I still don’t understand why housing is a problem. Aside from some number of homeless, everyone who got dusted lived somewhere. Plus we’re expected to believe that a non-trivial number of Snap Survivors died from other things post-Snap. Yes, some babies would have been born but they’re presumably not renting their own apartments. The total number of households after the second Snap should, if anything, be lower than it was before Thanos snapped since those lost to post-Snap calamity wouldn’t have been replaced.
Furthermore, many households where someone DID get Snapped would still have surviving people in that household so it’s not as though 50% of the residences became vacant. There should be just as much square footage of residential space post-Banner than there was pre-Thanos only potentially less people to fill them.
Personally, I think people underestimate the death toll post snap. Half of the transportation workers, half of the power grid staff, water, communications, healthcare, manufacturing, the inevitable stock market crash, you can’t just scale these things down 50% overnight, a lot of infrastructure will grind to a halt. Suicide, homicide, resource conflict.
Tony Stark insisted that nothing change from the last 5 years, because he was, justifiably, terrified of unmaking his daughter, but without undoing the aftermath of the snap, a whole lot of people are going to return to a world that can’t support them.
Look at all the economic and sociopolitical problems covid created and that was just 6 million deaths globally. Or the impact of the war in Ukraine on various global economies. Or what depopulation does to a city like Detroit over decades, let alone instantaneously.
You have 5 billion people showing up in homes that are now occupied by other people. Or maybe their old home was abandoned for half a decade.
They will all be unemployed and will need to find jobs.
Demand for EVERYTHING will suddenly drive prices up for everyone.
And there simply might not be enough food to feed all of the unblipped. Farmers presumably didn’t keep production levels the same in the event 5 billion people suddenly returned. Crops take time to grow.
Canonically, half of every living thing was Snapped. Thus the return of your neighbor included the return of numerous cows and chickens and corn stalks and apple trees. The MCU never went into the logistics, but Spider-Man didn’t start with widespread famine so it seems that the Stones were able to accommodate the intent.
I guess that’s not really the point of the story (outside of certain plot points in Spider Man, Falcon & The Winter Soldier, Wandavision, etc, It’s not meant to be a realistic portrayal of the societal impact of half the people in the world vanishing.
In contrast to HBO’s The Leftovers where humanity experiences a similar unexplained phenomenon where a mere 2% of the population “blips”.
But what evidence we have to base “Was this ethical?” from is from the MCU and so, from the MCU, we see no indication that the nearly godlike power of the Stones just left 5bil people homeless and starving. So I don’t think it’s a negative consideration in regards to whether or not it was the right choice.
Well, this raises a question I’ve had before, if half the pollinators and half the soil biota randomly went, wouldn’t that mean a lot of the plant life that’s left won’t last?
I know this drifts from the question in the OP to the plot hole that is the snap, but I’m genuinely curious about it. I know some microorganisms would be likely to rebound rapidly, but the imbalance might cause other problems.
They very clearly showed us in the movie that people had in no way moved, as you put it, on. And I’m not just talking about Clint’s murder spree - there was that whole group therapy session, people at the memorial, and other little hints.
You know there used to be (or there still might be)a youtube guy that was a comics historian (its been ages ) whose name I forget but he had a tagline where if something was illogical or just didn’t make sense if you thought about it for 30 seconds hed go " Because comics!"
I think the writers took the “because comics/movies” route because well that’s how it works for that type movie …you’re not expected to think that deeply about it so they didn’t write like that
“The Infinity Gems (previously known as “Soul Gems”) are some of the most powerful artifacts in the Universe. Each one allows its owner extreme control over one aspect of the universe: time, space, reality, mind, power, and soul. When all six are directly wielded together, nothing is impossible for their bearer.” - https://www.marvel.com/items/infinity-gems
This being the case, everything could have been reset so as not to screw up the present when Stark used the stones for the second snap. Equally likely, he could arrange for the convenient reappearance of the good guys in the immediate proximity at the climax instead of where they were originally snapped.
This is just a trolley problem in disguise, except the stakes are absurd. It’s literally unmurdering half an infinite universe worth of people. Of course you do it.
At the end of the day, I can only really consider this using comic book logic.
I imagine a character in the MCU who has gathered the Infinity Stones. This character isn’t out for power. They’re just a disciple of Thanos, and the only thing they want is to keep the stones away from anybody who might undo the Mad Titan’s horrific crime.
This character would be a villain. The heroes would stop them.
There’d probably be a scene where somebody (maybe Uatu the Watcher) posits that nothing should be undone, that the universe must move forward. Maybe something about logistics or whatever. Doesn’t really matter, because the only purpose of that scene would be to crystallize the heroic resolve of the protagonists. And to give somebody like Captain America a chance to say something like, “I have faith in the people of earth. In the peoples of every planet in the universe. I have faith that they’ll open their arms to their loved ones and rally around those in need.”
Everyone would nod solemnly. Uatu would admit that he has, today, learned something about these strange creatures called humans. Then they’d go defeat that villain.
I would say '80s… I just read Watchmen and will shortly start The Dark Knight Returns. I’ve heard these two were the specific trendsetters.
Although characters like Lex Luthor and J. Jonah Jameson have probably expressed the anti-super sentiment for even longer. Dunno when Marvel introduced the Friends of Humanity / Mutant Registration Act.
On a smaller scale, I could see some arguing it might be immoral, lead to starvation, etc. The revived might suffer trauma for their part. But on a universal scale there’s no way to know the full disruptive consequences, and traditional comic book virtue ethics handwave away such nuances anyways.
As opposed to doing a whole lot more with the stones, well that’s a more complicated topic.
It’s a trolley problem, not the trolley problem. There are many, many variations of the original.
The basic dilemma of a trolley problem is choosing between two states; action and inaction. Action carries explicit culpability, inaction carries implicit culpability. In our hypothetical, I have the means to undo the snap. That’s the lever. My choices are
Action: pull the lever and restore the lives of half the universe, but accept direct responsibility for whatever suffering the unsnappening causes.
Inaction: Do nothing, but gain implicit culpability for all the lives I could have saved.
Both choices suck, but the sheer quantity of lives you could save by pulling the lever makes it difficult to justify inaction.
You could undo the snap and return all those people to life. Additionally, you will be able to do so in a way that perfectly reintegrates every single person into their respective societies.
The only negative is that you will also be consigning me, Johnny Bravo, to having a mild itch in that really hard to reach part of my back for the rest of my life.
The problem with this is that there didn’t have to be any consequences - the unsnap could have also reset the timeline to 5 seconds after the snap; almost no impact on a widespread scale. This wasn’t done at Tony Stark’s insistence that his life not be impacted, so screw everyone else in the entire universe.
Sure, absolutely. But that gets into all sorts of extra problems. The unsnap could have done literally anything. It could’ve remade the universe to get rid of hate or poverty or bedbugs. What are the moral obligations wrapped up in a single moment of omnipotence? That’s a real rabbit hole of its own.