Thanosnomics: The Economics of the Avengers Finger Snap


Warning: this post contains spoilers for the movie "Avengers: Infinity War."

Thanos, the space warlord titan of the Avengers universe had a supposedly perfect plan to bring balance to the universe. With all of the Infinity Stones in his possession, his single snap at the end of the movie eliminated half of all sentient life in the Marvel Universe. While this outcome did not "feel so good" for those eliminated by the snap, the real balance of the universe still was unachieved because of the economics behind this half extinction. This curiosity led me to something surprisingly quite established: Thanosian Economics or Thanosnomics. 

The rationale behind Thanos' plan draws heavily from the economist Robert Malthus who proposed the idea that the human populations grows exponentially while food supply sees linear growth. As a result, the finite resources will result in a decline in economy, otherwise known as the Malthusian Trap. This occurs when supply and demand for resources pushes past the equilibrium and the economy can no longer sustain the population. Thus, Thanos' idea actually has some theoretical ground. However, just from simple math on population growth, this effect would be reversed in 38 years. 

Looking further, it would significantly impact specialized and skilled labor companies. There would be a hard loss of institutional knowledge and skill sets, which would significantly impact firms in technology, medicine, etc. With the labor force, half of the Federal Reserve would be gone as well so in the case of financial crisis, there would be little insurance. In terms of real estate, demand for houses would plummet while supply would go up, so the price of housing would drop significantly. While this seems like a plus on paper, this is reminiscent of the 2007-08 financial crisis in which the housing market significantly suffered and was devalued.

So from an economic standpoint, this snap is a poor decision, as even the positives are replaced rather quickly if the whole population doesn't topple before that. However, some more economically viable alternatives could be to use the power of the Infinity Stones to just double the planet's resources, and use the power to generate more energy, food, etc. While there would certainly be some negative consequences, it would play out to be significantly more balanced than wiping out half of existence. 

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