Gotham being corrupt should make it even easier for a billionaire like Wayne to control things, because as we see in real life, it doesn't take all that much money to influence politicians. There's nothing stopping Wayne from bribing the shit out of everyone to do non-evil things, then once Gotham is in a more stable place, bankroll campaigns for politicians that aren't corrupt. He could literally drain the swamp by backfilling it with money, but instead he decides to run around at night in his little gimp suit punching poor people

Isn’t that a massive indictment of Batman’s entire modus operandi though? That there can be a terrifying lunatic who will beat you up with his little finger if you even think of doing a crime, and yet crime and corruption is worse than in every other city?

I do think there's some merit to paying those kids of people enough via the state that they're less likely to need or want to be corrupt in order to make ends meet.

Of course there are people who would still use that to live their life in luxury at the expense of others but I believe that'd generally be a minority

Weirdly, when I watched the first season of Gotham, the GCPD was pronouncedly less corrupt than your typical municipal police department in the United States. The difference is GCPD was on the take by the Falcione family, but IRL police departments are the crime syndicate, themselves.

(This is a product partially of too much fighting with the Prohibition-era mob syndicates through the later 20th century until RICO laws were established, but now the mafia families are vastly reduced in power, the police unions took over. It's why we shrug off four-to-five officer-involved killings of innocent civilians every day, most of whom are unarmed and not resisting when the officer decides to escalate to unaliving them.)

At that point I realized even Gotham is copaganda, and the Batman/DC Cinematic Universe has little to do with what IRL looks like. Which is a shame, because DC could do better.