Makes me think of the grimdark future of Warhammer 40,000. In a universe where literal demons will spring from hell through the minds of the weak to annihilate humanity, an unimaginably brutal xenophobic totalitarian theocracy that is willing to burn entire planets to a cinder at the drop of a hat is the only possible answer. They do a LOT of heavy lifting in the worldbuilding to scratch that cryptofascist itch for a certain segment of the players.
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Gotham City makes a lot more sense if we assume all the characters are high on meth all the time
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I also think that night and day last for 24 hours or more in the Batman universe (they certainly have to in the Arkham games). So Batman can stay up all night battling crooks, sleep a good 10 hours, and still have a solid half day’s work as Bruce Wayne before grabbing one more quick nap at dusk.
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Well, He won´t give any money because He is broken.
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A big part of the Batman thing is he does invest in social services, give lots to charity, and spend for economic development in Gotham. That his family have been doing that for generations.
And that it doesn’t work. Because of all the rampant corruption. Many of your better runs highlight this by having the Wayne end and the Batman end be in a bit of a feedback loop. When Bruce Wayne’s efforts dead end, he uses Batman to clear the way. And if Batman can’t solve something because of a larger societal factor. Bruce Wayne buys out the bad guys.
We don’t get as much of it post Miller, but it’s still a regular feature if not a focus. Even the Nolan Batmen did some stuff on this front. The comics even borrowed Lex Luthor at one point cause who’s a bigger evil business douche to a have a business show down with.
To say nothing of the fact that from the real world we know charity and philanthropy are less effective than government spending and a social safety net.
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There is a third worldview:
3. People are adaptable. We see and imitate people around us. If you grow up in a community where people trust and help each other you are more likely to turn out good than if you grow up watchin people try to take advantage of each other.
Social trust may be the most valuable commodity in a society, and it is a lot easier to tear down than to rebuild. This is a problem both for capitalist and socialist societies.
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Exactly, that’s why the best form of government is a Benevolent Dictatorship. As long as we keep power concentrated in a Good Guy 
, then there is nothing to fear.
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The real, meta solution is to have a different person write the stories and change the milieu completely.
In the same way that the writer of the trolley problem invented the trolley and the dilemma and is thus morally responsible for the hypothetical people dying, the people writing Batman perpetuate the an environment intentionally crafted to produce psychopaths and vigilantes.
To put it another way, if there is a god, then that god is responsible.
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I always read Batman as “he’s also a deeply broken person, along with the supervillians - all symptoms of the same deep pervasive societal problems”. Thus the hate/love story between the Joker and Batman.
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Given that Prometheus was sentenced to eternal horrific punishment by the billionaire class Gods for the crime of literally distributing power and making life better for the common person, there’s a lot to think about just in that sentence.
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I’d argue that it’s taxes, but…
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Whether diegetically or IRL, this is a false dichotomy anyway.
Asking if Bruce Wayne should be a vigilante with his fists or his wallet is just a way of saying that society needs powerful individuals to fix its problems. And that’s the opposite of true. Crime, corruption, violence, oppression, poverty: these are all caused by individual power, and cured by power being shared widely.
Gotham will suck so long as it’s a place where Bruce Wayne can hoard hereditary wealth and beat up whoever he wants, because so can anyone else. And that’s true even in the absurd fantasy world where it’s possible to be a “good” billionaire.
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Batman is the worst vigilante ever: every time he has a chance at permanently stopping a criminal, he caves (see what I did there?). But seriously, the same rotating cast of bad guys keeps turning up, and Batman never seems to have the will to dispatch them once and for all.
If the actual problem is the ineffective revolving-door criminal justice system, then doesn’t Batman have a moral obligation to take complete and final justice into his own hands?
Cocaine.
Nature’s way of saying “you don’t need sleep” and “you have too much money”
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In the DC universe, as in our universe, murdering people still makes you a bad guy.
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Sadly the benevolent dictator will end up being corrupted by power or transfer power to a son or daughter who will wield power in a less benevolent way.
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One of the main ideas in Batman is that he has the will not to. It’s an important part of how they establish him as the good guy, despite being an unsupervised adult man karate-chopping poor people in a Halloween costume.
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Thank you. Everyone dives into this argument back-and-forth without even considering that, textually, they kick it around quite a bit. At one point he literally hires away a stack of goons because he realizes that the Black Masks’s footsoldiers could be better employed gainfully.
The one-two punch of his charity and his vigilanteism is significant, especially in the comics. Bruce Wayne and Batman are both exhausted their respective fronts. He also has spent a lot of personal time-and-energy in trying to actively rehabilitate many of his foes.
I’m not saying there aren’t significant flaws in the treatment, but they definitely go a long way to discuss how, even if he’s rich, he can’t just buy a just outcome.
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Reminds me of China Mieville’s somewhat-Marxist pitch for Iron Man, ‘Scrap Iron Man’ (it’s only a short read) where a bunch of laid off workers band together to take down the real villain of the Marvel universe:
the sociopathic authoritarian fascist arms-dealing corporate billionaire responsible for so many countless deaths, in the US and around the world: Tony fucking Stark.
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China Mieville is only being somewhat-Marxist? I’m sure he’ll be disappointed to hear that.
I’m also wondering if the idea was “rejected”, then passed on to the script writers for Spiderman: Far From Home.
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