Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

The Joke

Lex Luthor confronts Superman, arguing that since Superman has super-strength, super-speed, and super-integrity, why does he not also have "super-ethics"? Superman says he already has plenty of ethics since he saves lots of people. Lex introduces the concept of "emergent properties" -- qualities of things that are not apparent until you have them in great quantity. You cannot predict the behavior of an ocean from a molecule of water, or predict an economy from a single human. So with a huge amount of ethics, Superman should behave qualitatively differently.

Lex points out that Superman has caused collateral damage to innocent people during battles with supervillains. Superman dismisses these as emergent properties of his "goodness." Lex replies that Superman is not God and cannot excuse collateral damage that way. He argues that every time Superman fights a villain, humans get less self-reliant, caring less for themselves and expecting more from Superman. Superman asks what would happen if a great villain arose, and Lex says they would not even try to fight -- they would just wait for Superman. Superman objects: "But suppose I was the villain?" Lex replies: "This is screwed up, man. I was just trying to do a little evil. You've gone way beyond." Superman threatens to tell everyone about Lex's argument, and the final panel shows a newspaper headline: "Evil Supervillain Proposes That Superman Should Not Rule World!"

The Humor

The comic takes a genuine philosophical critique of Superman -- that an all-powerful being who imposes his will on the world might actually be harmful to human autonomy and development -- and puts it in the mouth of Lex Luthor, who is supposed to be the villain. The irony is that Lex is making a perfectly reasonable ethical argument about dependency, moral hazard, and the danger of concentrating power in a single being, but because he is a known villain, his argument will be dismissed. The newspaper headline at the end perfectly captures this: a completely reasonable proposition ("Superman should not rule the world") is presented as villainous simply because a villain said it. The concept of emergent properties is used cleverly to argue that massive power requires qualitatively different ethical reasoning, not just more of the same ethics.

References

The comic references the DC Comics characters Superman and Lex Luthor. The concept of "emergent properties" comes from philosophy of science and systems theory -- it describes how complex systems exhibit properties that their individual components do not possess (e.g., consciousness emerging from neurons, or wetness emerging from water molecules). The broader philosophical argument echoes critiques of benevolent dictatorship and the concept of moral hazard in economics, where protection from consequences encourages riskier behavior.