Billionaires dream of immortality. The rest of us worry about healthcare

[applegrove]

Jill Abramson the Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/05/billionaires-dream-immortality-healthcare

"SNIP...........

Both of us agreed we do not wish for immortality, though we are both extremely happy with our lives and healthy. Wanting to live forever is fundamentally selfish. It’s obvious why immortality appeals to billionaires such as Peter Thiel. It obviously wouldn’t to the millions in the US who won’t have health insurance if the Republicans pull out the vote on their bill.

Peter Thiel, the PayPal founder who is a friend of Trump, is one of the Immortalists. Lucky that he will never run out of money, especially since the Senate’s version of repeal-and-replace Obamacare is such a generous giveaway to the billionaire class.

The only reason it’s getting any Republican votes is that, as the New York Times reported a few days ago: “The bill’s largest benefits go to the wealthiest Americans, who have the most comfortable health care arrangements, and its biggest losses fall to poorer Americans who rely on government support.”

.....

The billionaire class does not need to worry, however, because their tax savings from the repeal of Obamacare, if it ever passes, will easily pay for a lifetime of “concierge medicine” (well, maybe not, if Thiel’s plan to live forever works out).

.............SNIP"

[LittleBlue]

1. Oh come on

Who the hell wouldn't want immortality? The fear of death is an involuntary fear in all of us, to some extent. Billionaires come off as more credible because they have more resources, but none of them have solved the issue of cell degradation, therefore immortality is still a dream and nowhere close to reality. Even with stem cell magic, blood transfusions and cryo chambers.

[applegrove]

2. Many would want immortality. Many would not. I had a grandmother who lived to be 103.

She was tired of living in her nineties because she could not fight the good fight being blind, deaf and confined mostly to bed. She spent her life fighting for others and could no longer though I needed her right up until she died.

[LittleBlue]

3. What if stem cell treatment meant that she wasn't blind?

What if she could stay 30 years old forever? Do you think her opinion would have changed?

That's where we're going. We're just not there yet, and not really close.

[applegrove]

4. So that the world becomes so crowded? So that fewer people could have children? So that much

of the middle class and poor have to die off early with policies like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell love? No way. Granny C. would not want that for the world or her family. She was about lifting everyone up. Especially children. She was a mother Bear of a woman and a nurse and she voted socialist.

[LittleBlue]

9. We aren't bound to this world

Our destiny is among the stars. There is more water on some moons and asteroids than earth's surface.

[longship]

5. Yup, stem cells. That'll do the trick.

You won't go blind, but you'll be riddled with cancer.

I don't want to go down that path any faster than I already am.

[Blue_true]

7. Who will you kill off to make space? What planet will you invade to make space?

Death has some benefits. It keeps us from becoming a rat colony where no one dies and everyone runs out of food and water. What will be left is the strong eating the weak.

[applegrove]

11. And it kills off monsters like Stalin, Mao, etc.

[Blue_true]

6. I only want to live longer that my oldest parent.

That would be 82 for me. I want to work until I die because daily tee times would get boring. But I have no desire to live forever or even much past 100, if I make that down the road.

[longship]

8. Than you have utter kooks like Ray Kurzweil.

He is so afraid of dying that he:

A) Takes hundreds of supplements which likely do nothing to promote his life, and most likely abbreviate it.

B) Sells classes in his "Singularity University" which at a cost of thousands for a two week course must compete with Trump University as the biggest education scam in the history of education scams -- I mean other than the not so cynically named Liberty University. But all those supplements he takes are expensive, so I'm told.

C) Don't get me started about those kooks into cryogenics. One would have thought that Woody Allen's "Sleeper" would have disabused people of that nightmare. However, at least the Orgasmatron seems intriguing.

One can at least hope. Just don't get in it alone... or maybe do exactly that.

Why is it that only mad people want to live forever?

[smirkymonkey]

10. If only billionaires live forever, then hell really does exist.

Who would want to live in that world?