this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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Let me get this straight; this guy was born into the richest family in Gotham. He has enough wealth that he can singlehandedly fund infrastructure changes, public healthcare, mental health resources, social services and rehabilitation. Instead, he uses his money to dress up like a bat so he can beat the shit out of people - and he's supposed to be the hero??
This is one of the worst commonly-parroted takes in all of comics and it always gets upvoted...by people who have never read a Batman comic.
He literally does all of the things...Rehabilitation is a major theme in Batman. Hell, it might be the MAIN theme lol
This is a 100% fair criticism of my comment tbh. I do have a pretty surface level understanding of Batman, and I let my real life frustration with billionaires inform the points in my comment. I'll take it easier on Bruce Wayne but fuck all other billionaires.
Its also worth noting that multiple curses on Gotham have been revealed, making it so that no matter what things can't improve.
Also yeah, the reason batman doesn't just murder bad guys is because its about rehabilitation, not punishment.
Lots and lots of rehab if the games are canonical.
He's not dead, he's just sleeping.
It's about the appearance of rehab.
If it was actually about rehab, the Joker would have become a hero himself.
The real message is that rehab doesn't work, and the hero is too naive to realize it.
The joker has become a hero in the past. The joker also is the sole character whos defining characteristics basically is he's crazy not insane
There's nothing to fix, he's just like that.
And then, recidivism. He goes right back to being the bad guy.
The message is that you can't ever trust the offender. Even though it seems like they've gotten their life together, they are a minute away from returning to evil. The message they are sending is that all "rehabilitation" is temporary at best.
Exactly. They are saying that rehabilitation can't possibly work; the bad guy can never change.
The lesson actually being taught is that the hero's naivete enables the villain's future harm. The villain should never be trusted again, because rehabilitation is an impossibility. Trust and compassion are the hero's true weaknesses.
Batman is not about rehabilitation.
There are plenty of stories available of former bad guys getting their lives together and becoming heroes themselves. Those are stories of rehabilitation. Batman is not.
It's an easy thing to assume is true because there is no such thing as a moral billionaire in real life which is why I always call it out.
That said, Bruce Wayne is a conflicted individual. He carries opposing beliefs and his actions regularly betray his cause. But I think that's kind of the point. He's deeply flawed and still haunted by childhood trauma which he hasn't healed from
What comic run would you recommend that best illustrates this? My comment was more of a joke about ethical billionaires and capital worship, but I am genuinely interested in this angle if you have suggestions.
The Wayne Family Adventures on Webtoon touches on the Trauma of the entire Bat-Family at various points. Though it's usually light-hearted and funny, it hits harder than you'd expect here and there.
There's a couple seasons worth of comics you can binge for free to see if you like it. I may be a little biased, because I've always liked Jason Todd and his trauma gets touched on a few times.
I don't think there is a series that focuses on philanthropy, like I was saying it's just kind of peppered in there because it's boring content for a comic lol
This is probably a bad example - Frank Miller has a series where he tries stopping gun violence through outreach and policy. Not really mental health or poverty but that's where that panel of Batman breaking a gun in half comes from.
You might prefer Absolute Batman. He lives lower middle class, works blue collar jobs, and still has his mom.
And drives the coolest batmobile truck/thing. Don't forget the coolest batmobile truck/thing.
It's been shown to be so close to working that it probably would have if the Heel Face Revolving Door wasn't necessary to sell comics
But because it's comics and they need to keep selling them it's not like things are allowed to truly get better. If it ever does the universe is rebooted and they start over.
Yeah. And his philanthropy isn't the focus because people are there for the action. It's a comic book, after all
Yep. Batman is a fundamentally unworkable character right from the premise.
Note: He does fund infrastructure rebuilding, public healthcare, mental health resources, social services, rehabilitation, etc.
Problem is that he also causes a significant amount of those problems himself. Going out in the middle of the night and giving a TBI to a low level thug isn't the way of bringing the city back from the brink.
That being said, depending on the version of Batman it also depends on Gotham itself. The city is literally cursed and goes through shit constantly partially due to that. Gotham is just a home to evil.
All in all? This is why I like Batman Beyond more or the Flashpoint Paradox version of Bats.
Honestly if the city is literally cursed, then the best use of resources is a) curse breakers or b) relocation program to somewhere not cursed. And then quarantining the city so no one can get in anymore.
Build a new city two blocks over.
Ah yes, the sim city way. Shit, I created bhopal v2. Uhhh, let's just zone these guys a few blocks to the left!
There’s a flying alien with every power imaginable living nearby, you’d think Bruce would tell Clark to go fix that curse shit since it’s too big for him to punch
There are also literal magicians a phone call away from him, like Zatanna and Doc Fate, who should know a thing or two about curses and lifting them
Suggesting that Gotham is fucked beyond their pay grade.
Costumed villainy might be the best of all possible worlds. Consider how many of them have doctorates!
It's the same guy that watched his parents die with a gun in front of his eyes and yet his biggest fear is bats.
Ohh, he has way more fears than that!
https://youtu.be/on4aD02llas
How are funding all that stop Penguin and Joker from literally destroy it, and then Scarecrow poison everyone just for fun? It's like letting billionaire run wild while we actively trying to solve climate change
May be in the fictional universe of Batman he attempts to be morally good, but I believe that there is no morally good billionaire regardless of the circumstances, so it seems to me an attempt to justify them in some particular cases, yet I think that it cannot hold that such concentration of power and resources can be morally good in a whole society ethos, the good tyrant only rises by unplanned luck and resolves immediately in wise redistribution, it cannot sustain in time.
Meh, if I had a billion or two, I'd keep at least one billion, just to be safer from the other billionaires. That way, I have war money I guess.
I'd spend most of my money just on medical checkups, therapists, coaches, I would pay a maid, get into some elite fitness program, go to an university, and whatever time is left, I'd go around helping directly. I'd strategically target entire areas to try and convince people to go solar, permaculture, etc. I don't see anything better to do with my life.
I would probably actually try an experiment with building a city out in the sea, the thing Peter Thiel claims he wants, but actually do it, in order to do a social experiment to see what happens when people have something like UBI, free healthcare, education, etc. They idea would be that hopefully, investing in people in this way would pay itself back.
I still find a better ethos for everybody to redistribute all, you and the other billionares you want to be safe of (and that the rest of us would not while you would be). Try out experiments out of curiosity not only can even damage collaterally others, it may even be flawed by design and serve no real purpose, or at least not efficiently... regardless of your good faith, control all the details of a huge amount of resources by one person is impossible, and if delegate in usage, chances of bad actors and oportunists be attracted to will still create havoc at a big scale... and if you just block those resources and not use them fear of lack of control, then is a terrible waste to begin with... I still stick to redistribution
I would initially do the experimental city as an Eve Online styled MMO - but with multiple servers, each with a specific type of government and economic rule. After a couple years of letting each server's population fill up and learn their niche, create a 'hub' server, where players of the OG servers can start with a territory and compete. Doing it this way, it would make it easier to remove outside factors like geography, pre-existing wealth, unfamiliarity with UBI, and so forth.
The way I figure, it would be easier to track success and population metrics with a wholly artificial reality, then use the insights from that to inform how to structure a realworld UBI Island.
Yeah bbbbbuut he's got a code.