A well written fable, but its moral would not be equitable in the world of today. It's inevitable that access to "defeating the dragon" would be available to only the most affluent in society, whom have also led the most comfortable lives. There is no fairness in allowing these people to enjoy extended or indefinite lifespans whilst countless others suffer inhumane conditions only to die early.

I think medicine gave a good hit to the dragon over the years.

At first only rich people beneficiated from it. But thankfully today medicine advantages are better distributed. We are not equals by any means and some countries are lagging behind, but it is better.

Link to my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39080399

I have good hopes the same pattern could occur here.

Perhaps the "rising tide" takes longer to reach some than others. I hope for a more equitable, fairer future, but it's likely my outlook is somewhat jaded.

I agree, the tide analogy kinda breaks down here though. We're all familiar that it's somewhat rare that a technological advancement goes from no usage to film and wide distribution in one step. New technologies are distributed only to the rich precisely because they are time and resource intensive to develop and can only be feasibly prepared via a process which will inevitably occur costs that the majority of humans will not be able to meet. But you _need_ those first few rich people, because the money they put in starts the feedback cycle that would not be able to start otherwise. Ideally this then begins a process of optimization which gradually allows these products to become available to everyone.

Inequality is the price of innovation, but it doesn't have to be paid forever.

Honestly I also get your take. I think it will depend on the "thing" that will enable us to live longer and healthier.

If it is something very expensive and an overnight discovery, then it is likely that a dystopian era will occur... Just imagine some kind of tyrant (as a reference to the fable!) reigning over a country for 100+ years.

But it could also be somewhat like what happened with medicine: the sum of smaller improvements, some more expensive than others, years after years.

If a tyrant reigns over a country for centuries, it's because the people there want him in power.

The major increases in human lifespan have come from public sanitation, food safety, vaccinations, antibiotics, and trauma care. The rest of medicine has had only a small impact.

Imagine a world where immortality is given to 1% of the populace per year such that in 100 years everyone is immortal, but it is given in order of decreasing wealth.

Now imagine a world in which no one is immortal for 99 years, but on the 100th year everyone gains immortality at once.

The latter is vastly more equitable, but to choose such a world would be horrific in cost of lives.

I can imagine the dystopia that would come from an undying elite ruling over a mortal underclass. However, in any situation short of that extreme, I would never promote anything that would slow the search for immortality. Especially not for the mere bog standard modern conception of equity; crab-bucket mentality here will only serve to keep us all scrabbling in the dirt.

This is an argument against pursuing equitability as an end in and of itself

I disagree, it's more an argument that even though advancement of human capability can bring great gains (defeating the dragon) we need to pursue equitability in these gains or otherwise they are unethically allocated.

The rising tide should raise ALL boats, otherwise inequitability will lead to social instability as seen througout human history so far.

While I agree that modern societies and especially global wealth are very inequitable I think medicine is one of the areas where it is almost universally agreed in practice to raise all boats. Generic medications are made available, foreign aid is often in the form of medicines and medical support, and global institutions are funded with the aim of raising all boats. Should life extension become possible through medicine or treatments it seems likely that the existing process of trying to achieve global medical equity will continue. Clearly life extension will be very highly valued and if it is out of reach of 95% or 99% of the human population there will be intense pressure to socialize its benefits to everyone. Where I can see problems is if life extension is out of reach of 50% or 75% of the world population due to material/equipment/personnel costs; that's a lot harder to socialize globally and would be similar to advanced cancer treatments and organ transplants/replacements which could be seen as the leading edge of longevity treatments.

I don't think there's a moral argument against expensive cancer/organ treatments being made available in wealthy countries; it doesn't seem like any progress on treating those diseases will be made at all if the treatments can't be made available, regardless of their extreme inequity.

> It's inevitable that access to "defeating the dragon" would be available to only the most affluent in society, whom have also led the most comfortable lives.

I don't see that it's inevitable at all. (a) The solution may be very affordable. (b) Any government that does not get the treatment to all citizens is likely be voted out or overthrown.

What a wonderful fable. I enjoyed reading it and wish there was more research occuring in this field. Still, I'm impressed from what I hear in the news from time to time.

Yes it's so good.

An amazing way to give a new perspective on life and death as we know it _today_ imho.

Strong emphasis on _today_ because life expectancy, healthy life expectancy and death are already really different from some time ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy

There's a quite common misconception around life expectancy. We aren't living all that much longer than in the past. The main thing bringing up life expectancy number is that childhood mortality dramatically declined. [1] If one person lives to 80, but another dies in infancy, then you have a life expectancy of 40 years old. Rather than living longer, more people are able to reach the ages that we all start dying around, and have been for millennia.

So for instance in modern history, of the 15 key Founding Fathers, 7 lived to at least 80 years old: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Samuel Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, John Jay. John Adams himself lived to 90. The youngest to die were Hamilton who died in a duel, and John Hancock who died of gout of an undocumented cause - it can be caused by excessive alcohol consumption. All the others lived into their 60s and 70s.

It's the same as you go back further into history. Look up basically any Ancient Greek you're familiar with, and you'll see most lived to about the same amount of time we do now a days, sometimes quite a bit longer. For instance Hippocrates, of the Hippocratic Oath, lived to 90 back in the 4th century BC. The common claim there is a survivorship bias, but that's not really true - because most of these individuals made their mark on history decades before they finally died. In other words had e.g. Plato died when he was 50 instead of 80, he still would be known today.

[1] - https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality (terrible layout but the site has many interesting graphs on this topic)

I believe what you're saying is correct, but the OP is also correct in pointing out that those who lived prior to antibiotics or other modern inventions probably died a lot more often of things we can prevent now. Not to mention all the routine surgeries that save lives. The massively declining child mortality is the big disruptor here, but there's more going on in the data. More recently, we might be reversing the positive trends with our extremely unhealthy diets that have led to other issues such as heart disease and diabetes.

There is an enormous amount of money being spent on research to figure out how to prevent people from dying. You're welcome to donate your own money to the many non-profit foundations issuing research grants in that field.

Ladders... those will be the endgame boss.

The environmental conditions are unknown but they know that they are the cause....

If the fish can't be normally observed procreating at times then it's quite obvious it needs different conditions.

are they environmental conditions though?

What else can be a factor? Fishies libido?

It’s a well written fable. There’s a pretty well narrated animation of the fable as well [0].

[0] https://youtu.be/cZYNADOHhVY?si=3zJIGBlfWmnml5i-

Unfortunately he doesn't address overpopulation. Admittedly, birth rates are declining rapidly.

People would definitely put off having kids if they had extended lifespans.

They're already doing it with our regular lifespans.

There is an entire universe to fill, overpopulation is just as worthy of worrying about as is running out of numbers.

Currently there is only Earth to fill.

Imagine we saw the mother of all asteroids incoming. It was large enough that it would almost certainly extinguish all life on Earth, and even throwing every nuke we had at it would barely scratch it. Yet we also saw this from relatively far away - let's say about 10 years. It seems exceptionally probable that by the time it got here we'd have established colonies on both the Moon and Mars.

The main issues are not technological in nature anymore - but economic. We put a man on the Moon more than half a century ago. The fundamental requirements to convert a short-term stay to a perpetual one are really not that great: food, home, maintenance. Water, which both the Moon and Mars have - in abundance, can be used to generate oxygen and fuel - taking care of near to all essentials. So what you really need is the infrastructure - housing, agriculture/ranching, industry, and recreation.

And that's all entirely viable, but has a very high price tag. SpaceX is trying to tackle this problem by bringing the price of space launches as close to $0 as possible, but even once that is achieved - the actual materials necessary to achieve this, even at cost, will be very substantial. And without some imminent danger, there will be people claiming that we shouldn't colonize another planet because everything here isn't perfect, which it never will be.

The cost of establishing a Mars colony is so high that the money is probably better spent in a different way. An asteroid defense program (using big Starship rockets), for example.

I don't see it as just a thing of ensuring the species, a la Elon. But even if you do, there are countless other scenarios it guards against - self annihilation via nuclear weapon, bioweapons or bioweapons research accident, any of the zillion astronomical phenomena that could screw out atmosphere (like a gamma ray burst, as hypothesized for a cause of one the great mass extinction events), a super volcano explosion (again hypothesized as the cause for a previous mass extinction event), and so on.

I think us doing something on a huge scale that people could actually be proud of, even if they didn't directly take part in it, is something that could be good for society on a much more broad level. We've achieved a lot in "our time", like the internet, but oddly enough it never really felt like an achievement - by contrast the Moon landing is something who got to experience even today speak fondly of.

And in any case, the exceptional cost is only for a truly self sustaining and independent planet, as would be needed in case of a catastrophe. We can "safely" start with a dependent system where various industrial goods can be shipped to e.g. Mars, and ideally even back to Earth as Mars' industry starts to come to life - even silly things like trinkets from Mars' surface, alcohol brewed on Mars, etc. will all be simple and valuable trade goods.

Getting things started will be done for a relatively low cost. Fortunately, thanks to interests like SpaceX this initial seeding need not even come from the public at large. And hopefully once something is there, that will inspire more people to see what could be there.

Getting the first human group on Mars does indeed sound like an inspiring goal. But getting the second or tenth group there sounds quite uninspiring. Remember, after some people landed on the Moon, the novelty wore off rapidly and taxpayers rapidly lost interest.

For Mars this problem is even greater -- we already sent a lot of robots to Mars, we got tons of high quality photographs from there, better than anything we go out of the Apollo missions. The novelty has already worn off to some degree. Getting humans there will be a nice achievement, but NASA will never get a gigantic Apollo-like budget for a Mars program.

Luckily, they can contract SpaceX for a lot of it, so the cost should be more manageable. But only for getting an American flag there. Setting up a permanent Mars base would be an undertaking which is orders of magnitude larger.

Currently NASA doesn't even have any plans for a permanent Moon base! There is a recent book, "A City on Mars", which highlights the enormous difficulties of establishing a permanent or even independent Mars settlement. I haven't read it, but in this interview with the authors the prospects sound grim:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=dJqr_cCi9tM

For example, it is doubtful whether pregnancies and childhood growth work normally in low gravity environments. It hasn't even been studied properly using mice on the ISS, even though this would be perfectly possible. Maybe all the children come out severely crippled.

Then there is the constant radiation, which means everyone has to live deep underground. Then the question arises: Why not instead build underground (or underwater) cities on Earth, for a much lower cost?

They also mention things like this: Biological warfare against Earth would potentially be a lot more safe for the attackers if they sit on Mars, due to being separated by gravity wells. So the existential risk might actually increase.

They argue that we should first build a permanent Moon base before going for a permanent Mars base. There are just so many things we can learn in a much less difficult to reach environment. At least from the Moon you can fly people back to Earth in case of a medical emergency.

This isn't quite what happened with the Moon landing at all. Even throughout the Apollo program, it was relatively unpopular. A large minority were exceptionally happy about it, but you have to remember this was also the era of Vietnam, race politics, and more. And that led to a lot of opposition to things like spending billions of dollars on space that could be spent on [x]. Like today. But what happened is that after Nixon defacto cancelled the space program in 1972, support for space began to grow dramatically. It turns out that people looking back didn't quite realize what they had, until it was gone.

I'm sure there was also the gradual realization, conscious or not, that space is also one of the very few ventures where you get out of it what you put into it. Spend $10 billion on SpaceX, and we'll have ships headed to Mars to establish the first infrastructure of human civilization there. By contrast you can't just buy your way to a good education system, or spend away social problems. Spend it on most other things and you're going to see a relatively negligible positive impact. Spend it on our favorite way to waste money (and with orders of magnitude larger sums), geopolitics, and you'll likely see an overall negative impact.

I don't really see NASA playing a meaningful role in the future of space. Their role in the present, outside of funding, is already quite negligible. They lack consistent leadership/direction, and are driven by congress - who is driven by graft. The SLS (NASA's new rocket - made by Boeing/Lockheed) alone has hoovered up tens of billions of dollars, to one day hope to construct a rocket that already isn't competitive against a Falcon Heavy. At the same time SpaceX is constructing a ship which will revolutionize space, again. China has already designed, built, and launched a new space station into space (as ours continues to deteriorate), and so on. The systems and motivations which drove NASA to epic success in the 60s simply no longer exist in our public sector.

---

The other things sound reasonable, but seem largely driven by a lack of knowledge - which I am not directing at you, but the authors in the podcast you linked. For instance you don't need to live deep underground to protect from radiation. One of the best shields against radiation is hydrogen. So one of the ways we'll likely protect against space weather on the way to Mars is by using the water storage on the ship as a shield. On Mars igloos, as odd as it sound, would make beasts of cheaply constructible radiation proofed housing, for but one example. You'd also conveniently be right next to basically infinite sources of water.

I'm happy to get into the other stuff as well, but this post is already turning into a novel!

There's no real overpopulation; there's only misuse of resources. There's too many people driving in big SUVs and living in McMansions and using too much fossil fuel energy.

Evolution doesn’t choose these things and it isn’t a conscious choice with the organism

It’s just random mutations selected for or we never get to see a buffalofish, the latter happens far more often and is the crux of evolution by natural selection: orders of magnitude more species that died out

I think Altered Carbon brought up the most chilling view of a world without death. In that exploration only the rich are immortal, because the poor can’t afford immortality. Someone being rich for hundreds of years will only cement their their power, position, and their perspective. How do we feel if Rockefeller were still alive and powerful? What if our old kings never died? If any of them had a sexual perversion, what if it continued for hundreds of years? Where does that road lead?

I wonder if people really would ossify after hundreds of years or eventually learn to be hyper-adaptable.

Current centenarians are a bad example, because their brains and bodies are falling apart.

Some sci fi suggests that the fact of our living and dying in just one century means we die as immature children.

Maybe it takes a thousand years or ten thousand years to “know thyself” to any useful degree.

> Some sci fi suggests

Jonathon Swift explored this idea in 1726, in Gulliver's Travels, with the Struldbruggs [0] - decrepit immortals. Struldbruggs also popped up in Larry Niven's Known Space universe [1], albeit there as the name of a club for the old and powerful.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struldbrugg

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_of_Ptavvs

In a rather unpopular opinion, I think most people are more of a product of their environments than we like to believe. If you look at the rate at which social change happens and public opinion about certain topics, it happens much faster than new generations replace the old. A good example of this is with same-sex marriage. Opinion changed rapidly and I'm sure many have even forgot all the things said before Obergefell v. Hodges. Certainly new generations have new ideas and put pressures on the environment, but I think there's too much weighting in most people's models of how much change is held up and requires older generations to exit the decision making process.

> If you look at the rate at which social change happens and public opinion about certain topics, it happens much faster than new generations replace the old.

To the contrary, it happens exactly that fast. https://scholars-stage.org/culture-wars-are-long-wars/

Bullshit

Between 2011 support was 70, 53, 39 for 18-34, 35-54, 55+ age groups. 2021 was 84, 72, 60. So that's ~20 points on 35-54 and 21 on 55+. That's 10 years. The 45+ transition into the 55 and the 25+ into the 35-54, but that doesn't explain the change. Why? Because the 2011 difference between 55+ and 35-54 is 14 points while 2021 it is 12. Even more importantly, the 55+ group in 2021 has a 7 point lead from the 35-55 age group from 2012.

This difference __cannot__ be explained from just people dying and the support "aging in" to the next age bracket. Literally 50% (7 points out of 14) is impossible to explain through an aging process.

Something more is going on, and thus, my claim is unequivocally supported by the data. (Note my claim isn't that specific, it is just that there is more than aging) Yes, culture wars are long, but they are shorter than can be explained from generations alone.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/350486/record-high-support-same...

This is so incorrect it's laughable. If you look at the data, public opinion in america has changed almost exactly in step with new generations emerging and old generations dying. People almost never change their opinion on political issues, they just die.

Except, of course, the politicians. It's always entertaining to watch them say or do the very thing they previously condemned.

That's precisely what you'd want politicians to do: represent the shifting will of the people.

Or, dare I say, learn what they themselves were wrong about and become right about it.

We vilify politicians when they change direction and make them dance around and mince words, when what they really want to say is "I was wrong before".

Yeah I don't get why people get upset over that. It's like the people that are like "we didn't learn that in school when I was your age." Times change, we learn, we correct, we update our beliefs. Being static is not healthy and creates a dissonance between the public and the __representatives__. i.e. the representatives become disaligned from those they are supposed to represent. And as my claim (which I add data to in other replies) shows, that's not even just a function of age.

We should commend people for updating their beliefs, not condemn. To me, one of the most honorable phrases one can say is "I stand corrected."

We wouldn't need politicians if all they did was repeat opinion polls. And very very few politicians say that they were wrong or that they stand corrected- they'll just blame their earlier comments on "it was a different time" or some similar nonsense.

To admit they were wrong would be to say everyone who previously voted for them was also wrong. We don't have that much bravery from most of our politicians.

Editing to add: of course, the real reason nobody expects them to ever say they were wrong is because nobody trusts they actually fully believe what they say in the first place.

Did you look at the data? Because I don't think you did. I lay it out here[0]. In short, what we can see is that in 2021 the 55+ age group has higher support than the 35-54 group did in 2012. This is not people aging into the new bins and bringing their support with them. If that were what was happening, then the 2021 55+ group could not have greater support than the 2012 35-54 group. There is missing growth from your model. We're literally talking about 50% of the growth being unexplainable by your model.

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39087434

>A good example of this is with same-sex marriage. Opinion changed rapidly and I'm sure many have even forgot all the things said before Obergefell v. Hodges.

Do you live on one of the US coasts? Because if so, you are probably right - before Obergefell, most people didn't care about your private life and after Obergefell it could all finally be out in the open. But in a big chunk of this country, it really doesn't matter what the courts decided because there is major political and religious pressure that says that ain't ok. Don't pretend for a moment that a wide swath of states wouldn't send us straight back to 1863 if they could.

Not important. I'm working off of US polling data. See sister comments for reasoning. Everyone that is calling me laughable and "haven't looked at the data" has clearly not themselves.

I’m not calling you “laughable” I’m saying that the data doesn’t matter. We lost Roe, there’s no reason to believe that ugly politics won’t seek to roll back Obergefell too given the opportunity. These people don’t give a shit what the majority think.

Sorry, I'm not saying __you__ are saying my claim is laughable, I'm saying "people" are[0]. The fact of the matter is 2/3 responses I got were certain I'm wrong with providing no evidence (@Georgelemental's link is not backed by data, only shows one plot related to belief in god, and is really just a socialist propaganda article that is shoehorning economic discussion into cultural that creates a premise that would validate my claim but contradicts their own (if socialism solves the issues, then it isn't about age... Though I'll agree that economic factors are important for estimating rate of cultural change)).

I agree with your point, but to be clear, it is not contrary to what I claimed. My claim is about how ethical values change faster than people age. See the reply in [0] or the linked comment there. The claim shouldn't be controversial because it is ridiculous to believe that your beliefs become fixed at some certain age. The fallacy is that people will think "well I update my beliefs but others don't" (i.e. I'm Bayesian, but others are immutable). You're not that unique.

Certainly this change can go in any direction. It is also a common fallacy to believe younger = liberal while older = conservative. While there is correlation, there is not much to suggest causation. Especially considering there are young people that are Republicans and many old people that are Democrats. We can argue nuance, but that's a different claim. I don't think most people have a good understanding of the demographics of voters[1] and instead focus on what data they want to see. Some of that complexity may be illustrated in looking at Figure 3 (education) closely. The most apparent differential is graduate level education. If you look at the top part carefully you'll see that there's a subtle distinction between completion of a college education vs not and the main difference is in graduate education, which is a much smaller number of people. The graph can be hard to read because the size of each bin is directly proportional to the education level (largest bin is H.S. (~80% of Americans) or less and postgrad is smallest (~5% of Americans if counting professional degrees)). Also take specific note at the differentials in the bottom plot as there is inferential race based data.

Basically, I'm saying it's a bit complex and people are trying to overly simplify the problem. I even think your claim of coast vs central is a point, but I'm not sure it really discredits the claim which is independent of party affiliation or if someone is rural or urban (which is highly correlated with cost vs central).

Oversimplification won't give you an approximate answer, but often will lead you in the wrong direction.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39082963

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/demographic-...

I think people stop adapting lots earlier than the time their body starts breaking down.

In fact, the body breaking down might be a reason people become adaptable.

People definitely ossify, but certain drugs encourage neuroplasticity. I don't think it's on the scale that would be meaningful in this context though.

> I wonder if people really would ossify after hundreds of years or eventually learn to be hyper-adaptable.

I'm kind of fond of Vernor Vinge's take in Rainbows End: people who undergo rejuvenation therapy go back to high school to learn a trade in the modern world. Part of the justification for this is if their brain is restored from a condition like severe dementia, they may have different personality traits and interests from their original selves, which will take time and learning to acclimate to.

> what if only a tyrannical nobility could benefit from this new technology, and it stayed that way forever?!

Yeah it goes without saying that's a bad thing, for any technology. That shouldn't convince anyone that Logan's Run is preferable.

This is the premise of In Time (film) too.

Yeah, but Altered Carbon does it immeasurably better from all angles.

I've heard that "In Time" was ripped off from "Repent Harlequin Said The Tictockman" (https://www.d.umn.edu/~tbacig/cst1010/chs/ellison.html). It's worth the 5 minutes it should take to read it, even if you take 6 ;)

> even if you take 6 ;)

"I'm writing this slow, because I know you can't read fast..."

Why specifically point out a sexual perversion. It seems like the least of the bad things an authority figure like a king could do.

Epstein.

Epstein's crimes were heinous, but if someone were to make a reasonable attempt to rank the villains of the past century by harm caused I think he'd be pretty far down the list. He's also a poor example in the context of this discussion because he did not die of anything related to old age.

Epstein is a saint compared to a truly evil person. What did he even do? Him and his buddies slept with some 16 year olds from what I know. That’s not even a crime in most countries.

> Epstein is a saint compared to a truly evil person. What did he even do? Him and his buddies slept with some 16 year olds from what I know. That’s not even a crime in most countries.

Child prostitution and sex trafficking is a crime in most countries.

Ah I didn’t know that. How did that work out? Was it just flying in willing 16 year olds or more sinister like bringing them in against their will.

Have you considered living under the iron rule of deathless overlords who, by the way, are also furries?

Imagine a magenta, glitter-covered pony hoof stamping on a human face, forever.

Have you seen the people under the fur suits? Someone is power would have no use for reality escapism because their reality is amazing. But hey, there always that really small chance I guess.

It's what produces the first version of a justice system and thus is mostly called out for in bad times..

This is dependent on a world where immortality is expensive because it's difficult to actually make someone immortal rather than because it's difficult to figure out how to make someone immortal. For all we know, immortality is as simple as a one-time injection into an egg cell, and the challenge is almost entirely in figuring out what to inject.

Also, how much is the death of bad individuals actually contributing to making the world a better place? It seems to me like the various abuses of robber-barons and tyrants past and present are perpetuated by institutions built around them rather than their own personal capacity to affect the world. A king in exile on a remote island or a Rockefeller driven to bankruptcy can remain unchanged as a person while losing virtually all of their capacity to impose their will on the world, while a kingdom or corporation can keep going centuries after the death of its leader if conditions stay favorable.

In these cases the bulk of such institutions is a bureaucratic apparatus, which serves as a tool. You cannot judge a tool for being used for evil purposes, and in the charge of those with different intentions, it may be used for better purposes in the future.

In the more general case (i.e. communities rather than kingdoms or corporations), judgment can perhaps be passed on the principles or aesthetics that keep it together. However changing it would probably require a change in its environment that rendered such principles or aesthetics obsolete. This is a much more difficult task that can require legislation or sociological advancement or something of that sort.

Nit, there is RD - real death in the altered carbon universe. Happens when an individual's cortical stack is destroyed.

> If any of them had a sexual perversion, what if it continued for hundreds of years?

because eventually, a child of a tyrant will be born that will be even greater than the original, and overthrow them

nature always builds in enough checks and balances to keep the wheel spinning, even if a revolution can sometimes take >75 years

systems are what perpetuate injustice. not how long puppets live.

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.

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.

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

There's a reason it is mostly the affluent that seek life extension, it's the one thing they can't buy just yet. And if and when they can I'm sure they will hope for it to be extremely expensive.

Life extension is just too big of a deal, and when people revolt it can get really messy. The "rich and powerful" are fully aware of this reality.

Every technology we know of started off as the exclusive purview of the rich and then saw progressive decreases in price as a result of providers fighting for market share by innovating on and scaling up production.

As for immortal tyrants, we already have immortal institutions that are functionally the same. And the activists, dissidents and opposition leaders who challenge their power will be almost certain to gain from immortality just as much as the heads of dominant political parties.

In a rapidly changing world, immortal tyrants will not necessarily have an advantage in keeping a grip on power. Insofar as they stick to their old ways, the nations they lead will stagnate and become more susceptible to foreign influence. And if they are open to change, they may be open to abandoning their repressive ways.

Opposing technologies that can save us from death due to hypothetical fears about the rich seems like a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Aging has a 100% probability of killing you if this technology doesn't emerge within your lifetime. It is strictly a greater threat than a speculated immortal tyrant. And if you think we are so abhorrent that we deserve a measly 80 years before we succumb to aging, then it doesn't follow that you would be so aghast at the idea of those same unworthy beings living longer under repression.

Those animals which have more offspring tend to live shorter lives. It's about equilibrium. If it were not the case, then their populations would grow out of control.

If animals which do not have many offspring did not live very long, they would have gone extinct already.