Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

[Darth Wedgius]

Re-structuring Wayne Enterprises might be awkward. He probably uses shell companies so things like his anti-death-cow ray (remember, he prepares for everything) won't show up in a review of the R&D budget, but a clever accountant might be wonder why Wayne Enterprises owns a company with both expensive dairy and particle beam research budgets.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

This does happen in Dark Knight.. The nosey accountant, not the death-cow ray. What Bruce Wayne should have done was let him in on the action. And for that matter, let the whole company in on it.

[CharlesPhipps]

The problem with a more equitable Wayne Enterprises is that it isn't necessarily a more egalitarian organization as a company is fundamentally different from a kingdom.

After all, the issue of Gotham City is not the poverty of the employed but the poverty of the unemployed.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Well it's also the vengence schemes of the villains. Let's be clear, Victor Freeze, the Joker, Scarecrow, most of the crimes they commit don't come from a place of economic pressure.

[CharlesPhipps]

They're terrorists not thieves.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The problem with a more equitable Wayne Enterprises is that it isn't necessarily a more egalitarian organization as a company is fundamentally different from a kingdom.

After all, the issue of Gotham City is not the poverty of the employed but the poverty of the unemployed.

Actually that stems from a tangent that wasn't my original postulation. When I brought up the lens of Marxism it wasn't necessarily to suggest Bruce Wayne make it a socialized company, but the subsequent point brought up about the impracticality of socializing the was to assert that he couldn't reverse the pervasive welfare allocation that Marxism diagnoses. Though I did retort, my only point originally was that Wayne Enterprises being the biggest (I think) corporation in Gotham, along with what I've read about the Wayne family being of the first settlers in Gotham, makes him party to the most effective chasm of equity disparity as discussed by Marxism. In other words I didn't particularly find him culpable.

[Admiral X]

Given all the millions killed by Marxism, I, for one, don't much care what Marxism would have to say about the world of Batman.

[CmdrKing]

Ehh, blaming Marx for the actions of Mao and Stalin is a bit like blaming Princip for the holocaust. There’s certainly a logic there but it’s not a very USEFUL way of parsing the problem.
Beyond that class inequity is a useful lens for fiction (some stories more than others) in any event, whatever you want to call it.

[CharlesPhipps]

I tend to view Marxism as a well and truly refuted concept but still worthy as a baseline for beginning discussions.

[CmdrKing]

Marxism as originally formulated was a 19th century solution to an 18th century problem. 20th century neoliberalism has enough in common with early capitalism that some analysis holds, but most of its solutions are ill advised. Stateless societies don’t scale well, full-scale revolutions are a bad idea against a modern military, and history has proven that fascists like Hitler, Stalin, or Mao are more likely to harness the anger of the proletariat than those seeking equity.

But it’s a foundational and worth knowing despite that. Sorta like Freudian psychology.