On Destroying Gotham (Detroit) With Economic Entrapment
Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins is a terrific film that has unfortunately lost a bit of luster over the years in favor of its superior sequel, The Dark Knight. I am usually attuned to arguments in favor of the first film in a franchise that kickoff the series that we ultimately love. Take Star Wars. The internet’s favorite Star Wars movie is Empire Strikes Back. Empire is a great movie with some really bombastic action sequences, fun character interactions, and expanded world building that really fleshes out the Star Wars mythos. But sequels have to be much better in my mind to overcome the laurels they rest on from the film that established a sequels chance to exist. Star Wars (1977) has always been my favorite of the franchise. It premiered just about every single good thing in the franchise. Yes, its world building was limited, but by Rise of Skywalker’s release I think we can admit the beauty in less; allowing viewers a mystery of the universe.
The Matrix, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Fellowship of the Rings, Iron Man, Jurassic Park, Jaws, Die Hard are all in my mind easy choices for representing a dramatic improvement over their successors. Batman Begins is not quite as good as The Dark Knight, but that is only a testament to how great The Dark Knight is. For instance, Dark Knight’s villain is heralded as the greatest supervillain performance of all time by Heath Ledger. Batman Begins’ Liam Neeson is also pretty great, maybe a bit too reserved, but his character is just not written up to the sort of involvement in both the plot, theme, and soul of his film as Ledger was in his. Neeson’s Ra’s al Ghul is fairly standard bad guy fair with an interesting strategy of accomplishing his ultimate mission of destroying Gotham City:
Ra's al Ghul : Tomorrow the world will watch in horror as its greatest city destroys itself. The movement back to harmony will be unstoppable this time.
Bruce Wayne : You attacked Gotham before?
Ra's al Ghul : Of course. Over the ages, our weapons have grown more sophisticated. With Gotham, we tried a new one: Economics. But we underestimated certain of Gotham's citizens... such as your parents. Gunned down by one of the very people they were trying to help. Create enough hunger and everyone becomes a criminal. Their deaths galvanized the city into saving itself... and Gotham has limped on ever since. We are back to finish the job. And this time no misguided idealists will get in the way. Like your father, you lack the courage to do all that is necessary. If someone stands in the way of true justice... you simply walk up behind them and stab them in the heart. Imply their sacrifice galvanized the citizens into saving themselves, by being gunned down by the people they try and help.
Economic warfare is a real thing, obviously. For Americans, we should all be aware of our country’s placing of economic sanctions on other countries. These sanctions can cause economic ruin in the form of rising poverty and have left in their path regime changes, violence, and starvation. Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran have long been sanctioned by the United States and will be for the foreseeable future. On top of the destruction, they do not often seem to even work. If we understand the purpose of economic sanctions to encourage regime changes favorable to U.S. or global interests, they have failed miserably more often than not regardless of the price paid by the sanctioned country with a successful regime change occuring only 12.5% of the time.
How could The League of Shadows have the ability to place sanctions measurable in any way on Gotham’s economy? We understand economic warfare to be the exclusive domain of states. Perhaps, they could have relationships with various countries that could place embargoes with complete prohibition of trade with the United States, but doubtfully just Gotham City. The organization is thousands of years old, so some healthy investments should have been profitable enough for them to own some significant businesses that could cause damage by refusing sales to Gotham (rate of return on capital has averaged about 4-5%/year through most of history, with lower fluctuations only seen after WW1.). Seems difficult to affect just Gotham, with the United States not moving to retribution in some form but let’s try it…
In Batman Begins, it is explicitly mentioned that Thomas Wayne nearly bankrupted Wayne Enterprises to try and build a monorail that would unite the city with cheap public transportation. The idea did not seem to be enough to fix poverty and crime within Gotham because some while later it was stated that, not the monorail, but the death of Batman’s parents that galvanized Gotham to save itself. We will have to save the, laughable in 2021, idea of a business man “galvanizing” a cities resurrection through death for another date, but why was a monorail the choice for a rich savior to solve Gotham’s poverty crises? To give Thomas Wayne a bit of benefit of the doubt, could he have been onto a spectacular solution? Is it possible limiting Gotham’s public transportation was their means of destroying Gotham with “economics?”
It might have been their plan? But the ultimate problem here is how could The League of Shadows execute their plan both covertly and in a manner that was targeted to an individual city? If wealthy enough, The League could have bought key kinks in the locomotive builder supply chain and simply refused to sell to Gotham, but this would not last very long until a government intervention. There really is no way to get around the inability to targeting an individual city economically with sanctions in a covert manner. So, we have to look beyond sanctions for a possible answer here, and I will admit we are so far in we need to get to that answer fast because it should appear to rational readers that there is no real economic means to affect an individual US city in a drastic manner covertly. But what if their plan was done in a manner that, instead of a hidden in secrecy, was announced regularly as a means of free market competition?
We do not have to look far for an example of industry crippling an entire city with policy decisions. Take Detroit. Post-World War Two Detroit was a powerhouse of economic activity, thanks in part to the boom of industry built in Detroit shifting from manufacturing of planes and US Army Jeeps in favor of cars and civilian Jeeps. The city grew from 285,000 in 1900 to nearly 2 million by 1950 and now currently sits at around 670,000. By the 1950s, the US automobile industry was controlled by General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler due to their company’s abilities to manufacture better and cheaper cars thus putting their competitors out of business. During this time period the big three car companies looked to decentralize their workforce from Detroit into the suburbs and abroad into Canada and Mexico to avoid paying comparatively high union salaries.
When a plant closed down it took with it numerous small businesses that catered to its workers. The most heavily populated sections of the city were those with a large automotive plant near-by, and were subsequently the neighborhoods that suffered the most closed stores and abandoned homes. Take the Packard Automotive Plant, opened in 1903 and later with a peak workforce of 40,000 individuals in the 1940s. Then closed by 1958. After its closing, many businesses in the area closed down, but some changed to less reputable practices such as Pay-Day Loans and Pawn Shops. In the 1990s it was used for raves and techno parties; both are great, but don’t provide a similar workforce. The loss of jobs, population, and businesses caused a sharp decline in tax revenues from income, property, and corporate taxes.
The city of Detroit still suffers from this entrapment of the auto industry – there would be no Detroit as we know it without their manufacturing settlement in the early 1900s or without their subsequent withdrawal from the city. Detroit still has more poverty than any other large U.S. city and is usually within the top two U.S. cities performance annually in murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Finances are still dire, as the city became the largest U.S. city to declare bankruptcy in 2013.
So I think after 60 years of the first major plant closing in Detroit we can safely say there was little positive economic or social effects from manufacturing flight out of the city. Unless, of course [EVERVESCENT GOD RAYS APPEAR FROM THE HEAVENS] we can take some positive signs of life to recent developments within the 2010s for Detroit. We have limited data, but there have been some encouraging signs to Detroit’s economic progress. While they have dropped from the 18th largest city in 2010 to the 24thin 2020, the bleeding seems to be slowing. From 2000 to 2010 Detroit’s population decreased by over 25%; from 2010 to 2020 population decreased by “merely” 5.8%. A decline might not be great, but definitely preferable to the larger reductions in population exhibited in earlier decades – and more in line with many other U.S. cities exhibiting decline or little growth in recent years.
Now, even if this was The League of Shadows grand plan – to starve Gotham of jobs causing an influx of greater poverty, leading to more crime and ultimately a city that dies from population decline, it probably should be looked at as a failing idea. A better lever for future ninja organizations to manipulate may actually be contributing to the welfare of a crime plagued city(!). We understand the effects of poverty to be strongly positively correlated to criminal activity and we even now have some data of universal basic income (UBI) payments effects on criminal activity. For the sake of variety, next time try the method that gives workers money rather than takes. For Detroit, we had some small social safety nets in place such as unemployment, but it obviously was not enough. Detroit’s decline represents a strong argument in favor of something like a job guarantee – which acts as an automatic lever of federal spending where anyone who wants a job can get one at a “replaceable wage”.
Upcoming: Flight of business from heavily unionized areas with strong sectoral bargaining agreements should be a legitimate fear for the left going forward, and we will examine strategies to combat this.
