[majewsky]

> immortality creates conservatism

I want to refute this, but I have to back up a bit first.

The late Frank Schirrmacher (a German journalist and essayist who died in 2014) argued that German politics is getting more conservative over time because of demographics. Large-scale reforms or revolutions typically cause less prosperity in the short term (as societal institutions get rebuilt and investments in future institutions are required) and higher prosperity in the long term. That's a bargain that works well for young people: They get to reap the benefits for a long time and thus can tolerate austerity in the short term, but from the POV of an old person (e.g. age 60+), they get all the troubles and none of the benefits. Hence an older society is a more conservative society.

In other words, a significant part of conservatism [1] is caused by people knowing that they will die soonish (say, within the next 10-20 years) and therefore deciding that the best way to ensure prosperity within these remaining years is to defend the status quo as fiercely as possible. Immortality would fix this behavior, bringing personal incentives more in line with the incentives of society as a whole.

[1] The other part of conservatism can be attributed to people genuinely being unable to imagine a better society than the one they live in or genuinely not believing a better society to be attainable (whether justified or not). As far as I can see, that part of conservatism would be largely unaffected by the availability of immortality.