[Barrin92]

>Aging populations need help,

They're pretty good at helping themselves. Close to where I used to live in Bavaria we had a pilot project of communal living for the elderly in a community of about a hundred people that included people with quite severe conditions such as dementia.

Medical and care personell routinely checked in but they were largely self sufficient and did a remarkably job of taking care of themselves, maybe most importantly the were happy and quite dignified, something I cannot imagine is the case when your only contact is a humanoid robot.

Of course in an age where every solution is yet another technology rethinking social life isn't very high up the list.

[red75prime]

The "help" goes beyond taking care of themselves. What about food, clothing, infrastructure maintenance, and so on? An inverted population pyramid requires massive increase in the productivity of the economically active part of the population.

[mikem170]

Or a regression in the standard of living. Ideally to a comfortable sweet spot for people.

[Schiendelman]

The elderly already have a significant regression in standard of living, often catastrophically. That's a pretty big problem I would like to improve. There are so many people who don't leave their house because they struggle to get clean and they're embarrassed, and then their social connections collapse. It's going to be a long time before we have the technology to really help with elder care, but boy is it worth it.

It's also something we could help by getting rid of zoning in cities, of course, because we constantly push low income elderly out to the edges of urban areas where they can afford to live, rather than allowing supply to keep up with demand in dense, walkable, accessible places where people who can't drive can actually have quality of life.

[mikem170]

I agree, we could do so much better. Zoning can be a tremendous quality of life issue, and needing a car to participate in society is an expense other people in other places aren't burdened with.