redbloodedamerica:

Iron Man vs. Captain America: Who’s Right?

Who is right?  Should they be registered and controlled by the government?  Or should they decide what to do with their powers?  It’s a great question, and I think it is a topic worth mentioning, so with that in mind…

Welcome to Out of Frame.

Now, before we get to Civil War and why Tony Stark and Steve Rogers end up fighting each other, I think we should back up a little bit to make sure everyone’s on the same page.  I think the best place to begin in order to explain the division between Iron Man and Captain America is with Captain America: Winter Soldier.  This was a pivotal film for the MCU.  It radically changed the tone of Captain America as a character, from being a sort of plucky do-gooder to a guiding voice of moral clarity.  More importantly to the point here, it revealed that S.H.I.E.L.D. (the organization that established and oversees the Avengers team) was actually compromised by corrupt politicians working for the Nazi splinter group Hydra.

Just like his comic book counterpart, Captain America started his existence as a loyal soldier, doing whatever his government asked of him, because he believed that those actions were morally justified.  But when Steve sees how modern society traded freedom for a false sense of security, he also sees how this exchange empowered evil people to negate individual rights on an epic scale, and he abandoned S.H.I.E.L.D.  “We compromised.  Sometimes in ways that made us not sleep so well.  But we did it so that people could be free.  This isn’t freedom, this is fear.”  This is critical character development for Steve Rogers, and it’s mirrored by the shift we see in Tony Stark between the first Avengers movie and the second…

So, let’s talk about Iron Man for a minute.  After his near-death experience battling a monstrous array of space aliens, Tony spends virtually the entirety of Iron Man 3 dealing with PTSD.  And although he overcomes some of his fears in that movie, he goes on to create the eponymous central antagonist of Avengers: Age of Ultron using the exact same reasoning that Nick Fury used to justify targeting people for pre-crime with flying death-machines.  Of course, like far too many of Tony Stark’s other creations, Ultron turned evil and murdered thousands of people, which in turn leads to the United Nations proposing a new law that would bring the Avengers…and all superheroes…under political control.

I hope all that backstory wasn’t overwhelming, but now that we’re all caught up, let’s talk about whether or not the inciting incident for Captain America: Civil War…is actually a good idea.  There are probably a bunch of different ways to approach this question, but for the purposes of this video, I think we should assess it on three levels.

First, we need to ask whether or not the government (and perhaps specifically the United Nations) has a track record of making decisions that reduce global chaos, and improve peaceful relations between people.  Basically, if the goal is to reduce civilian causalities or improve public safety, do we have any reason to believe that government is better at this task than private individuals?  Second, we should think about what happens when we give government these kinds of powers in the real world.  And third, we must consider the human costs on both sides.

Starting with the first question, Steve lays out the core challenge:  “Tony, you chose to do that.  If we sign this, we surrender our right to choose.  What if this panel sends us somewhere we don’t think we should go?  What if there’s somewhere we need to go, and they don’t let us?  We may not be perfect, but the safest hands are still our own.”  This is a beautiful example of a theoretical framework in political economy called public choice.  The idea, in the words of its founder James Buchanan, is to think about politics without romance.  This means looking at the actual effects of a policy, instead of idealistically assuming we’ll end up with the kind of perfect outcomes that only exist in people’s imagination.  In this scene, Captain America acknowledges that he is fallible and that his own decisions may not always be perfect, but he’s also being realistic about how superhuman powers might be misused if they were subject to political control.

By contrast, Iron Man is mostly focused on the idea that political control will improve trust and accountability; but this assumes the politicians in charge will make better decisions and have better intentions than Captain America, which is unlikely.  But if that were true, it also assumes that politicians won’t ever be corrupt, or have biases and make decisions that benefit their personal interests, and that they’ll somehow have better knowledge of complex local situations than the heroes have themselves.  I’m pretty sure no such politician has ever existed.  That’s why Duke University economist Michael Munger calls this type of thinking “Unicorn Governance.” 

Unfortunately, once you are aware of this problem, you see it all the time.  For example, in response to terrorist attacks in the US, there was widespread public support for going to war in Afghanistan, imposing new laws like the PATRIOT Act, and creating the Transportation Security Administration.  We did all these things with the idea that empowering government to go after terrorists would make us all safer.  But what people didn’t think about was the way these new powers would be used to erode civil liberties in the US, or to destabilize other countries around the world.  The fact that nobody really meant to create a society where the government has the power to spy on everyone’s phone calls, texts, and emails, or where people who look vaguely Middle Eastern get arrested under Stop and Frisk…doesn’t matter than much.  That’s the world we got. 

The point is, it’s just not enough to judge policy by its intentions, or based on what you hope will be the results.  But I think this is exactly what Tony is doing by supporting the Sokovia Accords.  Stark is assuming that the UN will make wise, just, and well-informed decisions and that the government-controlled version of the Avengers will still be used for noble purposes.  But…government’s track record on using their power to help innocent people isn’t all that good, even when the politicians in charge claim they have all the right intentions.  

Worst still, in Captain America: Civil War, it would specifically be the United Nations that oversees the Avengers based on the new rules.  But to the extent that the UN has any power at all, its actual record is horrendous.  In the mid-1990s, their Oil-for-Food Program turned out to be plagued with severe corruption and abuse, including millions of dollars being diverted from aid programs directly into the pockets of Iraqi government officials, towards kickbacks for connected companies, and to payoffs and bribes at the UN –including $150,000 to the head of the Oil-for-Food Program, Benon Sevan.  Worse, the Volcker Commission’s investigation of the program found that a lot of the food provided to Iraqi citizens wasn’t even fit for human consumption to begin with.  Then in the late 1990s, the UN supported forced sterilization in Peru via the UN Population Fund and continued to do so through 2002, even after the truth about the program was widely known.  And most horrific of all, just last year we learned that more than 100 United Nations “peacekeepers” ran a child prostitution ring in Haiti for over a decade and not one person has been sent to prison.  And this news came after many well-publicized cases of sexual abuse by UN operatives from around the world since at least 1996.  Yet, for some reason, this is the organization that should be in charge of where and when to send superheroes in a crisis?

Another thing about public choice is that just as we look at economic actors and ask how various incentives and motivations might affect their choices, we should do the same with political actors starting with the recognition that they’re no more or less self-interested, moral, or infallible than anyone else.  When we do that, we see a big difference between the institutional incentives for private citizens and public officials.  Politicians rarely face any meaningful consequences for poor decision-making, and they have very little personal stake in the costs of their actions.  They’re immune to prosecution for any damage they cause and taxpayers pay all the bills, so the incentives that accompany political power tend to reward much worse behavior than is ever acceptable for anyone else.

So, what’s the worst-case scenario for the Avengers?  Well…it’s hard to say for sure, but it’s not good.  Politicians might lie to our heroes and tell them to go topple the government of another country for national-security reasons that don’t exist.  Or they could force them to carry out espionage and spy missions or even assassinations.  They could use the Avengers as weapons of war in all sorts of ways and the superheroes would immediately come face to face with the choice of doing as they’re told, or becoming fugitives from the law…which, of course, is exactly what Captain America has to do in the movie.  This kind of government control robs individuals of their right to choose for themselves how they use their abilities and under what conditions.  And it creates conditions where poor decisions and abuses of power are amplified, causing more harm on a bigger scale.  It’s always worth asking yourself what would happen if your worst enemies gained control of the power structure you’re trying to create?  

Of course it’s important to make sure private citizens don’t recklessly endanger innocent people while trying to help avert some disaster, but it should be for the individuals themselves to decide which risks they take and how they use their abilities.  Especially when they’re trying to be good Samaritans.  If they go too far or make mistakes, then we hold them accountable as individuals.  This means stopping the superheroes that turn into villains, and using due process through the courts to assess their crimes and mete out appropriate punishments.  Stark’s right about that, but empowering government to conscript people and control their actions in the name of national security is a recipe for disaster that we’ve seen play out far too many times in the real world already, no matter how well-intented these policies might be.

I hope what you take away from all this is bigger than any discussion of fictional cinematic universes.  What really matter is how you think about these issues, because it’s not just about national security.  Health care, education, economic regulations – anything the government controls carries the same kind of risks.  Everyone believes their ideas are going to make the world a better place, but most people advocating greater concentration of power don’t bother to consider what happens when that power is controlled by people who aren’t as good or knowledgeable as the angels they imagine will always be in charge.  In spite of constantly being the smartest man in the room, Tony Stark seems to make this mistake again and again.  So, be like Captain America.  Think through the unintended consequences of the laws you think we should have and remember that everything works better on paper than in real life.  And leave the fantasy of perfection to your imagination, where it belongs.