The Justice League and Comparative Advantage

(Guest Post by John Perich from Overthinking It. As mentioned in a previous post, Overthinking It subjects popular culture to a level of scrutiny it probably doesn't deserve. Hence, we are big fans).


When you think about it, Superman doesn't need the rest of the Justice League.

In conventional wisdom, every member of the Justice League has a particular strength. Green Lantern can handle weird and alien threats. Aquaman can talk to fish. The Flash can handle armies of lightly armed minions in a heartbeat. Wonder Woman usually takes point on mystical threats. And Batman is the World's Greatest Detective.

If we consider each of those types of crime-fighting an output, we see that each member of the Justice League is a uniquely skilled producer of that output. Sure, Batman can beat up henchmen almost as well as the Flash can. But Flash can do it better. If Batman specializes in detective work, and Flash specializes in henchman-stomping, the two of them produce more Justice on net than if one tried to do both.

But what if we bring Superman into the equation?

Superman's slower than Flash (only just), but his super-strength and invulnerability make him better at dispatching minions. He's more capable of dealing with aliens than Green Lantern. And with his X-ray vision and super-hearing, you could make the case that he's a better detective than Batman.

So why does Superman need the rest of the Justice League?

For that, we turn the pages back to 1817 and the principle of comparative advantage, as publicized (though not first documented) by economist David Ricardo. Comparative advantage dictates that, even if one agent can produce two types of goods more efficiently than another agent, it benefits both parties for the efficient agent to specialize and trade for the other.

Ricardo gave the mundane example of a trade between England and Portugal in wine and cloth. Portugal could produce both wine and cloth more cheaply than England could. However, Portugal would benefit more from producing wine and trading with England for cloth, rather than trying at autarky.

Scenario One: Countries Refuse to Trade
	Units of Wine Produced per Year	Units of Cloth Produced per Year
England	80	100
Portugal	140	160
Total	220	260

Scenario Two: Portugal Produces Wine, Trades with England for Cloth
	Units of Wine Produced per Year	Units of Cloth Produced per Year
England	-	200
Portugal	300	80
Total	300	280

In fact, both Portugal and England would benefit more – the “global” production of both wine and cloth increase.

Bringing it back to comics, let's say tomorrow, the Justice League wakes up to two threats on their table:

1) A number of spatial anomalies have cropped up in Earth's orbit; and
2) A number of Sun-Eaters are approaching Earth.

And let's say everyone is out on vacation except Superman and Green Lantern.

It takes Green Lantern 8 hours to dispatch a Sun-Eater and 6 hours to close a spatial anomaly. It takes Superman 4 hours to do either.

Scenario One: Superheroes Refuse to Trade
	Sun-Eaters Dispatched	Spatial Anomalies Closed
Green Lantern	2	1
Superman	3	3
Total	5	4

Scenario Two: Green Lantern Closes Spatial Anomalies and Superman Dispatches Sun-Eaters
	Sun-Eaters Dispatched	Spatial Anomalies Closed
Green Lantern	-	4
Superman	6	-
Total	6	4

It's a slim margin, but the Justice League can dispatch one extra Sun-Eater by letting Superman specialize - even though Supes is objectively better than GL at handling both threats. And since letting even a single Sun-Eater through spells trouble for Earth (it does eat the Sun, after all), it’s a profitable decision.

So maybe Superman is better at everything the Justice League does than any given member. But that doesn't mean he can get by without them. He operates best as a floating agent, filling in where any team needs help and letting the specialists do the rest. This maximizes the output that the Justice League specializes in – Justice.