Asymmetrical Information

Demolish Clean Air Act-grandfathered coal-burning power plants in the Ohio Valley, forcing the owners to rebuild according to the standards of the last few decades. Sharply reduces externalities affecting the health and economy of the northeast while improving energy efficiency and temporarily shifting wealth from resiliant sectors of the economy (reinsurance firms) to the struggling Midwest as they rebuild.

I'm assuming that insurance would pay on this kind of damage.

This might almost make an interesting movie.

Read Philip Wylie's _Gladiator_, realize it's a mess too big for one being, and kill himself.

Design and perfect a frictionless motor (perpetual motion machine).

Since Superman is basically just muscle, I think the best use of his time would be to force Lex Luthor to try to fix economic problems with his brains. Maybe he could rope in Braniac while he was at it.

The obvious thing is oil exploration. He could easily see where there were unexploited oil deposits. Not to mention how large the Saudi reserves were (and whether the Iranians actually had a nuclear weapons development program but that's not macroeconomics).

Good point about “Gladiator”. Contra Tyler Cowen Supe's really greatest power is positive mental attitude.

Apparently one of the problems inherent in mass use of ethanol-based fuels is that they're highly corrosive, requiring either replacement of the current pipeline distribution network or shipment via special trucks. Superman is not only super-strong, he's also super-fast (nearly the equal of the Flash, who has been able to run around the world in the space of 2 or 3 seconds). So Superman should be able to carry large containers of ethanol point to point in a fraction of the time it would take to ship them by tanker truck. Notice I'm not doing actual math to support this, but if he can carry an oil tanker or the equivalent of a jumbo jet, both of which we've seen him do, and travel the length and breadth of the US in, say, 30 seconds roundtrip, then all you need is distribution points in counties nationwide for him to go to and he should be able to nearly guarantee independence from fossil fuels for at least our major metropolitan areas. All this will be achieved at a laughable exchange in energy consumed in transport (unlike the vast resources that must be expended now to ship gas nationwide) as we've never seen Clark Kent have anything more than regular human meals, no matter his exertions as Superman.

How could we forget Superman's hurricane-crushing prowess from Superman III? Imagine the impact on Florida real estate alone if he spent six months every year in Grand Cayman with a television tuned to the Weather Channel.

I think that the focus is being put on the wrong area. Superman could probably do the most good in terms of improving the overall macro economy not by the use of his powers but by gradually releasing some of his advanced Kryptonian technology. A few years ago (before Lex Luthor became president), Brainiac (or some version of it) was retconned as being Kryptonian rather than Coluulian and it struck a deal with Luthor to revitalize Metropolis by sharing his advanced technology. Think of the economic benefits of even faster computers, abundant sources of clean and practical energy, advanced medicine that not only cures maladies but improves the quality of life, etc.

Simply ridding the world of madmen dictators would allow us to dispense with a large whomping segment of the US budget, so his normal mode of operation would have a distinct macroeconomic benefit.

Then he uses his X-ray vision and super hearing to find who is bribing whom in Congress, and publishes the results. Another fourth of the federal budget tumbles into the dustbin of history, unless the breadth of corruption does not give pause to the US electorate.

Someone beat me to the punch on the oil issue, but there are other resources that he can prospect for us as well.

Obey the law and offer his services on the open market.

Eliminate the current tax code. If possible, replace it with the Jane Galt Tax Plan (TM).

If you really want to help the economy, have Superman spin the Earth in the opposite direction (like Christopher Reeve did in the original movie in 1978: Superman, The Motion Picture) and bring us all back to early morning, September 11th, 2001. Have Superman intercept each of the 4 hijacked airliners just seconds before they are about to hit the Pentagon and the WTC (that way, we all still know what we are dealing with in so far as the danger of Islamic Fundementalism) and just let things go for a while. 2001 & 2002 will have a GDP figure over a trillion follars more than what we had those years. The Dot-Bomb job crash would have a very soft landing, the 2002 Recession will be weeks long (not months or years) and we will never know just how bad things could have been.

Well, for one thing Superman should sit Tyler down and conduct a super-speed, comprehensive lecture on pop culture. That way he'd know that Clark Kent's journalistic profession is mild-mannered reporter, not photographer. Superman's pal Jimmy Olsen is a photographer, and probably would not appreciate Clark muscling in on his territory.

As for what else, Superman can fly at incredible speeds in outer space, is invulnerable, and has very strong lungs. Send him to Jupiter with a biiiggg balloon and have him jumpstart the hydrogen economy. :-) Or the Sun, but the balloon would have to be heatproof.

How do you refresh this "comments" page, without a refresh button? I don't want to have to keep adding comments to see anything after I have posted.

Paul: F5 key.

Design and perfect a frictionless motor (perpetual motion machine).

This is only Superman we're talking about here, not John Galt!

and how many African kleptocrats can afford kryptonite?

If they pooled their resources ... blammo.

In the great graphic novel "Watchmen," a similar question is addressed, though the superhero Dr. Manhattan is probably more powerful than Superman. Although Superman does not have Dr. Manhattan's ability to synthesize lithium at will (thus enabling cheap electrical batteries and cars and a light metal economy), he could act as the ultimate deterrent against opposing nations, just as Dr. Manhattan does in Watchmen.

Given his essentially invulnerable nature, Superman could act as a single world policeman for major crimes, eliminating the need for nuclear weapsons and preventing genocide and abusive dictatorships everywhere. Unfortunately, this sounds like the plot from the excreable movie "Superman: The Quest for Peace," which is almost enough to make me think this is a bad idea.

Just taking a peek at 3 responses

If Superman is going to provide transport services, he should replace those that are most expensive: ie not oceanic shipping (probably the most cost-effective mode we've got).

I suggest he obviate the need for a Space Elevator: rapid, inexpensive hauling of containers from ground to space and back. This would drastically reduce the cost of reaching space, making many more activities there economically feasible and opening up the solar system for true exploration. (Plus, orbiting solar panels for cheap terrestrial power!)

Other than that, stop genocide. It's one of those problems that seems to become more intractible the more players are involved -- but if it's just him, he could wrap up Darfur in a few weeks.

recently released info, peer-reviewed, of course, derived from further study of "The Dead Sea Scrolls", has conclusively proven: Superman is a Misean Economist with a specific Jeffersonian political bent.

With that, and seeing the popularity of "Celebs" among the American people. (see : Ahnold(R-CA))

I suggest Supe be trotted out to run for the top spot.

P.S. The "born on Krypton" thing was made up by his parents to qualify for a , then, extra 50% tax credit...

Enough with Superman. What is the best the Enterprise 1701-D could do to improve the performance of the macroeconomy?

How about the Death Star? What if they were both orbiting Earth at the same time?

I'm sorry, this whole topic reminds me of an episode of Schoolhouse Rock when I was a child which suggested that if we could get a superhero to turn a giant turbine we could have abundent clean energy. I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned.

If we have the Enterprise, we can replicate whatever we want. But if we have the Enterprise from Next Gen, then everyone spends all their time on the holodeck and there is no further progress in any human endeavor. Why would anyone do anything *other* than live in the holodeck? I wouldn't.

I'm sorry, did I miss something here? Is the economy in trouble?

I was quite convinced by overwhelming evidence that the economy has been chugging along just fine, thank you. Even recent talk of a "slowdown" is not even remotely like a possible recession -- just a little less energetic chugging.

What exactly needs to be saved?

I would have a very simply job for superman, simply be sit in on every budget meeting that congress has and anytime they approve a budget that will reasonably create a deficit.

Bar the door and require cuts until such deficit is removed.

You people have no imagination. Superman could:

1) fly millions of tons of nuclear waste into the sun or deep space, allowing increased use of nuclear power and access to cheap electricity for the whole world

2) fly toxic wastes into space, allowing the use of previously-too messy, or costly industrial processes and lowering the cost of manufactured goods around the world

3) plant trees in deforested areas around the world

4) clean-up toxic waste dumps and mine sites around the world

5) desalinize ocean water to create fresh water

6) build mountain ranges to create microclimates suitable for farming in previously-inhospitable places

7) hook himself to a big gerbil-wheel looking generator and produce free electricity

... and that's just off the top of my head.

1. Fly counter-orbitally around the Federal Reserve, thus reversing the flood of liquidity during the past 5 years & eliminating inflation in seconds.

2. Challenge him to "jump the debt in a single bound." Of course it's way too high for even Superman to do so. But, seeing such gross damage to his ego, he'll figure out some way to chop it down to size.

3. Use his X-ray vision to peek into the super-secret files and find out the REAL unemployment figures.

What will we do with this info, other than panic? I have no idea, but bear with me as I beat this gag to death.

4. Impeach and Convict our Profligate President. No one else seems to possess the strength to take this obvious step, so let Superman at it!

And . . .

5. Fly into Afghanistan, find Osama bin Laden, and string him up by the balls.

I know that has nothing to do with the economy, but no one's gonna argue, will they?

You guys aren't taking it seriously. The first problem is to identify the limiting factors in the current economy. Does anyone claim to know what they are? Oops! Wrong question. Let's say, does anyone have a reasonably sane assessment concerning the resources available to national (or global) production with the worst long-term inelasticity. Are we talking oil, land, energy, educated labor, specific skill classes? And what could Superman do about that factor?

The first problem is to identify the limiting factors in the current economy. Does anyone claim to know what they are? Oops! Wrong question.

No that is the right question.

The most prevelent limiting factor in our current economy is that we live in a huge country with lots of open space (from your house to your office and workstation) and very little public transportation. We live in suburbs, maybe not always because we want to, but because we haev to! We can not afford to live in the cities that we work. Mortages/rents are too high in the UpTown areas, we all don't make Katie Couric money. We can only commute in, and work there, not live there. There is no "walking to work" or "taking a bike" as much of the Euros recommend that we do.

So, we are stuck driving (and for some in Massachusetts/California/Virgina (D.C.)/New York City where real-estate prices near the city is out of sight) sometimes, 50 miles or more. Each way. And good fuel economy with our current technology is 30 mpg. That is at minimum, 15 gallons of gasoline a week @ $3.00+ a gallon.

That is a problem.

I don't know how Superman can solve that problem.

I'm not sure, but if you call superman a Super Homo one more time we're gonna be trading more than words...

quite amazing stuff...

Study: Yoga Helps Breast Cancer Patients Reduce Treatment Side Effects

If I were the Superhomoeconomicus, the first thing I would do is to create my competitors.

What if Superman turns out to be a libertarian who prefers to be left alone? Worse, what if he decides to use his superpowers to stack the vote for Badnarik in '08?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0756755743/sr=8-4/qid=1149767203/ref=sr_1_4/104-8823399-8335925?%5Fencoding=UTF8

Clark Kent is a Reporter for the Daily Planet. He is not a photographer.

The amazon link is to a story I read at Border's one afternoon. The story shows problems a world would have with a "Superman". (It is beautifully painted and an "okay" story.)

Paul:

The solution to the long commute was already suggested earlier: Destroy the zoning boards. The long commutes are caused by the chronic clustering of commercial and industrial space. Let factories and offices be set up anywhere (and permit tort law to deal with pollution and nuisances); the law of supply and demand will take care of the rest.

If we are going to think of Superman as an asset, we better also be thinking about depreciation. Just how long will he live, anyways? He has obviously progressed from Superboy to Superman, so that implies that he is aging. So any improvements to the economy better be in capital goods of some sort, or at least some type of self-sustaining procedural system that won't disappear after Superman's death.

And I certainly don't understand the suggestion to fly "millions of tons" of nuclear waste to the sun. There are no "millions" of tons in existence; perhaps there are thousands of tons. Nuclear waste really doesn't take up much space; parts of it are just radioactive for a long time.

M. Scott Eiland: Tyler Cowen was probably thinking of Peter Parker (Spiderman) rather than of such a non-heroic character as Jimmy. But yes, if you can't avoid mixing up your pop-culture icons, you ought to avoid talking about them.

The solution to the long commute was already suggested earlier: Destroy the zoning boards. The long commutes are caused by the chronic clustering of commercial and industrial space. Let factories and offices be set up anywhere (and permit tort law to deal with pollution and nuisances); the law of supply and demand will take care of the rest.

Hmmm. No. No I don't think that will help in the least.

Offices and financial institutions (who know where all the good paying jobs are) need to set themselves up near other offices and financial institutions. That is part of the cost of doing business. You need to be in the heart of where everyone else is doing business, because your business may depend on their business. And even if you change a zoning law somewhere that allows you set up shop close to the suburbs (or right next door to someone's split-level ranch) you might be out of business faster than you opened. Because getting clients out to your unprofessional office, or commuting in to where all the other offices are is going to kill your business. You wont have a business, unless you can get by with just one client (which is what happens typically for people who work at home.)

Location. Location. Location. It is everyting. And yes, the Free Market will take care of everything because everyone who changes zoning laws in an attempt to defeat long commutes from home to the job, are going to wind up seeing the free market put them right out of business.

1. Order a truckload of coal.

2. Take each lump in his hands and squeeze hard.

3. Auction off the diamonds, thereby destroying DeBeers monopoly and incidentally raising quite a lot of cash.

4. Bribe all the UN beaurocrats to resign and just go away. Bribe Congressional aides to turn their bosses in. Buy the New York Times and CBS and establish a policy of accurate and unbiased reporting or be fired.

Or solve the main illegal immigration problem by industrializing Mexico so they can stay home and get good jobs. (Superman Industries will succeed where others have failed because very bad things happen to local officials who try to solicit bribes or unreasonably obstruct business...) This keeps Lex Luthor so busy inventing and marketing robot gardeners, maids, nannies, and agricultural workers in the USA that he doesn't have time for grandiose illegal schemes.

Or use the money to have solar power satellites built. Superman will have to deliver them to the final location himself...

He can go back in time. Educate the people in year 2000BC to get to oil economy, we should all be living of' the fat o' the land ( or space-time grid) by now.

More seriously,

1. energy production.
2. Destroy Tin pot dictators
3. Election monitoring
4. Prevent Genocide
5. Enforce Property rights
6. Establish truth enforcement in news media (Fox I'm looking at you)

Since reading this this morning, I have thought a little more deeply about the "What if we had a Superman" idea.

Interestingly, this idea has been explored before and I had to do a little research to determine where I first experienced this idea (seriously).

I thought of Alan Moore's Miracleman (Marvelman in England). Miracleman was Britain's Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel is another version of Superman.

The story (in a couple paragraphs)...

Miracleman, who is wandering around and "has forgotten he has this power, suddenly discovers his power again (trust me, this is part of the story). Miracleman discovers his partner from the 1950's grew up and is very wealthy (you would be too if you had a "super" mind). Miracleman eventually fights his partner to death and destroys London during the battle. (Real power means real destruction and real death)

After this destruction, Miracleman rebuilds the world in his utopian image and becomes "god-like".

Neil Gaimen then takes over the series and has to deal with this "god" and the problems associated with having a "superman". Some live in denial (think of the amish). Some worship him and make pilgrimages to him asking for favors. Many fear him. How do you stop a "god"?

"Moore's last issue, number 16 ends with a controversial view on "What Superman should have done with his powers" - making the world a better place through totalitarian rule. Miracleman and his companions now rule the planet as they see fit, though they are ineffectively opposed by groups such as an alliance of Christian and Islamic fundamentalists. The 'age of miracles' is benevolent but in a final meeting between Miracleman and Liz, Moore indicates that Miracleman is incapable of understanding what humanity has lost when he imposes a utopia on the world." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracleman
(Holy cow! Did I just site wikipedia? ...And I am trying to deeply discuss "comic book heroes"? -sigh-)
Alan Moore is so weird and fun at the same time.

Terraforming Mars might be nice, especially if you throw in weekly shuttle runs afterwards.

Alternately, how about a micro-black-hole power generating station? The technology isn't so insanely advanced, if you can manage the inital problem of finding/creating a few-million-ton mini-black hole (but feasible for Superman, perhaps). Such a black hole would give off enormous amounts of Hawking radiation - effectively pure mass/energy conversion. There are some other, er, engineering problems, but given the actual black hole they aren't obviously insoluble even with current technology.

Paul,

Abolishing rent control would go a long way to solving the problem of long commutes. The commuters I knew weren't wedded to the idea of "suburbs" per se, but just couldn't afford to live in NYC. In the late 1980's, every 10 minutes further away from NYC dropped the price by $10K. (I'm sure it's more now.) Letting the free market provide thousands and thousands of new apartments/condos in NYC at a free-market price would bring in tons of people.

Obey the law and offer his services on the open market.

So far, the best suggestion of the lot. Most of the others seem like "nanny state-ism" with a cape.

Abollishing rent control might help a little in ways that I don't think any of us could measure, but not a significant amount that it would help with the cost of gasoline. No matter what your feeling of those people currently living in rent controlled apartments are, they are also (most likely) working somewhere in the city. Yeah, if you remove rent control, those people might have to move out and move to the suburbs to make way for someone else to move in (who can afford a higher priced rent), but that just means the ones that moved out are now commuting to the city and paying for gas instead of the ones who are now paying higher rent prices for the same apartments. The only ones who win (whether they should or not is another debate) is the landlords who own the apartment buildings.

No I don't see this helping at all either. I wish it did, but I think we are in quite a quandry here that even Superman couldn't fix.

Superman should use his super speed to patrol every Starbucks and trendy restaurant in Manhattan to discourage Jane Galt's friends from wasting their hard-earned cash on frivolous purchases like take-out espresso.

While he's doing this he can use his super hearing (and, presumably, his super loud talking) to carry on a conversation with Jane to find out why she thinks these rational transactions are "wrong." Should Jane have the power to deny other individuals the right to make contracts of their own free will?

Thumbs-up for the Mars idea. Creating a back-up in case we flub things here seems like a very good plan.

Chess,

You're checkered in your rip-out on the Amish, they are hardly in "denial". They are quite in step with reality, that they choose differently than you, is a problem for neither.

That you choose to deride their choice is probably emblematic of the turmoil you experience in justifying your own.

Superman could provide a fairly effective in an anti-nuke capacity... as long as they're not in lead suitcases. And once Superman is on the scene, the Nuclear Club would be less important than the Kryptonite Club.

Paul,

Yeah, if you remove rent control... The only ones who win (whether they should or not is another debate) is the landlords who own the apartment buildings.

This leaves out the possibility that rent control has strongly discouraged the construction of new housing. If landlords can charge market rents, more housing will be built. Supply and demand run their course.

Am I the only one who thought that, given the title and the timing, this post was going to be about a flamboyantly gay economist?

Obey the law and offer his services on the open market.

I fear he'll end up on K Street.

Superman's time would best be spent in a one-time project that itself would have a limited lifetime but would provide a long-term benefit to humanity. I propose he build a large sunscreen (optical density of only a few percent and most of that in the infra-red) out in space, using materials obtained from near-Earth asteroids. Position the sunscreen to shade the Earth, thereby reducing global warming long enough for the rest of us to do our part.

I propose he build a large sunscreen (optical density of only a few percent and most of that in the infra-red) out in space, using materials obtained from near-Earth asteroids. Position the sunscreen to shade the Earth, thereby reducing global warming long enough for the rest of us to do our part.

We still need an inexpensive way to get there. The damned things will need servicing.

A space elevator should do the trick. But if we're in the DC universe we can do better.

Space travel is a given; humanity is two generations away from having space drive (going by memory from long ago). Superman needs to purchase a space drive plus infrastructure to make the space drive and related industry.

No one (he went on taking this way too seriously) thinks about infrastructure. The existance of a 747 implies the technology to make the light bulbs in the overhead lights in the cabin. More it implies a culture that can make the technology to make the lightbulbs.

He gets Congress to follow the US Constitution, thereby eliminating all those unconstitutional alphabet soup agencies.

Weekly schedule for Superman:
Monday - nuclear waste deposited in sun
Tuesday - lifting of orbital components and personnel
Wednesday - lunar and belt stations resupplying
Thursday - waste disposal (sub-crust landfill and carbon sequesteration)
Friday - environmental missions as needed (glacier refreezing, reforestation, etc.)

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