Yes, I’ve watched all the Marvel movies and “Endgame” which was set up by champion utilitarian economist Thanos eliminating half the universes population.
Thanos’s claim to the economists’ hall of fame lies in his interest in scarce resources, his faith in the power of logical analysis, and a strong commitment to policy action — specifically, to eliminate half of all life in the universe, chosen at random. He collects some magical bling enabling him to do this with a snap of his fingers.
“It’s a simple calculus,” he explains. “This universe is finite, its resources, finite . . . if life is left unchecked, life will cease to exist. It needs correcting.”
But this is curiously short-sighted for a man regarded by many as a true economist. Any exponential population growth process will soon replace the lost people: that is why exponential growth is such a headache in the first place. For example, if the Universes resource demand footprint grows exponentially at a rate of 7 per cent, it doubles in just ten years — meaning that in less time than has elapsed since the first Iron Man movie, we could be back where we started. But no infinity stones to check the growth.
Thanos has convinced himself that’s he’s seen something nobody else can quite understand. The truth is that he sorely needs someone like Loki to explain the real world to him. Like many powerful people, Thanos regards himself as above his critics, not to mention everything else in the universe. He views humans less as free-willed agents capable of solving their own problems, and more like overbreeding rabbits, needing a cull for their own good.
So he’s the Trump of the Marvel world… And I see a potential happy ending, we just get the Avengers to go back in time and change the election result… problem solved.