The interesting thing about this is that these people never stop to think that the future they dream off might never happen. Aside from the fact that their cryo company might just go under, they don't ever consider that in 200 years they might just wake up under a dystopia.
It is our duty as poors to assist our betters in this endeavour to the best of our ability and get absolutely as many billionaires as possible (a) freezing their heads (b) locking up their wealth so tightly that nobody else can access it
Even if no one can use the wealth, wouldn't it be placed in some kind of trust in order to keep accruing wealth rather than be decimated by inflation?
And then, as the frozen rich wouldn't use any of their wealth, it would just keep accruing wealth. They would be perfect, frozen, capitalists. The control of that wealth would give power, and controllers of the trusts can gain even wealth and thus power more by coordinating. The power would only keep growing as more rich freeze themselves to keep up with and join the growing trust of trusts.
Living in a society where the frozen owners would own all the means of production, these frozen owners would naturally be hailed as sleeping kings in order to motivate me system. They may even be seen as something godlike.
Then one day, if one wakes up, it would cause immediate power struggles, as well as give a flash point for the discontent of the billions of impoverished serfs slaving away for the controllers. But the controllers would mobilise violence, and....
I wonder if anyone has worked out an economic model that treats this kind of lockup as though the money had been just literally lit on fire. Be interesting to see what that does to the money supply and whether it could help discredit the monetarist position on inflation.
Some EAs have tried to make an "EA case" for cryonics, and I just want someone to comment on it: "But couldn't you safe many more people by using that money to buy malaria bednets, or vaccines, or almost anything else?"
The interesting thing about this is that these people never stop to think that the future they dream off might never happen. Aside from the fact that their cryo company might just go under, they don’t ever consider that in 200 years they might just wake up under a dystopia.
At one time I was going out with someone who was into Max More, without either of us being cogniscant of the rationalist link back then, and she gave me the infuriating justification that it was all a probabilities game with a bizarre political economy in the background. The thinking goes that if your society becomes a dystopia, there’s no reason and/or no resources to wake you up. Looking back, it’s amazing to see it as a combination of that characteristically (neo/)lib failure of imagination and Promethean ideology.
For anybody hard of hearing at the back, the combination of a “characteristically (neo/)lib failure of imagination” and a “Promethean ideology” is subtext for “striding confidently towards fascism”
I read this story some time ago. As far as I can recall, the cooling process was interrupted. The bodies then thawed and began to move. Then they re-froze again. Upon a later inspection it was discovered that the bodies have moved and also were severely damaged. Read the story, it‘s quite entertaining.