X-Message-Number: 5260 Date: Sat, 25 Nov 1995 15:11:28 -0500 (EST) From: Robin Helweg-Larsen <> Subject: Re: Future patient care investments I agree with Steve Bridge. We are social animals, and until we stop being so we will be bound to the concepts of trading, of personal and group advantage, of weighing spiritual and material benefits. Roman soldiers stopped being paid in cakes of salt (salarium), but soldiers today still want to get paid. Native Indians gave up trading in beads and wampum, but they still trade. Polynesians may no longer use cowrie shells for currency, but the point is that currency itself is by definition useful only as a medium of exchange, to allow us to trade goods or services that we have a surplus of for others that we have a lack of; or to use our understanding of these present and future market conditions to make investments or to incur liabilities. Well-placed investments today may be shifted into others tomorrow; but they will still be more than sufficient to be traded for our revival from cryostasis in 200 years time. Trading for necessities, for luxuries, for gifts, for knowledge, for sex, for power, and just for fun will be around at least until such an ultimate eventuality as our all becoming part of a single universal intelligence. And why should we stop even then? (But I'll stop here, before futuristic extrapolation collides with Eastern religions....) Always optimistically, Robin HL Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=5260