It's been a while since I've blogged about anything; I've been leaving it up to my students to do the heavy lifting for a long time. Maybe I'll get back into it a bit now.
The other night, Emily and I watched "X-men: Origins." A copy that I picked up in Peru when I was there. I have a pretty low bar for movies, so although I've heard that it wasn't that good, I really enjoyed it. Movies are escapism for me, so the comic book films really work for me pretty well.
After we finished up the DVD, though, I was thinking about what the world would look like if there really were mutants wandering around with indestructible skeletons and superhuman strength and the ability to self-heal and stop bullets with their hands and stuff like that. Seems unlikely to play out the way the Marvel comic books suggest it would. So, in the style of Dan Drezner (but with more of a comparative twist), I decided to blog about it.
The universe of the X-men resembles our world in most ways, right down to the fact that there is a US presidency with control over the armed forces, etc. If indeed there were mutants with superpowers that were able to prey on humanity, however, it's much more likely that the world would be a lot poorer, there would be a lot less capital-intensive industry, and non-mutant government would play much less of a role than it does in our world.
One thing that political economists know from the work of Barry Weingast, Douglass North, Avner Greif and other institutionalists is that trade, capital accumulation, lending, contracting, and therefore, industrialization and much other economic activity (the activity that makes the wealth of the developed world possible) is due to the presence of institutions--rules--that keep people from taking wealth away from other people. If I'm stronger than you, and you can't trust that I won't take your wealth away if you save it because there are no rules or mechanisms for rule enforcement (such as laws, police forces, and judicial systems to protect my wealth), you simply won't accumulate much wealth for me to take away. Better to spend it as soon as you get it (and probably better to spend it on things that are quickly consumable, like beer, chips, and bottle rockets) than to save it or invest it in some business-building scheme such as new equipment or a new store or other facility.
Likewise, if judicial systems don't work very well because there are people who can use force or corruption to manipulate others (like diamond-hard adamantium talons or rapid healing abilities or the ability to corrupt others through threats or the ability to bend their minds) you get a country that is very poor, crime-ridden, and relatively unstable. One good modern day example is Guatemala, which has an extremely high crime rate, high birth rate, fragmented economy, and high rate of retributive justice.
A high crime rate, because the criminal justice system isn't any good at catching and punishing lawbreakers. A high rate of retributive justice, like lynchings, that are an imperfect substitute for a functioning justice system. A high birth rate, because the absence of unbiased government which might otherwise provide a social safety net leaves the poor with little choice but to have many children who can support them in their old age. And a fragmented economy, because firms are afraid to get too big, lest they become a target for racketeering and other criminal rent-seeking activities.
Finally, we also know that where one group has power or control that another group lacks, like disproportionately large political influence, more arms (weapons) or more arms (grasping rubber tentacles), or the ability to teleport or move metal objects with their minds, they will likely be able to manipulate existing government institutions to their material benefit (like wealthy European elites in resource-extractive economies like Bolivia, Brazil, or Mexico) or become the government, themselves (like early European states).
Further we know that if there are two groups of elites with a great deal of force fighting one another, the weak don't tend to get left out, and they don't tend to get to carry on their lives like usual. Just ask Peruvian rural peasants caught between the shining path and the government, the Sudanese, or rural Mayan Guatemalans during the '80s.
Basically, if there were mutants, our lives would much more likely resemble the lives of poor rural agriculturalists in the developing world.
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