"Here's a small charge for stopping that meteor."

[deird_lj]

So, I've been watching Lois&Clark, and just got to the episode where the guy gets Superman's powers and starts using them irresponsibly.
(...which isn't really specific enough. Uh, the episode in the second season when that happens.)

And Superman sits him down and gives him a stern talking-to about "right and wrong", which in this case basically means "Do not charge people $37.50 every time you save their life!"

Question for people reading this: is it okay to charge people for doing the superhero thing?

On the one hand, you have Clark Kent, and Buffy Summers, who'd be appalled at the idea.
Then there are people like Angel, who does that every week.
And then there's Peter Parker, who doesn't exactly charge any money, but still uses his superhero identity as a great way to make extra cash, by selling photos of Spiderman.

...I can't really decide who I agree with.

So, what do people think?

Comments

[parcae-lj.livejournal.com]

The important thing to bear in mind here, I think, is that Peter Parker, Buffy, etc are all providing a service (enforcement of law and order) normally covered by the government. They have to do this because the government in their universes is fantastically incompetent and ignorant, on a scale which would amount to complete anarchy in the real world. This is the only explanation for why Peter Parker can be a useful asset when his only means for sniffing out crime is a police scanner (which naturally can only detect crimes of which the police have already been informed), or why Buffy can select a random cemetery and be sure of finding her evening quota of demons to kill. Violence in their universes has reached the point that it is possible to find criminals in flagrante delicto by virtually random selection.

In other words, under normal circumstances, Buffy and Spiderman would be funded by taxation. Trying to find another system of funding, whatever it may be, will inevitably create injustices because of the problem of market failure. Law and order is a public good - it benefits everyone collectively that Buffy is out in the cemeteries, but no individual party benefits enough to create a market for her services.

The only real solution would be for all superheroes to be government agents, which would be boring. So fantasy universes create a series of excuses to hide the fact that the entire concept behind independent superheroes makes no sense.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_sabik_/]

Actually, Sunnydale is a fairly small town, it probably only has the one cemetery, and as far as I've heard the predator-prey numbers work out pretty consistent with what's shown in the show.

The real question is, what happens elsewhere? If Buffy's in Sunnydale, how is Cleveland going? Is Sunnydale somehow special? Or is there a curse associated with the Slayer, that bad things will happen around her? Or, as you suggest, is the rest of the country going really badly, with the government impotent to deal with the problem for some reason?


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[deird1]

Sunnydale is a fairly small town, it probably only has the one cemetery

...actually, no.

It has twelve.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_sabik_/]

Twelve cemeteries in a town of 38,500? That seems a little excessive... I guess they do have an unusually high mysterious death rate, but still...

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