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Iron Man Comic to Real World
- 1. dkozdras@usf.edu Website: stavros.coedu.usf.edu https://tinyurl.com/stavroscenterresources Presented by: Deborah Kozdras & Antoinette Criss From the Comic Book to the Real World: The Principal Agent Problem and Moral Hazards When Iron Man Flies Over Your Backyard.
- 2. From the Comic Book
- 3. To the Movie Reel
- 4. From Reel to Real
- 5. I wonder what it’s like to be a superhero? I wonder where I’d go if I could fly around downtown? Real World, Matchbox 20, 1996 • What would you do with superpowers? • What would society do if there were individuals with superpowers?
- 8. Choices: Comic vs Movie
- 9. Are Tony’s choices rational? Playboy lifestyle vs develop business skills
- 10. War Profiteering and Choices https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BPto2iPYM
- 11. War Profiteering and Choices
- 12. Hidden Agendas and Information Asymmetry • Like many superheroes, Stark hides identity of Ironman at first. • What are the possible consequences of hidden agendas and information asymmetry?
- 13. Conflict of Interest = Principal-Agent Problem Stark • Major turning point in Stark’s life • Weapons killing innocents • Providing alternative energy vs weapons Stane • Caretaker CEO • Shareholders’ interests • Controls when Stark goes on a tangent . . .
- 14. Tony’s a Danger to Us All: Moral Hazard https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FDDC_83Bv4
- 16. Who Owns This Suit? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DafoDiRvGLM
- 17. From the Reel World to the Real World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDcEu9fjAhk
- 19. Iron Man Suit Over Time: What was the Innovation https://www.wired.com/2013/05/iron-man-armor/ http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2013/05/the-complete-evolution-of-the-iron-man-suit/
- 22. Design Challenge
- 23. Argument Driven Inquiry: Building an Iron Man Suit 1.Identification of a Task 2.Generation and analysis of data 3.Production of tentative argument 4.Argumentation session 5.Investigation report 6.Double Blind Peer Review 7.Revision of Report 8.Explicit and Reflective Discussion
- 24. Superhero for President Activity Decision: Who is nominated for the best superhero?
Editor's Notes
- Though it is unlikely that we’ll have to deal with aliens, super-powered mutants, Norse deities or students bitten by radioactive spiders anytime soon, innovations like Iron Man’s suit are within the reach of today’s technology. For example, the army constructed a new type of wearable armor - Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) - that is based on the Iron Man suit. The serial entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has been compared to Tony Stark, is rumored to be creating a version of Iron Man’s suit (Blumenthal, 2009).
- Iron Man debuted in 1963 in Tales of Suspense #39, part of the pantheon of Marvel superheroes co-created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. As Genter (2009) and Fellman (2009) have noted, the character was the product of Cold War-era anxieties, and drew many of its themes, characters and scenarios from the global competition between the United States, the Soviet Union, China and the war in Vietnam. Like many Marvel comics from this era, Iron Man appealed to young adults and college students, not just the traditional comics audience of young children. Iron Man was an unusual archetype for a superhero. Tony Stark was a rich industrialist, who manufactured weapons for the military. In a biography, writer Stan Lee stated that he assumed his readership would initially hate the character: “You know what would be fun? Let’s create a character who wouldn’t have a chance to be a success right now and let’s find a way to make him popular” (Lee & Muir, 2002, p. 160).
- Like many Marvel characters, Iron Man’s origin includes a tragic element that adds a human dimension to the fantasy story. The carefree industrialist Tony Stark is injured and kidnapped while deploying some of his weaponry in a war zone (Vietnam in the comics; Afghanistan in the movie). The enemy, a local warlord, forces him to develop a super-weapon for his army, in collaboration with another scientist who is also held hostage. Stark’s heart was left vulnerable to a piece of shrapnel, embedded in his body during the attack. To prevent the shard from puncturing his heart, he and his colleague develop a magnetic field generator installed in his chest, which also powers a fearsome suit of armor that allows him to escape from his captors. The other scientist sacrifices himself to buy time to power up the suit. This noble gesture awakens a social conscience in Stark and sets him on his heroic path. However, from this point on, Stark is a slave to the technology that keeps him alive, and his secret prevents him from getting close to anyone else in his life. He is literally the rich playboy with a broken heart. The power of this story appealed not just to male superhero fans but to a new audience of women and girls.
- By way of example, I might decide that in the next hour to either read a comic book or watch a movie. I cannot do both simultaneously, so if I read a comic book I must sacrifice watching a movie – that’s my trade-off. My time and attention are scarce, so if I use them to do one thing, I must give up something else. That next best option that you do not choose is referred to as an opportunity cost. Thus, the total cost of my choice includes not only what I pay when I select my main activity, but also the value of what I forego by passing up on other opportunities.
- Despite Tony’s potential and talent, he decided to allocate his time to his playboy lifestyle, rather than using his engineering skills and developing the business skills necessary to operate Stark Industries. He focuses on maximizing his immediate pleasure, not future business success, and the costs turned out to be substantial. When his parents died in a car accident two years later, he was ill-equipped to take the reins of the company and had to rely on others. In some cases, that worked out; in others, there were unintended consequences.
- In the first Iron Man movie, when Stark returned home, a reporter called him the “Merchant of Death” and asked about his “war profiteering” business. However, Stark noted that his goods helped protect American soldiers and the citizens of the United States. As a serial inventor and entrepreneur, weapons weren’t Stark’s only product; his corporation produced medical technology and genetically engineered crops that saved millions of people from starvation. In addition, Stark explained, all these beneficial products were possible due to the profits made from military funding. When companies produce a number of products, they face trade-offs associated with that joint production – how should they devote their scarce resources to produce a variety of goods? Typically, the choices reflect the relative demand for each product – produce more of those with greater demand, which will result in greater revenue. There is also the issue of corporate responsibility – I may produce benign or socially beneficial products to offset the harm I do with my production of weapons. My choice to do this would be evaluated by weighing the costs and benefits, as with all rational decision-making. But what happens when the agent is seen as acting less than responsibly?
- In the first Iron Man movie, when Stark returned home, a reporter called him the “Merchant of Death” and asked about his “war profiteering” business. However, Stark noted that his goods helped protect American soldiers and the citizens of the United States. As a serial inventor and entrepreneur, weapons weren’t Stark’s only product; his corporation produced medical technology and genetically engineered crops that saved millions of people from starvation. In addition, Stark explained, all these beneficial products were possible due to the profits made from military funding. When companies produce a number of products, they face trade-offs associated with that joint production – how should they devote their scarce resources to produce a variety of goods? Typically, the choices reflect the relative demand for each product – produce more of those with greater demand, which will result in greater revenue. There is also the issue of corporate responsibility – I may produce benign or socially beneficial products to offset the harm I do with my production of weapons. My choice to do this would be evaluated by weighing the costs and benefits, as with all rational decision-making. But what happens when the agent is seen as acting less than responsibly?
- Stark decided to maintain his identity as Iron Man and use the technology benefits of his invention for public good, but, like any good superhero, he opted at first to do so in secret because of the dangers inherent in having his adversaries know who he really was. This gave rise to a situation known in economic theory as information asymmetry: one person knows something that the other party doesn’t. Like irrational behavior, information asymmetry goes against another assumption of classical economics, which is that all parties to a transaction have perfect information to inform their rational, utility maximizing choices. As we have seen, decisions are not always rational, and neither is information always perfect. When information is withheld deliberately, even for good cause, the result is often distorted because the actors misidentify one another’s motivations. Superhero stories provide a good format for illustrating the problems of information asymmetry because the superhero protagonist often conceals his or her real identity. A superhero can act out of personal altruistic motives, higher purpose, obsession, vengeance or dozens of other reasons. Because the public at large does not have important information about the hero’s true identity, they don’t know those motivations in advance and can’t make rational decisions about how to react to a super-powered actor in their midst, at least until the hero establishes a reputation. Likewise, because the people in Tony Stark’s life don’t know the full story of what happened during his kidnapping or his experiences as Iron Man, many of his actions as a businessman appear arbitrary and inexplicable according to the usual profit-maximizing calculus of capitalism, leading to consternation among his managers and investors. Unsurprisingly, one of the consequences of information asymmetry is low trust, which increases the costs of doing business.
- The conflict between Stark, acting out of secret motivations informed by his experiences as Iron Man, and Stane, ostensibly acting in the fiduciary interests of the company’s other shareholders but also having hidden personal motives, illustrates another concept that often arises from information asymmetry: the principal-agent problem. Principals are actors with a stake in the outcome of a situation, such as the shareholders of a company. Because they can’t be present to oversee every aspect of the operations of the company, they delegate that responsibility to agents: executives like Stane who are paid to make sure shareholder interests are being served. The problem occurs when the incentives for agents and principals are misaligned: that is, when the agent has interests that diverge from those of the principal, or the principals have objectives that they don’t share with agents. A lot of poor decisions in business, military operations, government and other complex multiparty transactions occur because of an information asymmetry between agents and principals. Both sides may be acting in good faith, but without full information, suboptimal outcomes often result.
- Another economic concept that plays a role in superhero stories generally, and Iron Man in particular, is moral hazard. Moral hazard arises from a situation where an actor is indemnified from the consequences of making a bad choice, but gets to collect the benefits of a good choice or investment. In short, individuals will alter their behavior regarding how much risk to take because they do not bear the cost if things go awry. As a rational, utility-maximizing capitalist, if there is no downside, then why not make a big bet? For example, the primary impetus for the financial crisis of the late 2000s, was the belief that some financial institutions were too big to fail. Because there were no true consequences for following unwise lending practices, the banks continued to engage in making loans to high risk individuals. Eventually the sustained lack of consequences encouraged a cascade of risky decisions that increased systemic instability. The result was a near collapse of the financial system as a whole, something far worse than the individual failures of poor investments if they had been allowed to go bad through the ordinary work of markets and regulators. In this case, the downside risk of making bad loans was covered for the financial industry. The result was, predictably, that firms took more risks. High risks mean potentially high reward, and if someone else bears the risk of failure, then its full steam ahead. Moral hazards sometimes occur in situations when agents act in a reckless manner, because principals do not hold them accountable. They can also occur when either an agent or a principal is placed in a situation where they are forced to assume more risk than they can reasonably cover: for example, when a superhero puts lives and property at risk in the course of confronting a super-powered threat. We want to trust the superhero, but the community, not the superhero, will bear the consequences of any risks the hero takes. We are unwilling principals; the hero is our unaccountable agent. If pressed, the hero may rationally maximize the chances for his own survival rather than the preservation of innocent life or property. This is the premise for the Marvel comic Civil War (Millar and McNiven, 2009). The story begins with some C-list heroes filming their apprehension of a group of escaped villains for a reality television series. It is clear the heroes are nonchalant about the dangers such an encounter might entail. Unfortunately, things spin out of control, one of the villains explodes himself (he can reform so it doesn’t bother him) and kills hundreds at a nearby public school. At the funeral, Tony Stark is confronted by an angry mother of one of the victims. She blames Stark for the death of her son. By funding and encouraging the action of heroes, Stark is acting as the unconcerned agent, while the people, the principals, bear the costs. If the population really wants the services provided by heroes though, there might be another way to achieve that The movie Civil War has a different beginning that is not nearly as conducive to the discussion at hand.
- This question of eminent domain emerged in the Iron Man 2 movie. At the end of Iron Man, Tony Stark revealed himself to the world as the armored avenger, doing away with certain problems of information asymmetry but raising other, thornier issues. Now that everyone knew this brilliant but unpredictable and erratic individual possessed such enormous power, how did that change the relationship between the public (the principal) and the superhero (our agent)? The government, media, and the general public pressured Stark to share the trade secrets of his technology with the military. Justin Hammer–CEO of rival Hammer Industries–was in a race to build his own suit of armor and gain his share of the military market. Another character in the movie, a U.S. senator, was eager to subject the Iron Man suit to eminent domain. This senator used the excuse of Stark’s drinking problems to argue that Stark would be more likely to act irresponsibly while using the Iron Man suit. The senator has a Constitutional role as an agent acting on behalf of the public that requires him to find ways to protect the public from the unintended consequences of Stark’s actions. He can also claim that the benefits of the suit are a public good, and that as a result, the suit should be under the control of the government, not an individual. And because the senator is a representative of the government, he has a tool to accomplish this goal – eminent domain.