Very cool! I'll take these paragraphs out of order a bit.

Quote Originally Posted by Ascended View Post
But you know what everyone ultimately agrees on? Successful economics. Even if they hate that it's successful, everyone likes having money put in their pocket. So you wanna tackle climate change, you don't blow up factories. They'll just build more and hate you for killing jobs, and learn nothing. But if you create a green technology that is more effective and cheaper, and then you bring that to the market? Consumers will shift to the superior, cheaper product and manufactures will have to go where the demand is or go bankrupt.

Now, even with your "do science!" idea, there'll be friction. People will lose their jobs. There'll be pushback from lobbyists. You're still not going to be popular. And they'll try to limit your influence. But if you pull it off and actually get your innovations out to the public competitively, and it's an obvious and clear upgrade that makes lives easier, the economics will force a win for you. Not because you're morally right but because you'll be too wealthy and influential to stop. Eventually they'll have to adopt your practices just to stop you financially, and at that point it's too late to regress. People don't let go of advancements once they have them.

So, your plan to start a business and introduce new technologies is the only plan that has a chance of succeeding. The rest of us, whether we're just putting out fires and hoping we inspire change, or those of us who are going to throw people into space.....all we're doing is making ourselves public enemy #1, because someone with Superman's abilities in the real world is too radical an idea to be anything but destabilizing. But saving the world through economics......that's actually how it works. That's how the world is really changed; business and innovation.
Yep. And with the powers of Superman, all of that is possible. Eventually, as the business builds, the idea is to keep as many low-to-mid level jobs (at good living wages+) going as possible (no upkeep/etc expenses after all, since I can handle that myself). Since it's proprietary tech that's always at least ten years beyond what any other humans could do, that insulates from a lot. And if it's just the people "at the top" losing out, that influence will have an impact, but will have a buffer (everybody else). Any time one of them goes belly up, put an ad out telling the workers to come here and we'll take care of them.

I think Amazon is a good example - even with the crappy things they do, they're still massively popular and really only get pushback in a few places. Now, imagine Amazon without the public detriment and horrible working conditions for shippers. And in several industries at once, all working as a public good (operating at very little net profit margin as most is going to the workers). Add to that the public face of saving people from burning buildings, stopping criminals and natural disasters, etc, and you've got something that's hard (though not impossible) to fight from a PR standpoint.

On the past point, I don't think business/innovation is the only solid road to positive change - but it certainly is the path of least resistance!

Morals and ethics are subjective. As this thread shows. Everyone here is suggesting what they believe would be the right thing to do and even within this small sample population, not everybody agrees on what "right" is. No matter what anyone did, someone would complain about it. You're not doing enough, you're doing too much, you're not doing the things you should, doing the right things wrong, you're being too involved with social development, not involved enough, blah blah blah. Governments will target you. If you bend the knee to one, the others will go after you. Bend the knee to none, and they'll all go after you. If you possess power but belong to no one, they'll call it "accountability" and try to stop you, even if what you do supports and bolsters them. And if your actions don't support them they'll label you a terrorist. They won't dare allow such a powerful wild card on the table no matter what you do. So bottom line, if you've got Clark's powers, unless you're so low key you don't do anything at all, you'll have at least half the world against you no matter what. They'll spend more time arguing and politicizing your actions than they'll spend actually considering your actions.
Also very true. And that's why I think journalism/media reform has to be another prong of it. If media (particularly U.S. journalistic media) has a powerful entity that's fully divorced from funding needs, it'll rise up pretty quickly - and one that keeps everyone (even me) accountable will do a lot to help balance things. There's no such thing as perfect, of course, but it would at least help.

So if any of us get powers I hope it's you and I hope you're really good at inventing and selling stuff.

If you need some marketing help, let me know.
I wish. lol - though my brain is always thinking of things, so you never know.

With my luck, I'd just get the Post-Crisis Superman's powers (which I say even *as* a P-COIE fan), and all of this would be moot. LOL