Scans_Daily

"Why don't the Fantastic Four provide the world with flying cars? Because some dingus...either a drunk frat boy or a terrorist...would crash it into a building and kill a lot of people."

This I agree with, although having a ground-effect-type car would save wear and tear on roads--a huge expense and inconvenience to repair--and allowing authorized emergency vehicles to fly would save lives and vastly decrease response time.

"Why doesn't Reed create a cure for cancer? Because for the millions he saved dozens would die, and then he'd have to spend his time in court."

Lots of types of treatments have potential adverse effects; thousands of people die every year just from general anesthetic.

"I think Jonathan Hickman's SHIELD...years after Morrison's Sci-Fi Closet for Batman...provided the perfect narrative escape from these kinds of questions. All through out Marvel's history, da Vinci, Galileo, and such could have made the world a utopia, except they kept getting distracting trying to keep it from being destroyed. The reason people think Reed Richards is Useless is because...instead of conducting three years of drug trials, answering endless bug reports, and dealing with help desk phone calls...he's inventing shit to stop Celestials and Dr. Doom from glassing the planet."

Richards wouldn't be doing those drug trials himself, but the Galactus Answer is plenty good in and of itself. I tend to think that the net result of supergeniuses in the world would be closer to the versions of New York City that we saw in Watchmen and Promethea: life would be more or less like it is now, with the exception of some consumer goods and maybe a few buildings.