14 KiB
[DC] How Batman's career would play out in real life
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Author: u/None *
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Score: 20
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Created: 2014-07-16T12:04:16
Post:
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+13] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)
There are bigger concerns than how he would conceal his secret identity.
There's no way that one-man crime fighting would work for an ordinary human. Crimes are rare, and if you're responding to the police scanners you're going to be arriving just before them (meaning that you have lots of altercations with them) or just after them (meaning that you can't touch the criminals). Batman would never be able to effectively stop crime on a street level, though he might be able to stop organized crime in some capacity by doing detective work.
Which brings us to the big problem that Batman has no legal authority. If you beat the shit out of some crime boss and drop him on the steps of the courthouse in some grand symbolic act, he's going to walk free unless he's already got a warrant out for his arrest. There are immense legal issues involved in arresting someone, and there's no way that what Batman is doing is constitutional. Seriously, look up the laws for making a citizen's arrest - unless the laws are different in light of Batman or the elements of his rogue's gallery, he's not legally allowed to be a vigilante, which means that it's highly questionable whether anyone he ties up is going to face any meaningful consequence, considering that their rights have been completely trampled on.
And then there are the psychological issues that Batman has ...
I always told myself that if I ever wrote a (possibly spiritual) sequel to my Superman fanfic it would feature Batman as the primary protagonist/antagonist. Possibly a young Green Lantern Batman - though I think maybe I just like the idea of someone intelligent exploring what the ring can do.
u/psychothumbs [+3] (5 hours later)
I guess the question becomes what sort of thing would a badass billionaire be able to do with his money and skill to fight crime / super-villains that wouldn't be something boring like donating money to charities and the police department.
u/ignirtoq [+2] (a day later)
If his goal really is to eliminate violent crime, the biggest deciding factor is just how much wealth he has that is fully and completely at his discretion, and how much more he can partially control with oversight from some board of directors (i.e. personal wealth and "Wayne Enterprises" wealth). A fully rational billionaire with the sole goal of eradicating violent crime would recognize that physically combating the criminals themselves is a terribly ineffective way to discourage the activity compared to correcting the flaws in the socioeconomic system that incentivize it. Basically, as sexy as a billionaire philanthropist playboy crime fighter is, it's not actually all that effective in accomplishing Batman's stated goal if the crime fighter is human (no matter how much martial training and technological toys he has to aid him).
The most rational model for eradicating violent crime I can come up with is as follows. With personal wealth, I would invest in dozens (or hundreds, if the wealth is great enough) of socioeconomic projects designed to "solve" behavioral economics but keep the knowledge secret. Specifically, the goal would be varied scientific experimentation to build a robust, theoretical mathematical framework to predict human activity and decision-making on personal and aggregate scales. Wayne Enterprises then provides an entry point into the current socioeconomic fabric to "tweak" the system over time toward the state the model predicts minimizes violent crime. To counteract the vast expenditure of wealth Wayne Enterprises would have to expend on these tweaks, the model could also be used to concentrate previously impossible amounts of wealth back into the company (which is why it would have to be secret).
Honestly, I don't know if any rational fiction posted on this subreddit has explored some or all of this idea because I shy away from economic fiction. Too many people write too many assumptions into their economic models without realizing it, and thus without justifying them. These assumptions lead to "utopia" scenarios far too easily far too often.
u/alexanderwales [+2] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
I don't believe I've ever seen something like that, probably because reading about socioeconomic projects wouldn't really make for a compelling narrative fiction, and also because it seems like it would have to include a lot of intensive research. And if you do away with the rubber suit and the bat theme, you're basically just writing about a billionaire philanthropist - him being Bruce Wayne doesn't really help that much.
But I would like to read that kind of thing, even if it was just a series of essays about economics dressed up in dialog form.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
I am pretty sure that such a project would not solve behavioral economics or remain a secret. Funding is hardly the primary constraint holding back behavioral economics. It is an intellectual challenge. Scientists are bad at keeping secrets. Money is also hard to keep secret. By its very nature, it shouts information to the treetops from whence it came.
u/psychothumbs [+1] (a day later)
See, this is an example of what I would describe as the 'boring' end of the spectrum. Obviously a skilled writer might be able to make a great story out of this kind of thing, but it doesn't have the sort of mass appeal of Batman. The challenge is to find a way to justify being a superhero in at least a semi-rational way.
u/ignirtoq [+1] (a day later)
Right, which is why I don't think a truly rational Batman would work as a story. Too much of Batman's core character is defined by what is ultimately an irrational psychological pathology.
u/alexanderwales [+1] Time flies like an arrow (2 days later)
You could still do it so far as the criteria in the sidebar go. You just need to have a Batman with a very alien values system. He doesn't fight crime in the way that he does because he actually thinks it's going to lead to the greatest reduction in crime, he does it because he takes a great deal of satisfaction in getting psuedo-revenge on his parents' killer. And that puts him into direct values-conflict with most people he might run into.
u/Nepene [+1] (a day later)
Hire mercenaries to take over the criminal underworld. A power vacuum would be bad, but if you can dominate the underworld with masses of well paid soldiers with military weaponry you should be able to massively lessen the violence. Do a batman on major criminals, make an example of them.
Hire private investigators and informants to make sure you are the main person bribing the police and local politicians. Subvert them to ignore your gang activity, do a batman on holdouts. Lobby federal politicians to supply them with more money, hire angry young males to swell their ranks.
Get an extensive surveillance network of cameras throughout the city with face recognition software so you can quickly bring captured superscience/ super magic to attack any threats.
Use police corruption to ensure supervillains get executed in a bloody and painful fashion that serves as an example to the scum in the city.
Build an extensive and high quality public transport network to ensure people can get to jobs. Ensure this has a central shut off switch that you control to avoid a Ras Al Ghul scenario. This can also serve to reduce unemployment.
End the drug war by lobbying local politicians, it's a meaningless distraction and a good potential revenue source.
Try to steal alien or magical tech that allows cheap power, mind control, cheap resources, cheap manufacturing, or cheap transport. Mass produce it if it's safe. Stargate style, barter with every alien for technology.
Fund extensive adult and child education stuff so people can do useful stuff. Encourage school systems that encourage the teachers to improve.
u/None [+2] (4 hours later)
A technological panopticon might make it feasible, but that leaves him with a huge amount of image and audio processing and threat assessment work. Not quite AI-complete if you accept enough inaccuracy, but with only one enforcer available, you need pretty good accuracy.
u/None [+4] (2 hours later)
Unrelated question, but how is your next chapter coming along? Is it coming out on Sunday or before?
u/alexanderwales [+4] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)
Still on track for Sunday, at least at the moment. Currently sitting at 6,000 words, so it looks like it will be a longer one when it's finished. Then editing, etc. But I still think Sunday is the correct date.
u/MugaSofer [+1] (20 days later)
At risk of handwaving, and a little late, but: this would be why Batman is the World's Greatest Detective, no?
(And why most writers note that his Bruce Wayne identity actually prevents more crimes. From a rational perspective, Batman is just a side project that he happens to be personally involved in.)
But to be fair, I think normal criminals are supposed to be more intimidated by the "urban legend" aspect - by the fact, or rumour, that there's a superhero operating in Gotham - rather than actually needing to fight Bats on a regular basis in order to operate. He reserves that for high-impact targets: supervillains and/or mob bosses, basically.
u/cae_jones [+8] (7 hours later)
According to what I've read, There are freelance crimefighters in real life. Most of them are ex-military, and they have a strict arrangement with the police that allows them to operate without causing trouble for each other or the legal system. Some of them do the whole secret identity thing (though it's kinda tenuous, since the police obviously need to know who they really are). They also have to worry about unofficial imitators; the article I read specifically quoted one of them as identifying a couple unsanctioned vigilantes and disavowing association with them and warning people to avoid them*.
So, yeah, in real life, Batman would need to avoid the whole secrecy thing and get official sanctioning. The canonical explanation for why he doesn't is that the Gotham City Police Department is hopelessly corrupt, but someone like Bruce Wane could probably get sanctioning from higher up--the county sheriff, the state governor, the feds whoever--and suddenly the legal system is on his side and he can actually drop criminals off at the courthouse and expect results. His tactics would most likely come under review if criminals complained too much, and he might find himself having to buy his way out of unwanted (but probably necessary) psychiatric attention.
* although this kinda reeks of signalling and tribal politics and ass-covering.
** But it's entirely possible my sources were BS. This was a few years ago, but I might be able to dig them up and figure out where I went hopelessly wrong if necessary.
u/PeridexisErrant [+3] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (17 hours later)
The biggest problem I have with this is that it assumes Batman operates in exactly the same way - it transposes the character to the real world, instead of translating the story into the real world.
And when you've got a genius billionaire driven by revenge... well, it could go well if he decides a spot of class war is in order to eliminate the poverty that causes muggings. Or it could go very, very dark.
u/Adamantium9001 [+3] United Federation of Planets (14 hours later)
How have I never heard of that sub before?!
More relevant to people who are not me: why the hell is it not in the list of related subreddits in /r/rational's sidebar? It may as well be called /createyourowndeconstruciton!
u/qznc [+1] Chaos Legion (17 minutes later)
More entertaining would be e.g. how L/Sherlock Holmes/Conan Edogawa would reveal Batman :)
u/None [+4] (24 minutes later)
I think this other top level post in that thread would be it:
u/BT_Uytya [+4] The Laundry (20 hours later)
Batman's targeting of criminals from all walks of life indicated to him that Batman has a sincere grudge against the underworld, likely because he felt wronged by Gotham's criminal element, and likely suffered a great loss at their hands.
A bit of a leap here, no? Chain of implications "targets everyone equally => hates everyone equally => somebody wronged him" looks plausible, but we are blessed with hindsight. There are lots of alternative explanations: "Batman wants to test his equipment and takes every opportunity to do so", or "Batman wants to eradicate underworld because somebody from White House ordered him to do so", or "Batman is a high-functioning psycho who found a socially acceptable outlet for his need to hurt people", or "Batman optimizes his public image and wants every law-abiding citizen of Gotham City to support him for some reason", or "Batman hates black female jaywalkers the most, but he tries to make the distribution of his targets uniform in order not to give any clues about his motivation to anyone".
(also, by this logic, if Bruce became Batman because Joe Chill killed his parents, isn't he much more likely to target muggers/murderers/killers than drug dealers and burglars? It seems to me that P(E|H) is actually lower than P(E|~H) here.)
(also, how am I supposed to obtain this statistics in the first place? It's not like I could go to every criminal of Gotham, from serial killers to smoking pot teenagers and ask them "hi, how often are you interacting with Bats?". And nobody tracks Batman's deeds — except Bats himself — nearly good enough to be able to say who was attacked by vigilante this night)