X-Message-Number: 1298 Date: Mon, 12 Oct 92 10:48:19 EDT From: (Perry E. Metzger) Subject: CRYONICS unbundling >From: Thomas Donaldson <> >Dear Perry Metzger: >Switzerland also has a rule against perpetuities, which means that >any arrangement you make with them will ultimately fail. That is ONE >purpose of a cryonic society. Of course, you could simply have the money held by a company in a place like Liechtenstein (sp?) or a similar place that has no rule against perpetuities. >As for professional management of a trust fund, I would suggest (and I >do think this would be an improvement) that Alcor's Suspension Fund be >managed by a normal trust fund manager (Union Bank of Switzerland?). >But ultimately Alcor would be responsible for it. >As for unbundling, the problem isn't with unbundling ESSENTIALLY. It's >with the currently small number of cryonics activists. Unbundling would >cause a LARGE increase in workload. As I said before, if you want to >become a cryonics activist, go to it. So issues comparing us to Chrysler >just aren't relevant. Would it actually cause a large increase in the workload? Why? >From what I can tell, there are only a few real sources of work in cryonics -- suspensions, maintainance, handling administrative details, and managing funds. Suspensions are already being contracted out by Alcor, at least partially. There is no reason why having a suspension organization as part of a cryonics organization would reduce workload. Maintaining people in dewars is not exactly a taxing task -- it mostly just requires physical security and a steady supply of LN2. Administrative details of signup is a biggie, but I don't see that this in and of itself justifies having a monolithic organization -- certainly organizations like Alcor could handle just this and contract out every other detail of what they do. Managing funds is done on a routine basis for large individual trusts without the money having to be part of large pools, and banks seem to handle this without any real problem. The point about small numbers of patients is correct, but I would argue that the number could grow dramatically if we started to look a lot more professional. Contracting out services to pro organizations or unbundling would add to our appearance of professionalism. "No, you aren't giving your money to crackpots -- you are putting it in trust for yourself with a famous bank. You are going to be suspended by a professional emergency medical services organization." This sort of thing will do a lot more for people's confidence than anything else you can name... Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1298