this'.     
> 
> Depending on the setting, Batman's resources would be at least measurable. Wayne Enterprise is not a bottomless money pit and no matter how much wealth one has you'll only have access to the most advance technology the era can achieve (so no super 'bat-inventions'). The Batmobile would also have to go, as with the other vehicles. Just to easy to track and recognize.
> 
> Lastly, just how 'realistic' would this setting be? To be honest, I'd like the image of Bruce with his hands pulling at his hair trying to figure out just how does a 7' humanoid crocodile stalking Gotham's sewers fit into his model of the world.
> 
> "It's going to be a long night Alfred".

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