Enrichment

How Billionaires Should Fight Crime

Since his first appearance in Detective Comics in 1939, fictional billionaire & philanthropist Bruce Wayne has been waging a brutal, personal war on the criminal underworld of the fictional Gotham City. Understanding the dangers of his life’s mission, Wayne invested millions of dollars & every waking hour of his life in training & arming himself, mastering dozens of martial arts, sciences & weapons, & adopting the aspect of a giant bat-monster that preys on the wicked. Combined, this investment gave Wayne a crucial advantage in his one-man-crusade against thousands of armed & hardened enemies, & his sinister alter-ego, the Batman! The 76 year long story of the Batman has been told, re-told, expanded upon, copied, compared, paralleled & parodied since its inception, is considered by many to be the primogenitor of the Anti-hero character archetype, & has a fan following greater than any that has been told before or since. It has come to represent everything that society’s anarchistic elements value most & inspires fans of the superhero sub-genre with a demonstration of how an ordinary human being can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with gods. The story is a masterwork of fiction & the character himself has been called everything from ‘badass’ to ‘genius.’

However, much to fanatical rage of many, this article is not about the plentiful merits of the minds behind the Batman or the many fictional accolades of the character; this article will, using real-world logic, specify precisely what both the Batman & Bruce Wayne have been doing wrong since their crusade began, & what they should have done differently. Essentially, I’m gonna tell you why Batman is NOT a ‘genius’ (insane, I know)!

Bruce Wayne has claimed that, in keeping with his late parents’ own values, he is whole-heartedly dedicated to the welfare of Gotham City & its citizens, promising to use his vast resources to restore the impoverished metropolis to its former glory. Unfortunately, this vow he made with an armed & armoured bat suit in his basement & an ironic understanding of the definition of ‘welfare’. What Bruce Wayne should done instead was invest his wealth in Gotham City, itself.

By buying apartment complexes, hospitals & businesses across Gotham, Master Wayne could have offered work, lodging, food & healthcare at rates of his choosing (were he to charge at all, being Gotham’s ‘saviour’ & all). If he was really so determined to brutally punish the criminal element, he could have deployed private security forces chosen, trained & armed by Wayne Enterprises (or, perhaps, even Bruce Wayne himself) to legally deliver ‘justice’ to any criminals living on company property. And if he’d bought each broken down, crime infested area of the city, while they were worth practically nothing, one at a time & simply returned the best property to the city once its value has reached its apex, he might have repeated this process until the illegal enterprises of local criminal organisations become impossible to keep running. In short, rather than spend billions on turning himself into bat, Wayne should have made the city difficult for criminals to thrive in with greater security, a satisfied working class & nowhere to establish their businesses, while aiding the development of the city itself.

Batman’s intention was not only to end crime on the streets of Gotham, but also to show its citizens that anyone can make a difference, a point that he makes with a considerable measure of anti-establishmentism, & end the corruption in the city’s most important institutions, such as the Gotham City Police Department, the $ billion corporations & the offices of powerful politicians. This is a noble goal that I personally support whole-heartedly, but the fact that he has chosen to champion this cause himself, by the means he has chosen to do so, might actually defeat it. Were Batman to ever be unmasked, revealing the face of caucasian billionaire Bruce Wayne, a member of the 1% & living embodiment of privilege in Gotham, the socio-anarchistic symbolism of the Batman would vanish without a trace, leaving millions of people alienated, disillusioned & hopeless, because they know that Wayne was only able to achieve what he did through his wealth & that he chose to spend it on becoming Batman instead of truly saving them. And worse yet, whether Batman was discovered or not, the fact that Bruce Wayne became Batman at all is proof of his hypocrisy; using company money, Master Wayne bought vehicles, PPE, weaponry, gadgetry, scientific equipment & building materials worth more than a $ million each, making him an embezzler at best. At worst, however, Batman would become something that few villains have attempted: a tyrant; enforcing a strict personal morality upon the citizens of a city ruled by the rich & the corrupt with weapons purchased at the expense of any hope the people might have had.

If Bruce Wayne simply refuses to give up on his dream of creating what is both a brutal vigilante & symbol for the down-trodden, does he really have to be the one under the cowl? Expanding upon the idea of deploying private security forces chosen, trained & armed by either Wayne Enterprises or their CEO, what if Master Wayne simply created a pseudo-Batman Incorporated, its members recruited from among those who’d suffered his loss without his advantages, equipped with technology developed specifically for them with funds from an obvious legal source & set up as an autonomous branch of the GCPD with a generous donation to help them get started. Dedicated everymen, who’re kitted out like no one’s business & entirely legitimate!

And there we have it, several flaws in Batman’s fictitious operation & their obvious solutions. There are, likely, many more, but these ones stand out most to me at the moment. These & the fact that he recruited several children to fight crime with him in ridiculous polo-shirts & speedos.