Well, she’s a girl with principles, when she takes a decision she doesn’t change her mind for sure. I appreciate this at her, she’s a worth protagonist (both strong physically and emotionally). Now I’m curious to see what is with that highly classified folder.

Just when everybody thought Max was out of the comic for good….

“…Okay, that was a bit rash and impulsive. Whoops.”

Annnnd called it.

Congratulations Allison, you’re an idiot. You have now proven than your own moralizing bullshit means more to you than actually helping people. Great job.

Check it out – that’s a brief about Max on the top of the pile. Low blow, Patrick.

I could explain how I feel about Al tearing up the check, or I could just post this image that sufficiently explains my feelings anyway. (Hint, I would Spiderman.)

Seems like a waste. Sure sure, it’s a ‘principles’ thing, but honestly, just take his money and put it towards something ‘good’. No one said you have to talk to the guy.

So, there’s a quote out there attributed to an unnamed Salvation Army officer about donations and their origins: “We would take money from the Devil himself and be only too glad to get it out of his hands and into God’s”.

I get that Alison probably has the overall wherewithal and contacts to set up Valkyrie WITHOUT getting involved with Templar Industries in any way, shape, or form. I also get that there’s probably an argument to be made that association an with Templar Industries could come back to kick her in the keister. For all that, though . . . tearing up that check seems a wee bit self-serving? Those were a LOT of zeroes before the decimal point, and that’s all money she wouldn’t have to beg or borrow from charitable contributions or her more benevolent friends.

Is there something I’m missing, or is this “Alison is human and therefore sometimes makes wrong calls based on emotion”?

I think he likes her.

Always lovely seeing Alison sticking to her moral code, even when it leads her down a harder road.

MAX??????????

Keep in mind everyone, and this is something the man himself has admitted, Patrick is pathologically incapable of doing ANYTHING without some form of strings attached that benefit his need to control everything around him.

The check is no good because it implies the strings are that Valkyrie is heavily indebted to Templar at the very least and, at the most, he probably has an obscure federal law highlighted that donors over a certain monetary amount get a say in how it is spent by the organization, thus giving him control over Valkyrie and an in to manipulate it to his own ends.

And lets face it, given what he’s done to Paladin in the past, can you really believe he wouldn’t try a different way of keeping her down if he could?

The files are… a tad more nebulous because the most likely string there is “and now you’re looking out for the conspiracy I believe in too, which would benefit me if you managed to root it out”. There may be more to it than that, of course, but it’s nowhere near the naked power grab the check is so you can at least humor it a little bit.

*Looks at the “Prospective business associates” thing* And…there’s the stick.

PR statement, “While the Templar robots were once used by the villain Menace, That is long behind us and Templar is now a good corporate citizen. At Templar we put these technologies to good economic use. As part of our positive progress and with the biodynamic community and the world in general in mind we make this contribution to the Valkyrie project. We at Templar hope that all women can walk safely in the world, knowing that not only is Templar industries no longer controller by Menace but now positively supporting organizations such as Valkyrie.”

Do you think Paladin also tears apart the checks she receives from Templar Industries?

Moreover, he is researching by reading the minds of people smarter than him who are specialists in relevant fields. Lisa is developing AI by directly tapping into a supernatural power of unknown origin and purpose.

I like this point. A lot.
In fact, when combined with the possibility of Paladin developing technology to detect psionic activity…
Yeah, this makes a lot of sense.
Neat.

What would happen if a large group of people saw her carrying the burned and beaten corpse of a civilian?

Nothing, as it turns out. To the public she will always be Mega Girl and to the authorities she will always be a walking potential extinction event who should not be annoyed with needless questioning.

Oh, I like that one!

Is Max… super?

I think I mentioned that trope last strip. 🙂

That’s not how people actually work in the real world.

People respond to incentive structures. If you incentivise them to do good, they will try to do good. If you punish them for doing good, they won’t.

This is why the recidivism rate for convicted criminals is so high. They can be as atonement-filled as they want, if finding a job or existing in society is as hard as it is, most of them will just say ‘fuck it’ and go back to crime.

Well, as the whole Menace thing is still a secret, and the check is made out by the new CEO, I’m guessing not much.

There is no evidence that Templar still operates on the proceeds of crime. The sketchiest thing we’ve seen Patrick do with our 3rd person omniscience powers is trade some money for some information with some agents of the Chinese government. That Patrick still has criminal connections is obvious, but there is no evidence that it is effecting the company. Patrick has an incentive to not rock the boat anymore, since a new investigation might discover that he’s still alive.

Nor can I imagine there would be any evidence. If your boss can read your mind, good luck whistle-blowing even if it was happening.

Templar in fact has already had anything the government was going to do to it done to it when Menace fell the first time. At that point they had carte-blanche to do whatever they wanted – about 10 seconds could have convinced Congress to declare it a terrorist organization and appropriate assets. As far as the government and the public is concerned Menace is dead, and Templar is reformed.

As to what actions they could take if they wanted to, many and varied. They could shut the charity down, but they would have to prove that the charity knew the money was stolen or corrupt when they received it, which isn’t happening without Allison’s testimony, and she speaks for the angels as far as the populace is concerned. They also have no way to compel her testimony.

That’s not even getting into the fact that the social justice scene exists in this world as well, seemingly even moreso, and so attacking a charity which supports and protects battered women is a hilariously bad idea from a political perspective unless you have diamond hard evidence. Even then you’re looking at a huge political backlash. Add in Mega Girl and Paladin to the list of people you’re fucking with and this spells political suicide with a capital P.

Again, you are assuming that the rest of the world knows what we know about Allison’s first person perspective. They don’t.

Then don’t shred the evidence, I guess.

If the authorities find out that Templar is doing illegal stuff, that check could be proof that they intended to launder money, so they can pin an additional charge on Templar, Al Capone style.

If you want to run a charity but never take any money from rich people, I have some bad news for you.

Also if you are more concerned with punishment and treating people who have been assholes like you believe they deserve, instead of actually achieving results, your charity isn’t going to end up very effective.

Look at the pushback from the current way the social justice movement operates. The confrontational everything-you-are-is-wrong attitude is pushing as many people away as it is getting people involved. Black Lives Matter is a great example of this problem – the confrontational angle taken to an absolute extreme such that they are tanking their public reputation. Part of this of course is the issue with an open movement – anyone can claim to be a part of it, and so you have rotten apples spoiling the whole bunch – but it especially holds true for new and still weak organizations.

Again, I’m not talking about what you would consider morality here. I’m talking about effectiveness. You’re falling into the same dark hole that those people in the 1970’s did when they created the current ‘tough on crime’ prison system- you’re caring more about punishing the guilty then on actually convincing them to change or in being effective at your goal (reducing crime/discrimination).

As much as I hate to Godwin, this is the attitude which led to the Treaty of Versailles, which placed the entire burden and blame on the German people for the first World War. They also wanted to punish the ‘evil’ side of the conflict, and argued that they had to pay for the wrongs they had committed. They used many of the same arguments you are espousing now.

That treaty was a direct cause of the social unrest and financial collapse of Germany in the next decade. That feeling of being downtrodden, the feeling that they were being made to pay for the actions of others, that nothing they do will even meet the burden imposed upon them.

It was in that environment that a charismatic leader emerged, promising jobs, the disenfranchisement and expulsion of the underclass which he claimed was causing the cultural and financial issues, along with punishment to their enemies and a reclaiming of the glory and traditions of the past.

That man was Adolf Hitler.

And does that description of his sound familiar at all?

I’ll give you a hint, it has a bad toupee, it’s orange, and it wants to build a wall.

Again, I hate to Godwin, but this line of thinking has been tried before many times, and it always leads to the same point. Resentment, recrimination, and pushback. You can’t keep battering people with how horrible they are and expect them to respond positively. Maybe a very tiny percent will, but the vast majority of people do not work that way.

At some point, someone has to forgive and trust, or we both just start slamming the ‘defect’ buttons on our prisoner’s dilemmas for all eternity, and everybody is worse off. This is basic game theory. This is why the US won the Space Race, because they adopted and forgave German scientists who worked for the Nazi’s on U2 bombs and missile weapons, who then went directly to work for the US Space Program. Look at the history of Wehrner von Braun for an example of that. There are times when this can go too far, and for that look at what happened to some of the Japanese biowar researchers, but that’s realpolitik and a bit different.

My point is that the concept of forgiveness needs to at least be thinkable.

I’m a consequentialist. I judge what is moral based on the expected and actual outcomes of a decision. I believe the decision which leads to the best outcome for the most people is the one that is the most moral. I flip the switch on the trolly problem everytime. As that green-blooded hobgoblin said “The needs of the many far outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.”

Effectiveness is what ultimately matters – if you have set your goal, if you’ve accepted that goal as an axiom and that it is a thing worth pursuing, you should be doing whatever you can to reach that goal in a way that maximizes benefit and minimizes harm. This can be a problem if you have very shitty goals, but that’s a different argument entirely. Everyone tries to accomplish their goals in one way or another, but many go about it in a way that ‘feels right’ and not one which is actually effective.