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1938 Superman Comic Sells For $1M
slasher999 writes in to note a new world record sale for a comic: an instance of Action Comics #1, 1938, sold for $1 million at auction. Both the buyer and the seller remain anonymous. This comic marked the first time a superhero went to work in a city, and the first time a man flew without mechanical aid.
Superman is not a man. He is an alien from the planet Krypton. So this is NOT "the first time a man flew without mechanical aid."
You're absolutely right. Well, presumably he had the retconned ability to fly at the time.
Not totally convinced by the argument that flight was a cost reduction thing for the animated series though. This was pretty high quality work, and flying would mean they couldn't use the rotoscoping technique they used for most of the animation.
An example of this would be a hypothetical economy where the value of products and services is determined by the resources (labor, energy and and raw materials) required for providing said products and services.
I've heard that argument before, and it's never been convincing. The first major problem that comes to mind is that under such a system, an old 26" black-and-white CRT television set would be worth roughly the same as a modern 56" LCD. Likewise, a Chinese knockoff of an iPhone would be worth exactly the same as the genuine article, even though it's complete crap. Your system makes no allowance for depreciation, or differences in quality. The other problem is that your system encourages inefficiency and laziness. If you take 10 hours and $5 in raw materials to make a chair, and I take 50 hours and $20 in raw materials to make a shittier chair, I can sell my product for a much higher price even though yours is actually superior.
Of course, the biggest problem is that nobody has the right to tell me what I can charge for my product, or what I can pay for yours. Implementing your "hypothetical economy" would require a regime more oppressive than the old USSR. I, for one, have no interest in seeing Orwell's vision brought to life.
> If we actually entered a post-apocalyptic world where the
> dollar was useless, you'd quickly find gold to be equally useless
No, that doesn't follow.
There have been many situations in history (frequently involving the near-certain imminent collapse of a government) wherein currency rapidly lost all its value. In each and every case, gold was still valuable.
Gold is inherently rare. Nobody knows how to make counterfeit gold. Unless some brilliant physicist discovers an affordable way to do transmutation, that's always going to be the case.
Gold also has a distinctive appearance that makes it easy to tell apart from other metals, even at a glance. ("Fool's gold" may look sort of like it might possibly contain gold ore, but you can't refine it and get anything that looks even vaguely like refined gold.)
These features give gold a durable value that has outlasted innumerable currencies and governments.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.