Dude, I spend way too much time thinking about this kind of thing already. Don't tempt meee...

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Too late! You know you waaaaant to...

To spark off actual conversation: At some point someone's going to say that meta-humans are 'taking jobs from hard-working citizens'. This will be entirely true. How many couriers does a company need when they have a teleporter who can get the jobs of ten humans done in a couple minutes? Significantly less. But can the teleporter be blamed for using his talents to get ahead? Some people are, whether naturally or by dint of effort, faster than others and as such make better couriers, but it's not illegal for them to take jobs. Is it that much different to be that much faster?

H-D

Oh fine, I'll take a stab at it.

Honestly, I think denying any hypothetical "meta-humans" jobs in which they can use their natural-born talents would be rather unfair and stupid. Why should somebody be penalized for doing what they do best?

I wonder what kind of laws would be passed and how they would be enforced... Like, would it be illegal for a telepath to just barge into a person's head without permission? What's the punishment supposed to be for that kind of thing? How do you make sure that behavior is corrected?

Yay for embracing my inner nerdiness. x3

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Remember, though, that the meta-humans would be so good at it that regular humans would soon find themselves out of a job. A bit like how machines are doing more and more of the labor these days while laborers are laid off. That would probably not be illegal, but the average human would not take kindly to the idea that him and pretty much everyone in his division just got laid off because of one guy who can do all their jobs at once, and probably better.

Obviously a telepath just reading the minds of those around them would be illegal - there are privacy laws for one's house and belongings, it follows that one's mind is the same - but how they would be detected and enforced is another matter. They'd probably result in fines or imprisonment (specialized for the psychic) same as any crime, but how would such infractions even be detected? How can the untrained person on the street even tell their mind is being read? If another psychic happened to pass by and detect the intrusion, that's good, but you can't exactly rely on other psychics being nearby.

Then there's the potential for crime. A single super-powered criminal, not necessarily a super-villain but simply a thug with super-strength and bulletproof skin, could single-handedly rob a bank. A lesser power, maybe a low-level pyro, could dominate a street gang, even several street gangs, possibly an entire neighborhood, and without competing gangs to deal with his would own those streets until some other (preferably fireproof) super came by.

And, to throw a wrench in the works, what if really low-level powers were fairly common? Industrial accidents, low-power mutants, what-have-you. An entire group of these might gather together. Ever played City of Heroes? You know the Outcasts? Something like that.

H-D

Guh, sorry for completely disappearing.

Remember, though, that the meta-humans would be so good at it that regular humans would soon find themselves out of a job. A bit like how machines are doing more and more of the labor these days while laborers are laid off. That would probably not be illegal, but the average human would not take kindly to the idea that him and pretty much everyone in his division just got laid off because of one guy who can do all their jobs at once, and probably better.

Hm, true, true...

Obviously a telepath just reading the minds of those around them would be illegal - there are privacy laws for one's house and belongings, it follows that one's mind is the same - but how they would be detected and enforced is another matter. They'd probably result in fines or imprisonment (specialized for the psychic) same as any crime, but how would such infractions even be detected? How can the untrained person on the street even tell their mind is being read? If another psychic happened to pass by and detect the intrusion, that's good, but you can't exactly rely on other psychics being nearby.

Huh. I was just operating under the assumption that anybody would be able to sense a foreign presence. Guess it depends on how mind-reading works in this scenario.

Then there's the potential for crime. A single super-powered criminal, not necessarily a super-villain but simply a thug with super-strength and bulletproof skin, could single-handedly rob a bank. A lesser power, maybe a low-level pyro, could dominate a street gang, even several street gangs, possibly an entire neighborhood, and without competing gangs to deal with his would own those streets until some other (preferably fireproof) super came by.

Guess the police force better get to work recruiting supers, eh? Actually, that makes me wonder... Would mind-reading by the authorities be prohibited? It'd be a pretty serious invasion of privacy and there's a lot of room for abuse, but it would also be pretty useful... Probably need to have a good amount of physical evidence to support your suspicions before you could do anything.

And, to throw a wrench in the works, what if really low-level powers were fairly common? Industrial accidents, low-power mutants, what-have-you. An entire group of these might gather together. Ever played City of Heroes? You know the Outcasts? Something like that.

 

H-D

Unfortunately, I haven't. D=

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Keep in mind that unless superhumans could do everything *exactly* the same amount of "better" for everyone in every possible task, comparative advantage is still going to hold. It's more efficient to specialize and trade.

And I'm pretty sure that there aren't enough superhumans to do everything for everyone--sure, a speedster might be able to do the work of 10 people in a grocery store, but chances are that there are more grocery stores than speedsters, the speedsters usually have better things to do than move stuff around in a grocery store, and anything requiring a forklift is still probably going to require an unpowered human operator (speedsters can't make the forklift go faster).