X-Message-Number: 7089
From: 
Subject: Re: CryoNet #7081: economics, cryonics [Ettinger]
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 12:13:10 -0800

In Message #7081, Mr. Ettinger writes:

[snip]

>But my main point, in the context of Mr. Selkovitch's remarks, is that if
>society reaches this stage before our revival--essentially everyone with
>essentially unlimited wealth--then we will wake up unimaginably rich, with or
>without continued compound interest.  

Unfortunately the prospect for "unlimited wealth" is not at all obvious.  A
couple of recent books make the case that economic progress has a finite set
of problems to solve, and in the U.S., at least, it has basically solved
them.  That would explain the fundamental deceleration in U.S. productivity
growth since the early 1970's and the ensuing stagnation of wages and living
standards.

Refer to:

_The End of Affluence: The Causes and Consequences of America's Economic
Dilemma_, by Jeffrey Madrick.  (New York: Random House, 1995)  ISBN
0-679-43623-5;

and,

_The Evolution of Progress: The End of Economic Growth and the Beginning of
Human Transformation_, by C. Owen Paepke.  (New York: Random House, 1993).
ISBN 0-679-41582-3.

Julian L. Simon, the great Extropian hero, also seems to accept this
conclusion, since on page 648 in his recent book _The State of Humanity_ he
writes:  

"The crucial contributions to living that advances in productive technique
might make in the long future differ fundamentally from those that it has
made in the past and in the immediate future.  We now possess knowledge
about resource locations and materials processing that allows us to satisfy
our physical needs and desires for food, drink, heat, light, clothing,
longevity [note: I disagree], transportation, and the recording and
transmission of information and entertainment.  We can perform these tasks
sufficiently well that additional knowledge on these subjects will not
revolutionize life on earth."

In other words, based on an authority praised by many of the people in the
cryonics movement, the "Wealth Singularity" has already happened, and it's
not realistic to expect that we'll just keep on getting arbitrarily better
off.  (I know a number of people in their 30's, including cryonicists, who
because of the ending of economic progress clearly aren't doing as well as
their parents did in the same stage of their lives.)  I have yet to see a
serious discussion of this scenario as it affects the cryonics venture.

Mark Plus


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