By Zach Foster
There have been a few articles and
snippets on the Mises Blog about Batman, but most are about the Batman
Chronicles issue where German Batman saves Ludwig von Mises's library — this
just goes to show that I'm not the only student of Austrian economics who's a
recovering comic-book nerd — though there is a short and sweet review of Batman
Begins by Joe Salerno and a well-thought, in-depth analysis of The Dark Knight
by Jeffrey Tucker. Let this article be the corresponding piece to The Dark
Knight Rises.
One of the remarkable things about this
Batman series is the way Hollywood — a bastion of tired, often-rehashed,
leftist propaganda — has unwittingly allowed an obscenely wealthy capitalist
who lives a decadent bourgeois lifestyle (when not fighting crime) to be the hero!
It was noted somewhere that Murray Rothbard was a fan of the James Bond films
partly because Bond was unrepentantly bourgeois and knew how to live it up in
style. I think Rothbard — who has forgotten more about Austro-libertarianism
than I could ever hope to learn in my lifetime — would have liked Christian
Bale's portrayal of Bruce Wayne, neither afraid to make large investments nor
afraid to be seen driving the ladies around in his European sports cars.
Another thing about Bruce Wayne/Batman
is that he's a shining example of what can be accomplished by the private
sector. None of Wayne's state-of-the-art technology is sponsored by government
grants, though there would be little doubt Wayne Enterprises sells to the
government. Nonetheless, Wayne's research is fueled by his own profits, not
government grants or subsidies, and with the help of his top man, Lucius Fox,
he develops the technology that enables him to be an effective one-man army and
fight organized crime that borders on terrorism, while responsibly avoiding the
corruption of the military-industrial complex.
Jeffrey Tucker was correct to note that
the mob's extensive operations and violence (as well as law enforcement often
turning a blind eye) are fueled by prohibition — that is, government
intervention — much the way Prohibition fueled the gang wars and the rise of
organized crime in the 1920s. The utopian idea held by leftists and
neoconservatives alike…
Source: Mises.org
