X-Message-Number: 9635
Date: Wed, 06 May 1998 15:53:48 +0100
From: John de Rivaz <>
Subject: Jim Halperin's Initiative
I think it is a good thing that people with money put up projects of their
own rather than simply give it to a central concentration point. This
produces a diversity of ideas that is never available from a committee
managing other peoples' money (which is what the concentration point would
be).
I recall a space opera story where humans were fighting aliens (what
else is space opera about?!) and both sides were equally matched and
committee/computer controlled, producing a stalemate. The humans eventually
won by putting a nutter in charge who fired almost at random and the
resulting kerfuffle ended with the humans gaining the upper hand.
That is, I suppose, why socialism and communism produced poor results
compared to capitalism. The latter allows individual actions to be taken.
Would communism ever have produced PCs, for example?
Having said all that, I do however take sides with those who think the
Halperin initiative as initially proposed will fail. I would imagine that
Jim Halperin will take note of the careful articles that have appeared on
the subject and possibly consider something else, now or in the future. Some
other ideas have already appeared, but I can throw a couple into the melting
pot.
1. Invest a sum of money in an offshore trust in a country free of capital
gains tax, and when this has grown to a suitable amount start funding
research at $1m/yr for 10 years, as was proposed for Prometheus. If you
don't want to bother to pick companies, choose a technology based mutual
fund or unit trust. For research to produce a successful suspended animation
protocol general technology will still need to advance substantially from
its position now anyway. That advance will cause an increase in technology stock
quotations. If a half a million dollars were invested initially, 8 years at the
same rate of growth we have seen over the past three ought to do it. A single
individual would be allowed to do this, - the legal profession would want a big
cut if someone wanted to take and concentrate contributions to invest, which is
why I understand that regretfully Prometheus could not run like this. I do not
know the costs of setting up and
running a trust in a
CGT free country, though. It may be prohibitive, but perhaps not in the
context of half a million dollars to start with.
Admittedly it is being very optimistic to expect the same rate of growth to
continue for such a period, but there are good indicators, for example the
20,000 to 1 increase in pharmaceutical new drug screening due to chemical
lab automation.
Eight years on it should be cheaper to do the research, as the growth in
technology stock prices is due to genuine wealth creation, not inflationary
pressures and exploitation of the markets by artificially creating demand by
coercion.
2. Start a program of recruitment, again based on investments in technology,
but this time forgoing part of the growth to offer an Omni type competition
*every year*. In the case of an organisation requiring of the order of $100k
for a cryopreservation, a fund that has grown to $1m could be milked every year
and still go on growing. When it rises to $(2 x the cost of a cryopreservation)
two could be given away each year and so on. This will generate publicity, and
people receiving the awards could also be encouraged to start their own trust
funds for their friends or even just their own reanimation accounts. If you
start with half a million dollars, you'd get to the $1M in two years at the
present rate of growth - if you used the
Cryonics Institute as carrier you could start the competitions right away, or
even run three a year!
I recommend that such a program be pursued only by pre-payments to the
cryonics organisation for each winner. This would provide a regular and
reliable source of income into the chosen cryonics organisation. The
alternative method of letting the trust grow and making it support more and
more people would work on paper, but the benefits to the cryonics
organisation would be minimal. However effective the economics and investment
objectives of the fund, it would be pointless if the cryonics organisation
withers away in the meantime before any cryopreservation is performed.
If the individual setting up such a project lived a long way from a centre
of cryonics he would also be benefiting himself if he organised the
competitions in his own local area. Admittedly only one or two people would
enter (based on the low entry rate for the Omni contest based on a very large
geographical area) but this really doesn't matter - all you need to do is to get
one person/yr and bang your drum each time. They'll soon start coming after a
few years. Unlike funding the winner by life insurance, this will still grow. As
long as the underlying investments grown more than ten percent, (and assuming
you can take the money out each year without capital taxation) you will
eventually be able to fund two per year th
en three and so on.
Once you can fund two cryopreservation prepayments per year, you can encourage
married couples as an alternative to running more than one competition per year.
When it grows to three or four whole families can be signed up. If the Omni
competition had been investment rather than life insurance based, then it would
still be working now. (Obviously it was LE based because it wasn't that highly
funded. As it is they must have got their fingers burned a bit as I seem to
recall it was an impaired life that was
insured.)
Think how commercial television advertising works. It is not just one big
bang and then nothing. They make quite a long film (for advertising) say 5
minutes. Play it a few times on TV, and later they play snatches of it. The
whole process lasts for months. I am proposing something similar on a longer
time scale.
I hope that these ideas have been of benefit and will help this mailing list in
its debate. I would be astonished if anyone took them up as they stand - the
idea is to add fuel to the debate
--
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
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