The Martindale Mike Podcast

5 Responses to The Martindale Mike Podcast

1. Martin Phipps | February 7, 2011 at 8:51 pm | Reply

   Thanks again for taking your time to do another podcast. I read your post about Batman and Patents after listening to this and I left a question there which I won’t repeat here. I suspect some questions take time for you to answer so you probably like getting questions that are easy to answer. I am looking forward to your detailed post on Superheroes earning money and what problems that would cause (assuming they didn’t give it all to charity).

   • Martin Phipps | February 7, 2011 at 8:56 pm | Reply

     Sorry, I misunderstood. I thought that you were going to post about “how much superpowers are worth” but then I saw that you are going to post under the assumption that they DON’T derive income from their powers. Oh well.

     • James Daily | February 7, 2011 at 10:01 pm |

       The “how much superpowers are worth” question was about how to value superpowers in a civil case where a de-powered person sues for the loss of their powers. That’s a tricky question if they don’t derive income from the powers.

       But we’ll probably return to the question of making money with superpowers again in the future. Lots of people wonder about Superman making diamonds from coal, for example.

     • Martin Phipps | February 8, 2011 at 7:25 am |

       As much as i would want to forget Secret Wars II altogether, the Beyonder did turn an entire building into gold. The government (specifically SHIELD if I recall correctly) covered it up saying that that much gold would drive gold prices down and hurt the economy in ways that the naive Beyonder couldn’t foresee. Does this sound plausible? Perhaps if Superman were turning coal into diamonds then somebody would serve him with a lawsuit claiming he was driving diamond prices down.

     • James Daily | February 8, 2011 at 8:02 am |

       As I recall, the sum total of all the gold ever mined is something like a cube about 50-60 feet on a side, so an entire building turned to gold would seriously upset the price of gold. But there’s a difference between suggesting that maybe flooding a commodities market isn’t a good idea and having a legal cause of action against them if they do.

       There is such a thing as ‘dumping,’ where a country exports a ton of cheap stuff to another country, flooding the market and harming local producers, but that’s an international trade issue that has as much to do with politics as law.

       Really what I think most people want to know about Superman and diamonds is whether they are taxable income. I don’t think they are (in and of themselves), and we’ll get into that in a future post.