Batman Beyond: Kind of Unethical There, Bruce...

[espanolbot]

Terry comes to talk to Bruce, who brings up how he's now supplying the GCPD with better tech...

Comments

[darkblade]

Dear Future Batman Writers

Batman as a concept is already questionable. Please stop highlighting his moral failings, having them bite him in the ass and learn a supposed lesson only to have the same moral failings a few arcs later.

Sincerely, Darkblade

[icon_uk]

This is hardly news though, Bruce has always kept the REALLY cool toys for his family, though he'll give good stuff to the GCPD. EG He donated bulletproof vests to the Bludhaven PD when Dick was a member, though they're unlikely to be as good as the skintight flexible, fire resistant shielding that makes up the batclans costumes.

Dick did the same under Snyder IIRC, noting that the surveillence equpiment that someone is using is top of the line Waynetech, which means it's about five levels behind the tech HE has in his costume.

[lonewolf23k]

I don't think it's unethical. Batman is basically equipped with top-of-the-line prototypes and tech too expensive to produce in large quantities. The stuff he'll sell to the GCPD are fully-tested final products ready for mass production.

[icon_uk]

Also, when Bruce was dead, Dick had a lavishly equipped state-of-the-art crime lab with every forensic device imaginable built especially for the GCPD's use and available to them at no charge, but they refused to use it as a matter of pride... stupid pointless pride IMHO, but such is life.

[chrisdv]

"Guys, you aren't using the new toys I gave you!"
"We have our pride!"
"And more Cold Cases than Central City, and they literally have ONE GUY working them. I know this, because his nephew's a close personal friend of mine."
"Plus aren't most of your arrests because Batman & Robin do all the work for you?"
"Damian, shush."

[theflames]

haha, 'pride', that made me cringe.

[janegray]

..."Pride"? Seriously?

So their pride is more important than saving people's lives? The very people they have sworn to serve and protect?

Assholes.

[icon_uk]

IIRC They were aggreived that Bruce had been running Batman Inc all this time, and that supporting someone who was financing and equipping a vigilante team in competition with them (as they saw it) was not exactly a cool thing to do.

[janegray]

They should have sucked it up.

What is a rapist and/or murderer gets away to make more victims because they didn't have the means to track him down and/or prove his guilt? If somebody gives you the mean, you accept them, period.

[espanolbot]

Police forces have there own culture of doing things, which sometimes can lead to detrimental things for the people they're meant to help. For example, a thing in both the US and the UK is that police departments are judged by the rate they clear cases, so in order to make their quota some less... ethical police departments charge suspects with lesser crimes or try to convince victims not to press charges in order to save them paperwork.

The latter example caused some contraversy in London recently when the unit that was meant to be investigating sex crimes was deliberately trying to get women to just "drop issue" when they reported they'd been assaulted, or victims would ask how the case was going, only to find that it wasn't started in the first place.

Within the Batman books, the fact that the GCPD had to rely on Batman to do their jobs in certain cases was a sore spot for a lot of their members, as it main it seem like they couldn't do their own jobs. So Dick Grayson offering them the use of their cutting-edge forensic equipment (which ended up getting mothballed due to lack of use, by the by) didn't exactly endear Wayne Enterprises to them, especially in the light of the aforementioned link between Batman and Bruce Wayne.

Reality

[blue_bolt]

Let's face it - Bruce Wayne is big on Charity and Batman is big on Crime Fighting but sometimes it seems like he could approach things differently. Imagine if he tried recruiting geniuses and the like for the GPD. Surely replacing the corrupt cops with hyper-competent recruits would do something? After all geniuses are like a dime a dozen in the DCU and Marvel.

Re: Reality

[icon_uk]

This being Gotham, the geniuses would end up being Riddler wannabe's who take over the whole city because they think they can run it better.

Re: Reality

[darkblade]

So hire people from Metropolis.

[sadoeuphemist]

I have no idea how this is supposed to be even remotely unethical. Since when are people obliged to provide the best they have when making donations? Particularly to an institution with a history of corruption?

[starwolf_oakley]

Wasn't there something like this in "Dark Knight RIses"? After the big chase, Alfred asks Bruce about getting some of the equipment in the cave to the police so they can use it. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong.

The DVD features for "Batman: Year One" mentioned something about how Batman only "works" in fighting ordinary criminals if the Gotham Police just aren't doing their job. A "breaking of the social contract" or something. But Batman being needed for "special cases" becomes more common as the GCPD is "cleaned up."

[obsidianwolf]

I think it fits in pretty well with what's IMO the biggest tragedy of Batman. He could probably do far more good for Gotham City as Bruce Wayne if he put his money, influence and genius out into the world in a broader way.

Yet his private war fueld by his control freak nature makes it impossible for him to do it.

[xammax]

Its shown multiple times he does both. Gotham is that bad.

[obsidianwolf]

Yeah I know some writers portray Gotham as just that bad but other times it's been clearly shown his own actions have made things worse. Like the time in NO man's land where his years of work making sure no one connects Bruce with Batman leads to no one taking Bruce Wayne seriously.

[icon_uk]

Which is one reason why I have so little patience with that era. In the 70's and 80's Bruce was in day to day charge of Wayne Enterprises (closely allied with Lucius Fox, comptroller and the acknowledged real business genius of the company), seen as a bit of a playboy, but a capitalist with a taste for the high life is still pretty distant from the Dark Knight.

Bruce doesn't need to be a complete idiot to not be seen as being "not like Batman".

[obsidianwolf]

I agree completely I've never really liked the Bruce has to be a silly play boy to keep folks from guessing. I've also never liked the portrayals of Gotham that require the city to be so insanely corrupt because writers want Batman to be so damn super competent at everything that the only way he can't have made any in roads at all in cleaning up Gotham is for the city itself to be so tainted that it might as well be supernaturally evil.

[sadoeuphemist]

Actually thinking about it further, I don't know how this arrangement is supposed to work. Bruce Wayne is praised for being 'the sole provider' of equipment for the police, something that will put him 'back in the black.' So he is selling them hi-tech stuff for a lot of money. I don't understand how this is doing anything for the police. If Wayne didn't exist, surely they'd use their money to buy hi-tech stuff from another company?

[icon_uk]

Bruce ensures the Police get value for money, and WayneTech products are amongst the finest in the world, with a superb safety record.

[sadoeuphemist]

So has WayneTech just been refusing to sell stuff to the police before? I don't get it.

[mrstatham]

The contracts were probably with someone else who would have a greater likelihood of dicking the police over, like a Beyond-era LexCorp equivalent or whatever.

[sadoeuphemist]

As opposed to the guy who thinks the police are corrupt, sponsors a vigilante, and has a vested interest in keeping them less well-equipped than him?

Anyway, my point is, Bruce acts like he's been withholding equipment from the police. But Wayne Inc. is selling this stuff. It's on the market. If the cops want it, they can pay for it, which they're doing now. He's not doing them a favor by selling stuff for a healthy profit. Unless like Wayne Inc. is literally the only company that sells this specific police equipment, or something like that.

[icon_uk]

It probably is, as Bruce (Who has a rather vested interest in developed peacekeeping tech) seems to be releasing a new generation of equipment to the pubilc, stuff he'd kept back from them out of his control freakery (and his isolation)

[sadoeuphemist]

I think it's really unlikely that Bruce Wayne is able to totally suppress a new generation of technology, and that the police are relying on this totally new technology from a single supplier.

Like, he's not Tony Stark, he's not the only one who knows how/is legally permitted to build arc reactors. Batman wears a one of a kind nomex-carbonfiber-nanoweave-whatever suit that costs a million dollars, but carbonfiber-nanoweave-whatever is publicly known technology that another corporation could replicate if necessary. Meanwhile, if you want good body armor, there are plenty of places to get good body armor without spending a million dollars per cop.

[icon_uk]

He doesn't need to be Tony Stark, given his clout as the sole owner of the companies which are respsonsible for the development and industrial manufacture of high end devices, I have no problem believing that he could exert such control without even arousing suspicion.

His R&D staff will be amongst the best and highest paid on the planet, and the intellectual property rights will most likely be in the name of WayneTech, Chairman Bruce Wayne, he can produce or block whatever he wishes and as long as he keeps his staff happy enough not to defect to LexCorp, then he'd keep a competitive edge and still keep the cream of the materials for himself as Batman.

Plus of course there are other business factors like the theoretical science of carbonfiber-nanoweave-whatever being publicly known, but not necessarily the actual economic manufacturing of it in industrial quantities. Yes, once it's on the market LexCorps can copy it if they wish, but it'll take them time, and that's what being on the cutting edge is all about, you may be only a few months ahead of the competition, but that's where the money is.

Plus of course, the Commissioner of the GCPD knows full well, and from her own personal experience, the quality of the tech that Bruce Wayne would endorse for use and that can't have hurt his bidding chances either.

[sadoeuphemist]

But by the time something is capable of being manufactured cost-effectively in industrial quantities, it's no longer cutting edge. By the time nanoweave-whatever is cheap enough that you can buy a set for every police officer, there's some experimental quantum-magneto-fabric with force fields or whatever for Batman to wear. There would be no point in deliberately suppressing affordable nanoweave, other than to be a dick.

He should be constantly selling off his old tech as a regular thing. It's not a show of magnanimity, it's just economic sense. Batman's tech level doesn't come from a secret font of knowledge that he must purposely keep hidden. He simply buys the best stuff there is at the time. Just by virtue of it being the best means that very few can get their hands on it.

[md84]

Bruce learned the hard way (pre-Flashpoint anyway) that throwing money at a problem doesn't always solve it unless you are willing to do so unethically during the No Man's Land arc. He cultivated his own "Rich Idiot with no day job" persona so well that no one took Bruce Wayne seriously. Lex manipulating things behind the scenes didn't help matters either.

As for not giving the police his best, it's probably for the same reason Iron Man doesn't give powered armor to the police. Trust issues. People like Bruce and Tony simply don't trust anyone but themselves and their closest allies to have access to the power their toys provides. Sometimes they don't even trust their allies. Heck, sometimes they don't even trust themselves.

[superfangirl1]

Do this mean that old Bruce will give the police bat crime fight technology he haven't use 10 year ago?

How far back technology is he willing to give?

[icon_uk]

He has an old Commodore 64 he might be prepared to let them have as the core of their new mainframe.