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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jian" data-source="post: 9595402" data-attributes="member: 78087">Yes, exactly. And while the IM films for instance have a certain amount of this, it’s really best that we don’t regard money, science, technological development, or techbros as somehow magical in that Objectivist way. They’re very real and affect us directly, we can’t pretend they’re magical.For instance, IRL billionaires often use some version of a financial strategy known as “buy borrow die”. You first buy a lot of stock (usually in your own company) and then use it as collateral to borrow money from the bank, rather than spend any money of your own. This also means that the borrowings can be offset against any taxes for your heirs when you die.(It’s more complicated than that, but bear with me.)Thus, assuming Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne are similar to IRL billionaires, they don’t have much cash lying around, Scrooge McDuck style - their net worth is based on the value of Stark or Wayne stock* and they just borrow money from banks when they want it. It’s generally estimated that even Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos can’t borrow more than half a billion a year or so this way for non-business purposes** (which building Iron Man suits or Batmobiles would definitely count as) and they can’t reasonably embezzle much money from their companies (which, as publicly traded companies, have massive amounts of oversight which prevents this).*They can of course sell stock to make money but that devalues the stock and annoys the board so they generally won’t.**They can borrow more for business purposes - expanding or starting new businesses etc - but that usually requires partners and oversight and you have to show something for it.This means that Tony can’t match the defence development budget of even a single new fighter for his suits. No doubt his genius can make up a lot of the gap, but that also means his IM suits will generally cost less than a modern fighter to make and sell. If he wanted to sell it and if the USAF wanted to buy it, they would.</blockquote>

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