Superman as Capital(ist) Good

I've been waiting for this day for almost a year.

Now I can finally point to this brilliant piece by Robert Murphy:

"Superman Needs An Agent"

This is no Randian paean to the virtue of selfishness. As a devout Christian (and even a pacifist, I believe), Bob Murphy is fully sympathetic to the premise that (to borrow from a different superhero from a different publisher) "...with great power comes great responsibility."

Murphy is all for the mandate that the The Last Son of Krypton should use his powers for the good of humanity; he just wants to ask the question of how best to maximize Kal-El's benevolent effects. And the answer is ... Superman needs an agent! Someone to find the highest bidder for his services, so long as those services don't violate ethical principles.

The article definitely deserves to become the title piece of a best-seller.

After first reading this one, I mulled over it for a long time, talking parts of it out with the pre-pregnant missus on long hikes. What I realized is this: Superman's productivity (and therefore his philanthropic potential) isn't just magnified by the division of labor; it's even more magnified by the structure of capital.

In other words, superpowers can be used as a consumer good -- directly helping those in immediate need, as we see him do almost exclusively in the comics, cartoons, TV shows, and movies -- or they can be used as capital goods, the means of production.

For example: when terrorists are about to blow up the Eiffel Tower (or when Lois Lane has been kidnapped, or when a doting pet owner has let her cat get stuck in a tree) people have immediate needs that Superman can fly in and immediately satisfy, in which case his powers are consumer goods.

But if he freezes the surface of a lake and carries the ice sheet to farmers in drought-stricken areas, his powers are functioning as capital goods; they are functioning higher in the structure of production.

Even higher would be his cooperation in producing technology to duplicate those powers.

How high up the ladder of capital goods should he go? There's no way to determine that without free pricing. This is why Superman needs an agent. Does he help out 1 person in immediate need? Sure, but how many individuals in immediate need should he serve if it means time not spent helping millions of people more indirectly? Again, only a pricing structure can determine the opportunity costs of such a decision.

Murphy's article (and all the thinking I did about it afterwards) helped me solidify my understanding of the role of prices in determining priorities, but more important (for me, anyway) it got me over the hump in grasping the distinction between the free market, in which voluntary exchange leads to a more productive division of labor, and CAPITALISM -- where surplus can be invested higher in the structure of capital, serving more people more efficiently at lower costs.

(Digg it!)