LONGECITY

Thought experiment:
We've had Mercedes Benz and BMW technology for a long time. When will it become cheap enough so everyone can buy it? Cuz I think I should have an equal chance to have a good car.

Why is immortality different? If it's a limited resource, and it will be for a long time, how should we determine who gets it and who doesn't?

It seems its because the more expensive things take a little longer to come down in price in general, and they are purposefully made so they dont last forever, and made so that they remain rarer and thereby more expensive, but in time, when electric and clean fuel vehicles take over youll be able to buy all the $1,000 Cadillacs and BMW's in fair to new condition that you want. Its funny though because it seems that if they didnt try to be so greedy that they would actually have more. If everything lasted a lot longer then it would drive down the price of most everything else and they would be living in a world where everything was cheaper and everybody was happy and pursuing the next advance in humanity. Like how farming gave people more time to think and experiment and improve languages and trade and all of that.


Life saving therapies are different though, its hard to demand that everybody get a good cheap Cadillac, but it seems its easier (relative to) to demand and work for and legislate and pass bills mandating that everybody get good affordable health care. As economics teaches us, the cost of health care would remain high with out this regulation because greedy people know that since people demand life saving therapies no matter what, that the concept of supply and demand goes out the window there.

So with a lot of things, supply and demand works pretty well.
Then with some things they are purposefully manipulated to try to rake in a ton of money.
Then with other things they are purposefully manipulated because the demand never goes down.

Therefore it seems that we dont have to worry about the notion that Cadillac price wont come down as an indicator that maybe indefinite life extension therapies wont, because we dont generally mandate the pricing of non essential goods.

Immortality for all who want it! Period.

No, not all. It must be earned / justified.

No it should be provided to everyone.

The future must not be like this in any way. When the technology comes everyone must have an equal chance of become immortal. (Yes it's true the rich will buy it first but it will then become cheap enough so everyone can buy it).

Thought experiment:
We've had Mercedes Benz and BMW technology for a long time. When will it become cheap enough so everyone can buy it? Cuz I think I should have an equal chance to have a good car.

Why is immortality different? If it's a limited resource, and it will be for a long time, how should we determine who gets it and who doesn't?

Because immortality is different then an expensive type of care. When immortality becomes available it's not going to be a product that is a non-essential good. It's going to become something that is essential to have. And if it doesn't become that I imagine there will be all sorts of mass riots protesting against it and to make the government make immortality a right and not a privilege.

Immortality for all who want it! Period.

No, not all. It must be earned / justified.

No it should be provided to everyone.

Why? And more importantly, How? If it took a million dollars per person on average, and there are 7 billion people in the world, we would need 7 quadrillion dollars. Given that this is about a hundred times as much money as there is in the entire world, I'm not sure how that's gonna work out.

Immortality for all who want it! Period.

No, not all. It must be earned / justified.

No it should be provided to everyone.

The problem is that not everyone wants Immortality for everyone. So your dilemma is that if you give Immortality to everyone, you are subjecting a lot of people, perhaps billions, to death. Therefore, Immortality must be earned.
Edited by Forever21, 22 August 2011 - 06:39 AM.

Jesus Christ, with the filtering in place, this thread is much cleaner. Thank God some posts have disappeared.

Immortality for all who want it! Period.

No, not all. It must be earned / justified.

No it should be provided to everyone.

Why? And more importantly, How? If it took a million dollars per person on average, and there are 7 billion people in the world, we would need 7 quadrillion dollars. Given that this is about a hundred times as much money as there is in the entire world, I'm not sure how that's gonna work out.

Well then I suppose it will be survival to the fittest. Those who can get this hypothetical aging treatment will live and those who can't get it will perish. I'm sure there will be a point in time when the entire earth's population can get the cure to aging it's just that the population would have to be a lot smaller.