In the first episode of the second season of The Boys (Prime Video, 2020), Homelander walks into the office of Stan Edgar, CEO of Vought International, to complain about Stormfront’s signing and to hint that he will leave when his contract runs out. Edgar does not raise his voice. He explains that Homelander is under a misconception: Vought is not a superhero company but a pharmaceutical one, and its most valuable asset is not him but the confidential formula for Compound V, the substance that gives the powers and which Homelander, Edgar reminds him, released into the wild. The man who can kill with a look is told what he is worth on a balance sheet by a man with no powers at all. That reasoning, in which every piece has a price and every risk a cost, is the one Gary Becker turned into a theory of crime.
// The theoryCrime as a rational decision
In 1968, the economist Gary Becker published “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach”, work that contributed to his 1992 Nobel Prize in Economics. Becker proposed treating crime like any other economic decision: a person offends if the expected benefit exceeds the expected cost, which is the probability of punishment multiplied by its severity. For Becker, offenders are no different from anyone else: they respond to incentives. His model has been applied with particular force to white-collar and corporate crime, where decisions are made in offices, with spreadsheets.
Every death, a cost
Edgar embodies Becker’s model in its coldest form. For him, Vought’s crimes are not crimes but line items: the risk of Compound V being discovered, the cost of compensation for dead civilians, the benefit of military contracts. As long as the probability of punishment is low and the benefit enormous, the equation works. And it is low because Vought buys politicians, controls the media and has the only people who could stop it on the payroll. Corporate crime works like that: no hatred is needed, it only has to pay.
// The subjectThe power of having no powers
In a series full of beings capable of destroying cities, the most fearsome character is a businessman with no powers. Edgar never raises his voice. He dominates Homelander not with force but by reminding him he is replaceable, and that is his form of violence. He is also a pure pragmatist: he shares neither Stormfront’s racism nor Homelander’s narcissism. They bother him because they are bad for business. His entire morality comes down to the bottom line.
The series gives him few scenes, and in all of them he is calculating. Vought injects Compound V into babies with their parents’ paid consent. In the first episode of the second season, Edgar places Stormfront in the Seven without consulting Homelander, and two episodes later, after the massacre in the apartment building, he praises her at a televised press conference: a heroine who points at threats is good for business. At Sage Grove, a psychiatric center run by a Vought subsidiary, adults are injected with experimental versions of the compound to stabilize it, and Annie finds emails from Edgar celebrating a “breakthrough”. When Stormfront’s Nazi past leaks at the end of the season, Edgar halts his plan to sell Compound V: the risk has changed sign. In the third season, Homelander, with Victoria Neuman’s help, pushes him out of the company, and Edgar loses his position, though not his life.
Stan Edgar
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// The crackCompanies do not calculate alone
Becker’s model has been criticized for assuming a rationality few people have: most offenders do not calculate probabilities, and many act on impulse. Edgar, who does calculate, would be the exception that confirms the criticism.
And in corporate crime the problem is different: the decision is made not by an individual but by an organization in which each person does a part and no one feels responsible for the whole. The criminology of corporate crime, since Sutherland, emphasizes company culture as much as its director’s calculation. Edgar is an effective symbol, but Vought offends even when he is not around.
Changing the equation
If corporate crime responds to incentives, the answer is to change those incentives: fines proportional to the profits obtained, criminal liability for legal persons, real protection for whistleblowers and independent oversight. Research shows that certainty of punishment deters more than its severity. Vought was untouchable because nobody really believed it could pay for anything.
Three key ideas
- Becker’s economic model (1968) explains crime as a rational decision: people offend if the expected benefit exceeds the probability of punishment multiplied by its severity.
- Stan Edgar runs Vought, hides Compound V, experiments with it, profits from the fear of supervillains and treats each victim as a cost.
- The crack: few people calculate like that, and corporate crime is the work of a whole organization, not only its director.
Sources · further reading
- Becker, G. S. (1968). “Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach”. Journal of Political Economy, 76(2), 169-217.
- Sutherland, E. H. (1949). White Collar Crime. Dryden Press.
- Simpson, S. S. (2002). Corporate Crime, Law, and Social Control. Cambridge University Press.
- Nagin, D. S. (2013). “Deterrence in the Twenty-First Century”. Crime and Justice, 42(1), 199-263.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Stan Edgar?
Stan Edgar is a villain from The Boys, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. Homelander can kill anyone with a look.
Why does Stan Edgar become a villain?
Gary Becker saw crime as a sum of costs and benefits. Stan Edgar, Vought’s boss in The Boys, does that sum without powers or violence: every victim is a line item and every hero an asset.
Which criminological theory explains Stan Edgar?
Stan Edgar's case is analysed through Economic model of crime. Gary Becker’s economic model of crime (1968) treats crime as a rational decision: someone offends when the expected benefit exceeds the expected cost, which depends on the probability of being punished and the severity of the punishment. Stan Edgar, of The Boys (Prime Video, 2019-2026), is the CEO of Vought International. Under his leadership, the company hides that superheroes owe their powers to Compound V, a substance injected into babies, and profits from the fear of supervillains, created with the Compound V that Homelander leaked to terrorist groups, to sell its “supes” to the military. Edgar is not violent; he is a manager who treats each victim as a figure on a balance sheet.
