Or, worse, the young will never get any power because the old will not relinquish control.

Then you have the "surfeit of princes" problem.

This isn't just grand political power: imagine being unable to progress in your career because geriatrics above you aren't retiring.

That's just one possible secondary effect. We could enumerate many others.

Oh yes. That's a very clear concern. I'm reacting to the "people who decline will he like antivaxers" comment. But it seems far more likely people will be priced out as opposed to voluntarily refuse treatment.

This logic is flawed. It would be much more economically sensible to just rejuvenate everyone regularly instead of doing what we do today — try, and eventually fail, to manage all the conditions related to old age. Since aging affects literally everyone, this huge scale would drive the cost of that intervention down to pennies.

Just to be clear: I'm not from the US, we do have not a very good but nevertheless somewhat working public health system over here.

> It would be much more economically sensible to just rejuvenate everyone regularly instead of doing what we do today — try, and eventually fail, to manage all the conditions related to old age.

In the US, we just will do neither for the majority of Americans. If you're too poor to afford rejuvenation, you'll be too poor to afford other treatments. And you'll just die.

Sure the cost of each treatment might be pennies (although it probably will cost a lot and not have those economies of scale) but total profit is not maximized by a smaller markup. Better to get Gates/Bezos/Musk/other billionaires to give you 90% of their fortunes.

They’ll sneer at the masses without eternal youth anyway.

Unless, of course, living a thousand years brings some wisdom with it.

I’m guessing we have to choose between capitalism and eternal youth.

I’m totally ok with a post-scarcity socialist society.