Superhero finances

[slade the sniper]

Ok, here's an odd question. What are the financial difficulties of starting and running a full time superhero group? This question came about during a discussion for my BUSN 5000 class (yes, I'm doing an MBA )

Anybody ever done some cogitating on this? I am sort of needing real world numbers, since I don't thing my professor is going to look too kindly on 3d6 x 10,000 worth of damages, etc.

Thanks in advance.

-STS

[Pepsi Jedi]

The insurance alone would be astronomical.

[LeeNapier]

There are some real-life superhero groups you can contact if you want the inside scoop on the costs needed to set up a real-world organization. Take a look at http://www.reallifesuperheroes.org/

They don't have superpowers or anything like that, but they do know the costs of organizing. They operate on a bare-bones budget, and most of what they spend goes to charitable donations (like food and blankets for the homeless) and personal equipment (if they carry any).

The super-team in question needs to be considered, as well as the level of their operation. A Team like the Avengers or the X-Men reqiure some very very wealthy backers (Tony Stark and Professor X), Whereas a team like Power Man and Iron Fist require very little (store-front operation, requires rent, very few other costs).

If the Superheroes are actually doing crimefighting, then yeah, as Pepsi Jedi said, you'd have insurance costs, and I'll add that you'd want some very good criminal defense and civil lawyers on retainer, all of which can get prohibitively expensive very quickly.

[victor1966]

The problems of keeping a job can be fun thing to role play point . Sorry I am late again for work . The city was being attack by huge ants .

[Pepsi Jedi]

lol Always seems to happen when I gotta work a shift at the Burger Hole.

[Rallan]

Ok, here's an odd question. What are the financial difficulties of starting and running a full time superhero group? This question came about during a discussion for my BUSN 5000 class (yes, I'm doing an MBA )

Anybody ever done some cogitating on this? I am sort of needing real world numbers, since I don't thing my professor is going to look too kindly on 3d6 x 10,000 worth of damages, etc.

Thanks in advance.

-STS

Okay, some potential problems.

1) Earning a living. Superheroes can spend days, weeks, or even months or years doing full-time heroing on short notice. They can be kidnapped, zapped to other dimensions, time-travelling, kicking ass in exotic foreign locales, and all sorts of other stuff. This is going to make it extremely difficult to hang onto a job for very long, since employers don't really like employees who call in sick for three months at a time. Especially when the employee only rings two months into his break. Especially especially when his excuse is appallingly unbelievable, because he can't tell the truth (that'd blow his secret identity).

2) Equipment. Some approaches to superheroics are going to be very expensive to maintain. Having a lair full of gadgets, zipping across the world in your team's supersonic transport jet, being a robot or a cyborg, having a badass custom car with a million clever crime-fighting gadgets, these are all expensive propositions. And they get even more expensive if your toys get blown up on a regular basis. And superheroes who rely on natural abilities don't get off lightly either. Anyone who decides to go for a darker and edgier 90s anti-hero look is gonna find out pretty quickly that fetishtastic rubber and leather costumes cost a lot more to replace than spandex did

3) Medical. If you can't regenerate and don't have access to someone who can lay on some kind of super-healing, you're going to wind up in hospital eventually. If you're uninsured (and you probably are because you can't hold a steady job and you blow all your spare cash on replacement costumes instead of taking out personal coverage), this is going to be insanely expensive from the moment the paramedics scrape you off the pavement and stuff you into their ambulance. If you're lucky enough to still have medical insurance, things still suck. Your claims are going to look bogus, self-inflicted, or both. And as you get hospitalised more often and make more claims, the insurer is either going to drastically raise your premiums or just cancel your coverage.

4) Lawsuits and property damage. If your identity is known (or if the private investigators hired by the dude who's shop you destroyed last year while fighting bionic bank robbers manage to discover your identity), then sooner or later someone who lost a lot of money because of a fight you were in is going to sue you for every penny you've got. It's the American Way. Crippled robbers who claim you used excessive force apprehending them. Legally employed mooks at the evil factory who are emotionally scarred by the way you killed their best friend right in front of them while uttering a Bond one-liner. The governments of supervillain-led dictatorships trying to extradite you for crimes against their glorious leader. NASA's legal team asking the jury why anyone should believe you when you say that destroying their latest Mars probe was the only way to save mankind. That sorta stuff costs big bucks to defend yourself against, and bigger bucks if you lose.

Basically if you live in a world where comicbook supers stuff is real and you you've got some of it, you're probably best off not getting involved in these kinds of shenanigans unless you're either very very rich or planning to become a supervillain.

[slade the sniper]

Well, I went ahead and knocked out a business plan for a supers group. Initial investment was two million US dollars. All of that was gone in weapons, equipment, licenses, 3 vehicles, a lair and land that was purchased (12,000 square feet of office space and dormitories w/ all the little extras). The loans were covered by the US government with a 1% interest rate over 35 years. The requirement is to make almost 520,000 US dollars a year to cover the cost of the loans, the licenses, the insurance, the operating expenses, etc.

That is for a 5 person group to be "full time" crime fighters earning 30K a year for personal crap. That amount of income does allow for up to 200,000 dollars of "losses" from people who can't pay (since we are helping people who generally can't just call up the cops).

With the 520,000 of income, it allows for 100K of charity (the company is a non-profit) or for future expansion of hero slots (3 at 30K each).

The group is going to have to "charge" fees for things, ~100 dollars an hour per hero.

That is the long and the short of how to run a superhero group, economically speaking.

-STS

[Iczer]

The group is going to have to "charge" fees for things, ~100 dollars an hour per hero.

-STS

which brings me to my part. Who pays this?

It occurs to me if someone is forking over money for this investment, there will be some form of oversight involved. this oversight will cost extra (usually the salary of the people responsible for the work)

Batts

[Rallan]

The group is going to have to "charge" fees for things, ~100 dollars an hour per hero.

-STS

which brings me to my part. Who pays this?

It occurs to me if someone is forking over money for this investment, there will be some form of oversight involved. this oversight will cost extra (usually the salary of the people responsible for the work)

Batts

That's a good question. If your supers set themselves up as a troubleshooting mercenary team that governments and corporations can hire to deal with specific problems, then a business model that involves being paid a few thousand dollars a day each is logical and makes sense.

But if they're honest to goodness heroes who run around thwarting robberies, battling whichever monster randomly showed up this week, and saving people during disasters, who's supposed to be footing the bill? Either they're basically government employees who should be treated the same as other emergency services personnel (in which case why should they be ran like a business?), or they're the superhero equivalent of a fire brigade that'll rock up to a burning orphanage and refuse to put out the fire until they get paid.

[slade the sniper]

Everyone brings up good points. The role of the group is sort of a cross between The Equalizer and every other charity. When people need some form of justice but for some reason can not get it through conventional channels. Examples would be reformed cons needing a job, getting kidnapped kids back from non custodial parents (especially if they left the country), object retrieval, and standard private investigation where there may be collusion on the part of government officials or law enforcement. Also, due to prior employment history, the group will maintain ties to various federal agencies and the military, though it would have to be simply information, not equipment or enablers. Think a non-profit version of Xe/ Blackwater/ Triple Canopy/ Executive Outcomes.
The oversight issue is a problem, but when forced to choose between effectiveness and oversight, the federal government will forgo oversight to achiece the desired effect.

-STS