X-Message-Number: 6104
From:  (hEpCaT)
Subject: Re: "investing in cryonics"
Date: Sat, 20 Apr 1996 08:57:43 -0700 (PDT)

> Message #6095
> Subject: Re: "investing in cryonics"
> Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 08:49:30 -0400
> From: "Perry E. Metzger" <> 
> 
> >  From:  (hEpCaT)
> >  
> >  It is dangerous to assume that suspension funding alone 
> >  would be enough continue a suspension.
> 
> No, but I'll guarantee you that bad management of suspension funds,
> especially when they are largely invested in the mortgage of the
> building the bodies are kept in, doesn't improve odds of
> survival. (I'm trying to be understated here.)

Understatement to the point where you're such a 
minimalist that you don't even back up you're 
position with any logic or facts isn't very impressive. 
I'm no expert in investment, but I notice that 
Alcor's PCF keeps growing by more than what new 
patients add to it!

> >  Investing in your own cryonics organization makes the 
> >  probability of its survival, and therefore your own revival, 
> >  much more likely than to count on the integrity of future 
> 
> Let me be blunt, Mr. Cosenza. If Alcor's patient care fund goes
> bankrupt thirty or fifty years hence because for ten or fifteen years
> it seriously underperformed or lost a substantial fraction of its
> principal, you aren't going to be personally making up the shortfall
> -- if you are alive, I doubt you will have the money. Its all very
> ballsy to speak of it as though caring meant more than being rational
> about investments, but the fact is that caring isn't going to pay the
> rent or for liquid nitrogen -- money is. Furthermore, in fifty years,
> lots of the people that "care" now will be dead or on ice.

Fifty years hence, the people that will get frozen 
will have people that care about them that are either 
signed up with the same organization that is managing 
their funds *and* pouring liquid nitrogen on them, 
or they'll be in the hands of a vendor whose main 
concern is his own bank balance. My only point was that 
the former is better a preferable situation to the latter. 
As an example: I joined Alcor back when they were still hiding 
Dora Kent's head. They weren't doing that because they were 
getting paid for it from her funding and in fact, nearly 
all suspension members contributed to the legal bills incurred 
by the fallout of that whole mess. Which "non-fictional" 
organization will be doing that for Dr. Leary? 

> The amount of rationalization going on, especially in the replies I
> saw to my message on the subject, ("The investment isn't in Alcor, its
> in this LLC that by legal fiction isn't Alcor"; "Well, its not THAT
> bad an investment"; "We agree that real estate is usually bad but this
> is different"; and now "Caring is sharing" or whatever David is
> spewing here) is really amazing. You even violated your own bylaws and
> public statements about the subject. Have you no shame?

Perry, you need some Thorazine (I *am* an expert 
in psycotropic pharmacology). Quoting things that 
people haven't said and making accusations without 
providing an iota of evidence is irrational.  

Ever forward,

David

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David Cosenza                                           
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