Re: Technical and Spiritual Development

From: Terrell Miller (millerto_at_bellsouth.net)
Date: 01/22/05 

Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2005 12:23:45 -0500

William Mook wrote:
> It is impossible to ban people from having children.

Q: What is a Chinese foster home?
A: a syringeful of formaldehyde

> It is uneeded in
> advanced industrial cultures.

such as the Arabian peninsula, where it's pretty common for one man to
have a couple dozen children by several different wives and concubines?

> Right now the wealthiest societies are
> already declining in numbers and are maintained by constant influx of
> settelers from less developed regions. What will happen as society
> becomes even wealthier and that wealth is spread throughout the world
> by market forces?

what makes you think that market forces will make the whole world
wealthy? Is there anything in Rwanda or El Salvador that is of value to
anyone? Otherwise the Rwandans and Salvadorans don't have anything to
become wealthy *with*.

The only chance that Third World countries have to become wealthy is if
they come up with some new in-demand service that doesn't depend on
their own physical resources. India is doing that now with software
development. China is well on the road to doing the same thing (want a
$20 copy of Office? Han can take care of you).

But a prerequisite for that success is a highly educated populace. That
takes time and money. You may notice that the two countries I mentioned
happen to be the most-populated countries in the world, with a combined
third of the world's population. It's a lot easier for big countries
like that to bootstrap themselves than it is for scarcely-populated
regions like Africa or Latin America.

> That's right, the entire world population will be in
> decline.

that's pretty certain to happen in the last half of the century
regardless of what the world's GNP is or isn't. The countries with
explosive population growth will run out of resources to support that
growth pretty soon, so their numbers will level off and start dwindling.

> Under these circumstances, the results of longevity research will be
> welcomed as a panecea.

sure, as long as you can afford the exorbitant fee that the drug
companies will charge *because they can*.

The folks who can afford somec/boosterspice/whatever-Spinrad-called-it
will have an enormous competitive advantage over those who can't. Those
people will be the exact same ones who tend to be in leadership
positions (government or captains of industry or investors).

There would be a huge incentive for the host government of the first
drug company to develop an antiaging serum to strictly regulate its
production. The drug company doesn't care, they can make a massive
fortune just selling it to the Beautiful People. Saves them a lot of
organizational bother not to have to expand the company's bureaucracy,
and it's guaranteed profit. The b-school term for that is "cash cow".

So the production runs of the drug are very small because of "technical
difficulties". Which means that the price will be sky-high. Which means
that very few people can afford it. Which means that you get a very few
very rich immortals. Who ruthlessly guard their source of immortality.

Meanwhile that company can plow lots of its earnings from the
immortality drug into spinoff substances that will create superficial
"fountain of youth" effects similar to Botox. *Those* drugs go on teh
mass-market and are wildly successful and profitable as well. The
have-lesses are happy because they feel and look a little younger, and
maybe they get to tack a few more years onto their lifespan. Good for
them. But that draws attention away from the *real* immortality serum,
which is a virtual State Secret.

But pretty soon people start noticing that some folks just do not get
any younger, and questions are raised. So the immortals live a
peripatetic life, traveling from place to place under different
identities. As soon as they start to get compliments on "you haven't
changed a bit!" from locals who have known them for decades, time to
move on. Then they recycle themselves as newly arrived twentysomethings,
or whatever physical state they manage to maintain.

All those Mexican kids in your neighborhood who nobody knows exactly
where they came from and they aren't real eager to flash their IDs?

Them <g>

> The things you imagine being done are the result of a diseased
> imagination and have nothing to do with the prospect of living forever.

Ah yes, Bill Mook is the only person in the world who has everything
figured out. Which is why he has to drift from one failed get-rich-quick
scheme to another, always riding the wave of whatever hi-tech fad
happens to be in vogue at the time.

> While it may be possible to indoctrinate a minority of youth to any
> sort of aberrant behavior such indoctrination rarely sticks as they age
> and mature and come to know themselves better.

I've got 90-year-old relatives who still use the N-word, Bill. People
rarely change their opinions, they just learn to gloss them over better :(

> So, in a world where
> everyone lives forever, what you describe as conditions - if they ever
> occur at all - will be short lived against the grand arc of ones life.
> Recalled and laughed at as one might recall a bad dream.

that midlife crisis thing is a real bitch, ain't it Bill? ;)

> The only lasting change is one that occurs through universal voluntary
> selection. People already voluntarily decide to limit the number of
> children they have in the wealthier countries. This has more to do
> with empowering women than anything else.

um no, it has to do with working at a job that doesn't require any
manual labor that you need a bunch of kinds to help out with, that and
the fact that many more children survive to their fifth birthday than
they did for all but the last century of human history. 

-- 
Terrell Miller
millerto@bellsouth.net
"Every gardener knows nature's random cruelty"
-Paul Simon RE: George Harrison
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