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In the latest chapter of humankind's ongoing quest to prove that we can't have nice things, people are now turning on a great American hero: Batkid. Specifically, some people are mad that a 5-year-old leukemia patient's wish to be Batman for a day reportedly cost the city of San Francisco $105,000. What they fail to realize is that money was actually spent to make the rest of us happy.
If you look around on social media and on Twitter, you might notice a few people grumbling about the cost, saying $105,000 "could save ~50-70 lives if spent on bednets," that it was "an enormous waste of public resources," or simply "a poor use of money." What Batkid's detractors fail to realize is that fulfilling the wish of Miles Scott would not have been as expensive if we hadn't all been swept up by it. The $105,000 figure refers to the money spent by the city of San Frisco, not the Make-a-Wish Foundation. And it was not money spent "on Batkid" — the money was largely spent on all the people who wanted to take part in rare and genuine moment of human kindness.
When crowds gathered at City Hall to see Batkid get a ceremonial key to the city, San Francisco had to deploy more cops and sanitation workers and to accomodate everyone. Make-a-Wish had originally estimated 500 volunteers would show up. The actual crowd was closer to 20,000. So the city ordered up things that weren't part of Scott's wish, like large video screens, speakers so that people could hear the ceremony, and a crew to clean up after the crowds.