I’ll finish my house, clear out the old tree debris, and complete all the physical work I’ve planned for years to come.
Secretly redirect a world ending asteroid into a direct, undeniable path to earth. Make sure scientists see it. Let the planet struggle with the knowledge that everything will soon end and the futility of everything up to that point.
Then publicly redirect the asteroid saving the world.
Destroy all nukes, Luigi the system of money and power annnnnnnnnnd speed build a train system in the US.
Let’s just say you won’t have to worry about billionaires and healthcare profiteers anymore
Heyyyy, I was going to say that!
Fly into space and reverse the Earth’s rotation. This way we travel back in time. I will the use my knowledge of the future to become like Lex Luthor.
Use your Lex Luthor wealth to eliminate inequality, right? insert padme face
you destroy earth… spend the next 47 hours desperately trying to figure out how to actually time travel with your powers
No no, that is actually canonically one of Superman’s powers.
Wipe the DC legislature off the map. Excepting aoc of course
I’d repair the bikes of people with broken bikes who need their bike fixed so they can get on their repaired bikes and cycle off on their bike.
Bike
Republicans would be in trouble, and so would certain evil leaders.
Figure out if I’d be more haunted by my actions as a temporary world superpower, and watching the status quo return very quickly afterward, or more haunted by all the things I could have done and didn’t. Sit pondering that for 48 hours.
Get a little area where I would actually want to live.
Carve out mountains to channel water to more areas, basically accelerate what Egypt is doing to spread the green lush from the Nile River.
Make ideal spots for some cities, get a lot of gold out of the ground to prepare to buy the land
Pour all the foundations of the buildings, build lines of rails for public transit and trains. Make sewer system and areas to transport water
Just make it super easier for people to come and build/live there, and if I own it all I can avoid big corporations coming and pushing out growing businesses
Destroy every factory making glue traps, every fur farm, Palantir, NGO group and the like and maybe tunneling through K Street in DC at high speed
Bring my family to safety, destroy every US or proxy owned oilfield, report to marshal kim jong un for further instructions
Making the mother of all power vacuums Jack, can’t fret over each billionaire!
I would create my own Groundhog Day set up. Start learning task A. After 47 hours, fly around the earth to rewind time. Learn for another 47 hours. Repeat process. Learn infinity tasks and become a master at everything. On the last loop win the heart of Andie MacDowell.
Does Superman not age?
Also, sounds kinda lonely
The fuck you would. Not much is stopping you from doing that now, just in a longer timeframe.
You’d be sat here with me and everyone else scrolling your phone for hours, before thinking “Oh yeah I was gonna do that thing…can’t be arsed now”.
If only I had a way to support myself for the next 60 years while I did this, and still be young enough to enjoy it when I’m done.
Maybe the timeframe matters.
Fair enough. Back to scrolling then, like the rest of us.
I can’t conceive of a better answer than this.
Damn, you win.
I would definitely start by sending every NATO leader, every NATO military person, and every unrepentant former NATO military person into the Sun.
Possibly a world tour of grabbing billionaires and far right politicians, Bibi, Putin, Trump, Le Pen, Musk, Murdoch and all the likes, showing them the messes and human suffering they helped creating and hurling them into space or something.
You could show Musky what it’s really like to live on Mars
That’s a pretty good starting list. I don’t know that I’d waste time trying to show them anything; just go straight to disposal.
I, too, was thinking “murder.” It solves only a sort term problem though. Within a few years, you’d just have a new batch.
The system is broken. Capitalism as we practice it is broken; our political systems are broken (some more than others). That won’t be fixed by DXing a bunch of oligarchs.
After the first 12 hours, as chaos is setting in, release a video demanding that all heads of state sign an agreement to limit the wealth of legal entities worldwide, something similar to the existing agreement on minimum 15% tax for corporations. However, this is a wealth-based tax, not income based.
Set minimum limits, e.g.
- No single individual may own or control more than 0.01% of the world’s wealth (0.01% would currently equal around USD 40-50 billion).
- No family may collectively own or control more than 0.05% of the world’s wealth (think the Saudi Royal family).
- Similarly no company’s market capitalisation may exceed 0.05% of the world’s wealth.
If their annual tax submission determines that they exceed those limits, they have 6-12 months to reduce their wealth. Companies can achieve this through splitting the company into smaller legal entities. Individuals may make charitable donations (anywhere in the world) but only to organisations that they can prove they and their family have no financial ties to. Also, the value of any non-profit organisations that they manage will count to wealth controlled by them/their families, to limit options for simply shuffling wealth around.
If they don’t comply, the remainder is 100% taxable, with the tax collected globally based on the location of their wealth. I.e. if they have money sitting in 3 countries, each country can sieze their proportional share of the wealth in that country.
Any head of state that doesn’t comply within 12 hours is added to the hit list. After the first few heads of state drop, the rest will comply quickly.
Most heads of state of western democracies do not have the authority to enact such measures, much less in so short a deadline. And their political opponents will simply drag their feet on any approval process and let you eliminate a rival. Most of the billionaires live in countries without a dictator (quite yet, anyway) who could comply, even if they wanted to.
You’ll need to make it very visible and very real to as many people as possible, and make it sound credible that “shit like this starts up again, and I’ll be back, be excellent to each other or else”
Remember those found-footage style videos that were going around a decade or so ago, where there was this mysterious figure in black who just appeared and was offing criminals in fairly graphic ways? There was speculation that it was a viral ad for some anti-hero superhero movie, but it never materialized.
That’s the way. Be mysterious. Be featureless. Don’t talk. Give them no way to track you after it wears off: appear, do, disappear. Repeat for 48 hours, then disappear.
I still think it wouldn’t last long. The temptations of power and wealth will override any fear; after year, it’ll be back to business as usual. 5 years later, it’d be mostly forgotten.
Now, if you could parse out 48 hours in 2 hour chunks over 12 years, with a couple of “examples” every year at random times, that might have a lasting effect. Do it 4 years in a row, give it a break for 2 or 3 years and let people think it night be over and strike again… that would probably have a more lasting effect. But I still think, at some point after your powers run out a decade or two at most and the shenanigans would start again. Humans believe what they want to believe, and what they’re best at deluding themselves and is “that can’t happen to me.”
Counterpoint: Superman is strong enough that he could raze the system to the ground.
He could certainly degrowth the planet. But, than, we’re well on the way to doing that ourselves.
