Fantastic! I love how you point out the things that Superman could do in the real world, like helping to put solar power stations in geosynchronos orbit around the Earth. That would clearly be fantastic, and it would go such a very, very long way towards solving the Earth's energy problems, and it would provide us with such clean energy, too.
You have given Clark a very good reason to stay in this world and help turn it into a much better place. So far, I have been thinking that Clark would return to his own world and take Lois with him. Now, for the first time, he would have a powerful reason to stay.
Interestingly, however, I thought that very many of the other things that Agent Smith was suggesting could easily be done without Clark:
“Say he repairs three satellites for fifteen million dollars….do you have any idea what he can do with that?”
“Buy a mansion in Beverly Hills?” Lois asked.
“He could buy approximately 1, 875, 000 bushels of corn. How many starving Africans or Burmese or Chinese could he feed with that?”
Yes, Clark could repair three satellites for fifteen million dollars and buy 1,875,000 bushels of corn. But it's not as if other people couldn't buy that corn too, and give the corn to people who need it. It's not as if the sum of fifteen million dollars does not exist elsewhere in the world. It's not as if others don't have that money and could use it to buy food to feed the hungry, if they were only interested.
“You seem a little different than the others,” Clark said. “I thought you were going to try to sell me on promoting American interests.”
“I am,” Mr. Smith said. At Clark's look he said, “These things I'm suggesting are very much in the best interest of America.”
“So feeding the hungry, preventing water borne diseases…”
“Where do you think most of the new diseases come from?” Mr. Smith said. “They tend to come from places where people are hungry and already sick, where their bodies have compromised immune systems that are perfect incubators for a new disease to learn its way around until it's virulent enough to spread to everyone else.”
“So this is about self interest?” Lois asked.
“Very much so,” Mr. Smith said. “Those African immune systems are the world's first line of defense against the next super-plague.”
This is so true. And yet, the world can't find the money to help those starving and sick African children. Where does most of the world's money go? That's easy: it goes into buying weapons and military equipment. It's really so ironic: it is not hard to justify the need to buy bombs and armies to deter your enemies, but it is next to impossible buy food and clean water to African children to prevent the world's next super-plague.
It seems to me that if Clark stays on this world for a while and uses money to really do good with it, he might remind people that they, too, have money that they can do good with. Somehow we've gotten our priorities wrong. For all of Clark's unique abilities, it could be that his ability to get his priorities right might serve as the most powerful example and incentive to this world.
Ann
