If I invented, say, a gun in my garage today, would the government be allowed to confiscate it and put it to use in the military? Because that’s what it seems like they’re doing in the movies.
Weapons platform? Seems like a great way to get around town! The tech has multiple purposes that the U.N. seems to want nothing to do with besides monopolizing.
We currently have regulations on explosives, yes. Do any of those regulations say that the government can order you to use those explosives in a way it sees fit? I mean, if I develop napalm in my garage (note: HYPOTHETICAL), can the government then order me to take that napalm to the Middle East and blow up a group of terrorists? Because that’s what it seems like the Accords are doing.
I don’t even understand this. How would China even know you’re a Christian? If you’re going to tell me it’s by what you write or say, then what they’re regulating is expression, not ideas. Which you and I may find repellant, but hey, China. Still, nobody can stop anyone from being a Christian though, or designing a suit of power armor.
It’s not illegal as long as you’re legally able to own a firearm, but the gun you created would be subject to all the regulations that all firearms would fall under.
In the case of the Iron Man suit, it’s more akin to a tank with a functioning main gun and ammo. You would absolutely not be allowed to own that.
The Accords also give you the choice to retire.
The government doesn’t need Tony Stark (or you) to blow up a terrorist with napalm. They can get a soldier to do that with any of a jillion tons of stockpiled explosives. They would just confiscate your napalm and charge you with manufacturing an explosive device. In this case, Tony Stark is apparently the only guy on Earth that can build the suits. So, he can either comply, or give up the suit.
I see it less like a tank and more like a combustion engine. It just so happens that Stark wants to use it for a tank.
The thing is though, pointing to collateral damage as a cause for worrying about superheroes is absurd. (It was absurd even in the case of MoS, though that movie was horrible, I always felt the collateral damage thing was the least of its problems.)
I mean supposing the Avengers had been under the Sokovia Accords during the Sokovia incident. What were they going to do, let the “meteor” fall? What would an oversight committee have done? Stop them from preventing the “meteor” from falling? When the end of the world at the hands of a mad supervillain is in the offing, any amount of collateral damage somewhat short of an amount equivalent to what the supervillain’s action would do is ok.
And of course the irony is that’s exactly how governments think anyway: that you do your best to minimize collateral damage is a given (and ofc superheroes have the added burden of actually saving as many as they can, as per AoU), but within that boundary, you use precisely whatever’s necessary for victory, no more, but no less.
In fact the only kind of thing to get one’s panties in a bunch about are precisely the sorts of accident that happened with Scarlet Witch (and wasn’t it a similar type of accident that triggered the comics version of the Civil War?) But that doesn’t need something like the Sokovia Accords - i.e. it doesn’t need superheroes to be brought directly under government supervision. It just needs - what, better training? Some kind of liability insurance?
IOW, something like the Accords would be a hammer to crack a nut.
Sure with guided missiles, lasers, and some kind of arc-reactor powered hand blasters. Nothing to worry about there.
Man the insurance on the Hulk would be out of control. I’d hate to pay the premiums on that.
This thread just reaffirms how #teamcap doesn’t have a leg to stand on. You guys wouldn’t last five seconds in P&R, much less a freshman civics class. :)
-Tom
Yes that’s how Tony chooses to use it. Why can’t they say “Here is your third option, take out the weapons and use it as your personal transportation”? The tech is not inherently a weapon, it is used as one. But the Accord treat the whole suit as something it has a complete monopoly on. The Falcon’s suit doesn’t have weapons on it, why isn’t he allowed to fly around without signing the Accord?
Retire from…inventing things? Or what if I invent some sort of super-napalm that is better than every other type of napalm? Am I not allowed to, say, sell that to the government? Because it sounds like the Accords give the government the right to A) confiscate my napalm (and probably all my research), and B) throw me in jail (or a high-tech maximum-security underwater prison). That sure sounds like it’s giving the government power over inventions.
So the Accords would allow the government to confiscate any inventions it deems as “too dangerous” for individuals. What about people with enhanced abilites that can’t be turned off? Do they have to submit to injections to suppress their powers? Are they required to work for the government? And where does it end? Could the government order a private company to do something it’s really good at (say, developing software) to comply with a critical government investigation?
Only if you acknowledge one part of the equation (the existence of super-powered individuals) while ignoring the other parts of the equation (the existence of heroic individuals, and cases of government misuse of power).
Teamcap haven’t really answered one big question: why government oversight is always/usually bad? Government comes in all shapes and sizes and compositions. You can’t judge them all the same way. You have hereditary totalitarian North Korean government on one hand, the Swedish government of freedom, equality and welfare state (and ABBA) on the other hand, with the US or UN somewhere in the middle. How good government oversight is depends on how good a government is. If it aims to oppress, the oversight will aim to oppress. If it aims to find a careful balance between freedom and oppression, between security and anarchy, the oversight will reflect that.
In fact now I think more about it, I think Teamcap in the movie isn’t a clearly anti-government-oversight-tout-court. It is simply this: “We need to get to Zemo before he unleashes rogue supersoldiers on the world so please let us go” vs. Team Ironman “No we can’t because of Sokovia Accords”. Nothing grand here.
IMO the movie itself is subversive in the sense that they make Stark, the arch-narcissist, to be the voice of reason. It throws a curve ball to people’s perception: Stark is a bloody narcissist/asshat so he must be doing it for the wrong reasons. The Sokovia Accords was delivered so much snark and self-righteousness it is just begging to be shot down. But I think the reasoning there is generally sound, it just needs tweaking.
It doesn’t help that they are delivered by General/Secretary Ross, who has a distinguished history of “We need to capture The Hulk so we can dissect him and use his blood to create a new group of super-soldiers”, as well as putting his daughter’s life at risk along the way. Also, he immediately threatens to put Tony Stark in a floating maximum-security prison for the high crime of failing in his mission to capture Steve Rogers. Makes a pretty strong case that Cap was on the right side.
Edit: If I may be permitted to make an analogy, it would be like watching Die Hard and coming to the conclusion, “John McClane really should have turned himself in, because the FBI is more qualified to deal with terrorists than a civilian is.”
Technically, The Falcon’s suit was stolen wasn’t it? It used to be used for SARS and was the property of the US military until Cap and Black Widow swiped it for Sam Wilson.
I think further up in the discussion someone talked about Tony causing the creation of Ultron and therefore him being the cause of that particular disaster, except we don’t blame the creators and inventors behind weapons for the damage they do. We don’t even blame the manufacturers, in most cases, for what happens.
If I built a car, then turned on the ignition and let it drive into my neighbor’s house, you can be damn sure I would be legally responsible for the damages, as well as for criminal negligence.
Completely different, and here’s my reason to why I say that. Your car did what it was designed to do. Tony lost control of his experiment. If someone created an AI that got out of control and was loosed on the Internet, what kind of trouble are we talking about today, and from whom? And by loose, I mean it did something that wasn’t meant to happen. Tony’s issue was an experimental failure. We have these all the time. Sometimes we get really cool things out of those, like drugs with incredible use and potential, sometimes some kid blows himself up with a rocket. That fact that his experiment walked away, or flew… I don’t know that makes it hugely different.
It’s not like he created a rocket and accidentally blew up his neighbors house. He lost control of an AI. And if he had purchased something legally and destroyed his neighbors house… the manufacturer wouldn’t be at fault.