[bitwize]

Become enough of a tyrant and you may not live to see old age -- Hitler and Stalin didn't. As for tyrants who do grow old -- is an effectively immortal tyrant that much worse than a tyrant who dies but consolidates power within his family to create a centuries-long dynasty?

Also, once the technology of immortality becomes well-characterized, the cost to replicate the procedures will go down barring price-fixing collusion that involves government regulatory bodies. This is the real problem with movies like Elysium: a version of the cure-all hospital bed that serves as the movie's McGuffin in a critique of capitalism would, in a free market, be readily available at Target or Costco; businesses would rent them like tanning beds; and charities would pop up to provide them at gyms and homeless shelters for those who still couldn't afford one of their own. You couldn't really restrict the availability of something like that to just the rich without the government putting their thumb on the scale somewhere. In fact the rich would respond by allowing themselves to grow old and decrepit; in a world where everybody could be restored to health and vigor, aging would be taken as a status symbol. Kinda like how in a world where photography became easy, having original paintings on your wall is a status symbol.

[orangecat]

Right. The argument is especially silly for anti-aging treatments because the consequences of aging are horrifically expensive: look at the Medicare and Social Security budgets for starters. Governments and insurance companies would have every incentive to make them as widely available as possible.

[Log_out_]

And nobody would build subscription cancer into it. True, pure, science fiction