The Global Division of Knowledge Improved on "Batman"

My youngest loves the Batman movies and video games, so when it was his night to choose a move, he chose the 1989 version of Batman starring Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Kim Basinger.

I was surprised at how poorly it held up. Everything seemed hokey, the special effects made it very clear how far movie technology has come, and it felt a lot more like watching the original 1958 version of The Blob rather than one of the more recent Batman movies.

Not long ago, I wrote that the global division of knowledge gives us shows like Andor, which was by far the best Star Wars content Disney has produced.

Calls for tariffs on movies made or produced overseas make me sad as an economist, but they also make me sad as a consumer. I've said repeatedly that if you had told me at age 6 that at age 46 I would be watching a steady stream of new Star Wars shows with my kids, I'd say there's no way life could be that good. But it is, thanks to free trade and the global division of knowledge. Frederic Bastiat's big lesson was to account for the unseen rather than the seen, and while we don't know what we're missing because rules and regulations have slowed up economic growth, the gap between the 1989 version of Batman and today's action/sci-fi content suggests that it's really quite a lot.