X-Message-Number: 10912
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 1998 10:53:17 +0100
From:  (John de Rivaz)
Subject: re: Money - taking it with you

This message got garbled, so here is is again:

One thing that money can do at the moment is make it possible for you to
have like minded people around you.

When you are born, you have absolutely no control over your environment at
all. You just about start to get some control over physical objects when you
are sent to school. Probably the school chosen is chosen on the grounds that
it is the one nearest your parents' home. You have to get on with those
around you or live in misery. You leave school and have to get a job in
order to live. Again, you may not particularly like those people around you
or even what the job entails. You have to chose somewhere to live. You may
not like the neighbours. You choice will be limited by the job you
have got. Eventually after most of your life is over you have enough money
to retire.

* You may have done quite well, and have enough money to buy a home with
some land around and maybe even some surplus accomodation, possibly in
additional houses in this land. Maybe you can then chose who lives in this
extended environment, ie you chose who you live with who your friends are
etc. You can afford products from the Life Extension Foundation
<http://www.lef.org> to keep you fit for as long as possible, until such
time as you may need to go into a private nursing home, where you have your
own suite so that you can maintain your privacy. You can afford
crypreservation arrangements.

If you have not done well, then you remain in the house with neighbours you
may not like until you get too old and enfeebled to carry on, at which tinme
you are put into a local nursing home to await the grim reaper. You may or
may not get on with those around you - just like the school. Eventually the
state decides what to do with your "remains" when a minimalist elderly care
system gives up on your viability and you perish. Their decision will be
based on a choice limited between rotting or burning.

^ If instead at the point where you reach the age you can leave home you get
some money by reason of good luck, either by inheritance or a win at the
lottery, you can sidestep most of this misery and go straight to the
paragraph started with a *.

The future, of course, will be different because the products of the LEF etc
will not cost as much money as they do today. (Indeed they may cost nithing
if there is no money) But someone without any influence at all is not going
to be able to follow the * paragraph for all eternity.

If money does not exist in the future little will be lost by trying to send
some there. The argument is the same as asking can people be sent to the
future by cryopreservation. Cryopreservation of people may not work. We all
know that. But that doesn't stop us from trying.

Similarly preservation of money may not work. But that should not stop us
from trying to engineer something similar to the paragraph marked ^ if we
are reanimated. Investment in technology will do it assuming the notion of
money does persist. If money persists and such an investment is not
successful we won't be reanimated to see the failure - the technology to do
it will never appear.

My own analysis suggests that a very rough figure of growth will be a factor
of ten every decade. So if the first revivals occur in 50 years, then every
dollar so invested will have become $(10^5)=$100,000. Inflation depends a
lot on the nature of government, ie the politico-legal axis. It could go so
high that technological growth stops, and we won't therefore get revived to
observe the fact. A figure of 5% reduces this investment result to a little
under $10,000 (1.05^50=11.47) - still a substantial growth. Aiming at a
target of a ten million dollars in terms of present day money ($1m in future
terms taking these assumptions) reanimation funds invested in technology
should be of the order of $100 per person. Now who can seriously suggest
that the loss to cryonics organisations' bequests from members of $100 is a
serious burden? Indeed members could provide a lot more than this and still
provide no such burden - my calculations are very rough and obviously
reality could vary enormously either way and still provide reanimations.

A question I would put up for speculation is if money ceases to exist, how
can a member of a society without money put himself in a location he wants
to be in, do what he wants to do and gather the people around him he wants
around him?

-- 
Sincerely,     * Longevity Report:  http://www.longevb.demon.co.uk/lr.htm
John de Rivaz  * Fractal Report:    http://www.longevb.demon.co.uk/fr.htm
**************** Homepage:http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JohndeR
    In the information age, sharing can increase world wealth enormously,
        because giving information does not decrease your information.

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