28 January 2025

Against Longevity

Individually, it isn't hard to see why someone might want to live longer. But even if we could make people live to say, 200 years old, should we?

In a democratic society, having a large share of the population that formed their core political beliefs and social norms a century ago or more is not a desirable thing. This also places friction in the way of economic and scientific innovation.

This also means that people in the roughly 30 years of their lives that have children find their needs and priorities further diluted in the political system, despite their centrality to the long term survival of the species.

And, if people live longer, are they also working longer, or are they hoping to spend 3/4 of their lives in retirement?

3 comments:

Dave Barnes said...

This is why I believe we should have an old age cutoff age. 80 would be good.

Mitchell said...

Personally I think the human race is mad to not have tried to achieve such longevity. But in any case, we have instead decided to put ourselves out of business by making non-biological intelligences smarter than we are.

Guy said...

I think that Larry Niven had this kinda in the background of the "Known Universe" stories, where the gerontocracy controlled most levers of power.

Because capital grows over time, the balance between capital and labor would shift towards labor, and the returns to capital would decrease. Can't count on 5% or 3% anymore, returns would be pushed down to 1% and you have to work until you have 5 to 10 million in the bank instead 1 or million. So the working life grows to 80 or 120 years...