X-Message-Number: 33064
References: <>
From: Gerald Monroe <>
Date: Mon, 22 Nov 2010 07:08:19 -0600
Subject: Re: CryoNet #33061 - #33063

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Looks like charles platt has issued another one of his periodic rants
> against us oh so irresponsible cryonicists. We are all such libertines.
> Partying our lives away. Tsk tsk.
>
> Charles, the rich cryonicists will just have to cover alcor on any funding
> shortfalls. THat is just the reality of it.
>
> that is the only way the rich people can have a chance of ever being
> cryopreserved. Even the rich need us poor folks to help them make it to the
> future. They need us. And so they will have to help alcor and other cryo
> orgs make it, too, or else they will have no chance at the future.
>
> I think the rich cryonicists recognize this. And they accept this.
>
> I think however that the uber-libertarian cryos do not accept this fact. It
> must really gripe their guts to think that their hard-earned/inherited money
> will have to go to help others. It must really grind on them that they will
> have to depend on others to get a chance at future revival.
>
> Libertarians, what a laugh.
>
> I think that Libertarianism in a person of advanced age could well be a
> sign of some sort of severe personality disorder. I mean, it is one thing to
> be a libertarian at age 30. Hey, I gotta confess I was one at that age, too.
> But to be one at age 50? Time to put away childish things, dude....
>
>
Keep some perspective, please.  2.4 million people die every year in the
United States.  A ridiculous, almost inconceivably vast number.  Everyone
reading this will have their number come up eventually.  Beating this so you
wake up afterwards *has never been done in human history.*  There's roughly
*100 billion* humans who have died before.  This isn't an appropriate
subject for name calling.  Each of us is trying to beat a personal
extinction of our existence that will make everything we accomplished in
life meaningless.

The wealthy ones among us want to use their wealth to increase their
personal odds of success.  If you had 10 million instead of the minimum
buy-in, wouldn't you want to use the funds to boost your odds further?  It's
just human nature.

I think the right approach is to focus on how a lot of things the wealthy
can pay for to benefit *themselves* also benefit the poor folk who "only"
pay a hundred grand.  If the wealthy were to pay for an armored underground
vault with armed guards at the surface patrolling, the fixed costs are such
that making the vault store thousands of people would not cost much more
than making it store 10 wealthy people.  Research is an even better example.
 Enormous amounts of research need to be done eventually or this will never
work.  If a wealthy person were to donate money to research it would benefit
everyone as much as it benefits one individual.

A vault store thousands of people is also a lot safer than one storing 10.
 It would be MUCH harder for the government to close the place down for some
reason if there were the extended families of thousands of people protesting
than just the families of 10.

What we really need is for cryonics to become a common medical procedure
supported by medicare.  I keep hearing about how 40% of all medicare dollars
are spent on the last month of life.  It would save the government (and
society) ludicrous amounts of money if cryonic preservations were done
rather than medical procedures that have low chances of success.  And if the
federal government built the vaults, they could be in decommissioned missile
silos next to military bases and other places that would be virtually
guaranteed to be intact for centuries with minimal odds of failure.

I don't know what it would take to get to that point (other than
demonstrated success with an actual revival of a human) but I know that more
research funding and more people frozen is a step in the right direction.  A
few elite rich folks putting themselves in a private bunker away from
everyone else is *not *a step in that direction.

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