48 ms·

I was walking on the street the other day. It was fine summer, and I saw so many elderly walking outside. All of them were using one type of aid or another; som

by dsign 1y ago

I was walking on the street the other day. It was fine summer, and I saw so many elderly walking outside. All of them were using one type of aid or another; some even had a social worker at their side. As I saw them, I was thinking that my 63% marginal tax was paying for it, while I part with 25% of my income after taxes to pay my mom’s pension. That monetary cost is nothing, I would gladly pay it for the rest of my life if it could give my mom a good life for that long. Her old age is my single biggest source of stress. In the political sphere, some countries are tearing themselves apart on the question of immigration and identity. But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce. So, we are paying an extremely high cost for letting God go on with His Slow Tormentous Cooking of Souls before Consumption, and things are only going to get worse, given the demographic expectations. Wouldn’t it make sense to put a big chunk of budget into creating life-extension tech?

4gotunameagain 1y ago
> But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce. You cannot discount the destabilising potential of immigration, and the lowering of societal trust it comes with. As we saw multiple times, integration is the edge case and not the rule. It will be especially harder to integrate people the way the demographic pyramid is looking right now in "developed" countries. I would also question the desire of immigrants to pay for the welfare of the senile of their respective state, given the fact that they are more than likely to feel mistreated and wronged by the western, "developed" countries that will be hosting them. I am an immigrant (expat?). I don't enjoy paying contributions for the welfare of the people who played in a huge role in the reasons I had to emigrate.
- simianparrot 1y ago
  I appreciate you being honest, but I also don't want people like you to immigrate to my country. How are you so sure of the role our old people played in your reasons for emigrating? Even if you're in the US and from a country the US has actively destabilized, how many of the people on welfare -- old and/or infirm -- were instrumental in the actions that led to the destabilization of your country? How many of these people had any active choice? This is why we need strong vetting of immigrants.
  - 4gotunameagain 1y ago
    Apart from the complex topic of political complicity, I am talking about events and actions that the majority of the local population supported. I would of course have to reveal quite a bit about me in order to be more specific. But even if I were an immigrant to the US from Venezuela or any of the tens if not hundreds countries that the US destabilised, I would indeed think of the majority of US's population as complicit. The people that are against such acts seem to always be the minority.
    - simianparrot 1y ago
      Then why would you move there?
    - whodidntante 1y ago
      There are plenty of countries to go to that are not complicit in your home countries issues if your issue is with the US. Russia and China have well above average lifestyles based on PPP. So do many South American countries, as well as Japan, and South Korea and other Asian countries. Also a number of countries in the middle east. Yes, I understand the US is a very very bad country. I am also a very very bad person because I am very grateful, proud, and and supportive of this country for providing my family an opportunity to thrive even though it took decades for my "type" to be accepted and not discriminated against. My grandparents fled from other countries to be here, for a better life. Note that I say "opportunity", because nothing was handed to my grandparents or my parents. They were given opportunity, not a subsidized life. They were also, as many immigrants have been, discriminated against for decades, but never complained or held grudges. I am a huge believer in immigration, but have zero tolerance for those demanding to be supported or who commit crimes or those that choose to come here and bitch about this country. There are plenty of other places to go to.
      - 4gotunameagain 1y ago
        Oh rest assured, I am not in the US. I would never do that. I find the mentality there insufferable. The mentality that you laid bare in your comment. About the land of opportunity, as long as the cost is externalised.
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  > As we saw multiple times, integration is the edge case and not the rule. Is that true? Are you sure the edge cases where people didn't integrate aren't just bigger stories than the many many people who arrive and live normal boring lives? > question the desire of immigrants to pay for the welfare of the senile of their respective state, given the fact that they are more than likely to feel mistreated and wronged Maybe we could stop wronging and mistreating them? Or is that an important part of our European heritage?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
kruffalon 1y ago
> But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce. Not in a sustainable way. Immigration is only viable as long as the countries of origin are so bad to live in so it's "better" to migrate. This is not really a world we want, is it?
- DrBazza 1y ago
  Don't forget that the recipient countries of immigrants are brain-draining the countries they're leaving. Arguably those motivated individuals are precisely those that should stay in their country and make it less 'bad'.
  - kruffalon 1y ago
    Yes! But more importantly wealthy countries shouldn't depend on there being poor countries where women still have "too" many children but rather we should fix our own problems so we want and can have sufficient young people of our own (not said in a nazi way). And we should also redistribute wealth so there aren't any poor countries to exploit for natural resources, crops and people.
    - nradov 1y ago
      Redistributing wealth will not make poor countries rich. Most poor countries are poor because of bad governance, corruption, political problems (including armed conflicts), culture, and geography. I support some limited forms of foreign aid but when we simply redistribute wealth it mostly gets stolen or wasted without achieving any sustainable improvements.
  - ACCount37 1y ago
    That's for them to decide, not you. I don't have enough cruelty in me to demand that someone should stay in Sudan and try to "fix" what's happening there.
    - Levitz 1y ago
      Do you have enough cruelty to promote immigration, grabbing the best people a country has to offer, leaving it in the gutter?
simianparrot 1y ago
> But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce. Unchecked immigration of people who do not share the majority of the destination’s cultural values leads to a monoculture that is terrible for everyone. Multiculturalism doesn’t work when everyone’s culture is equal everywhere. And unless it wasn’t obvious, I firmly believe in multiculturalism, but I believe we (here in Europe in particular) have been misled about what it should look like. And no it’s not about ethnicity. And that’s saying nothing about the impact on source countries as some other comments go into.
- oezi 1y ago
  As another European I don't understand your argument because Europe has seen so much internal migration over the hundreds of years that it is weird to argue it is leading to monoculture. Also unchecked migration to Europe is down to 200.000 people per year so less than 0.1% of population.
  - simianparrot 1y ago
    I include poor vetting and integration as unchecked immigration if that wasn’t obvious. And do note that I wrote > people who do not share the majority of the destination’s cultural values No culture should nor can stay stagnant. But if we allow in people who do not share or wish to share a majority of our cultural values, which vary a lot between European countries as well, then we deteriorate what made our countries lucrative destinations for these people faster than we can maintain it. It’s not complicated. Why are all those people coming here if all cultures are equal?
    - orwin 1y ago
      I'm pretty sure US cultural slop destroyed more of my culture in the last 20 years than immigration ever did, and while immigrants are part of the movement for sure (especially English retirees, but also a lot of 2nd/3rd gen migrants from eastern Europe/North Africa), they're not the main driver.
      - 1y ago
hamandcheese 1y ago
> Wouldn’t it make sense to put a big chunk of budget into creating life-extension tech? Won't that just make the problem worse?
- HeadsUpHigh 1y ago
  Most longevity enhancing interventions that have worked in mice have extended healthspan and lifespan at the same rate.
  - nradov 1y ago
    The interventions that have worked in laboratory mice seem unlikely to translate to humans. Those mice live in nice safe flat little cages where there's no risk of trauma or infectious disease. In the real world a frail old human will fall down the stairs, break a hip, lose mobility, and end up dead within a few years because of that original injury.
- HighGoldstein 1y ago
  Conceptually no, unless you specifically target end-of-life fatal ailments for some reason. Extending the healthy lifespan is a pretty reliable way to extend overall lifespan.
grues-dinner 1y ago
> Wouldn’t it make sense to put a big chunk of budget into creating life-extension tech? Only if it can improve life quality rather than length alone. Of course if we make it so you can live to 200 in the body of a 24-year-old and then suddenly drop dead, the good news is there will be no pensions to pay any more and the bad news is you will drop dead at your 180th year at work. Which is not to say I would not take that deal. Aging is brutal and I've just about had enough already!
- lblume 1y ago
  Historically, increases in total lifespan have always corresponded to increases in the length of healthy lives. People don't only live longer, they also live without being sick a whole lot longer.
  - throw__away7391 1y ago
    Exactly. It is far more fantastical to imagine such lifespan improvements resulting in a planet of crypt keepers than one of external youth. What magic do you expect would keep such people alive?
    - grues-dinner 1y ago
      The same magic that keeps some people on quasi-life support for sometimes decades already. You could imagine entirely curing cancer, heart disease, frailty and infection but not brain degeneration, for example. Curing everything else except frailty also seems invidious, though with sufficiently good brain-machine interfaces perhaps that would be less of a problem: you can just float in anti-impact gel from 100 and 200 and mentally roam the wreckage of the internet! If AI takes over knowledge work, how you pay for your life support and data connection may become an issue.
      - throw__away7391 1y ago
        Weird that you say that because these life support systems are exactly what I had in mind as evidence to the contrary. Without such an external life support system attached keeping you alive, there's not going to be some drug that holds your body together in a zombified form. Whatever treatment sustains the health of your heart muscle will surely be equally helpful to all the other muscles in your body, as would whatever keeps your circulatory system and all the other tissues in all your other vital organs in working order. The alternative would be to encase the body in ever increasing layers of machinery, which is definitely not what anyone talking about life extension means.
joelthelion 1y ago
> So, we are paying an extremely high cost for letting God go on with His Slow Tormentous Cooking of Souls before Consumption, and things are only going to get worse, given the demographic expectations. Wouldn’t it make sense to put a big chunk of budget into creating life-extension tech? It's controversial, but I think it would be tremendously beneficial to our society if we accepted that death is (currently) inevitable and that past some point, assisted suicide is a lot better than artificially prolonging suffering at great cost for as long as possible.
- DoctorOetker 1y ago
  But then how would you justify the healthcare racket?
  - baq 1y ago
    Ah, the good old ‘your medical bill is my dividend’ retirement plan.
- A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
  > assisted suicide is a lot better than artificially prolonging suffering at great cost for as long as possible. I beseech you to contemplate how badly this might be abused, and how monstrous the consequences could be. Even now MAID in Canada and other forms of assisted suicide in Europe have arguably gone way too far.
  - okr 1y ago
    It is my life. Not yours. What you are afraid of is openly murdering people.
    - A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
      There are lots of ways for you to end your life. You do not have to involve government or society. You do not require sanction or assistance. The only people who might require assistance and sanction are those who are so catastrophically ill that they cannot function independently at all. But MAID has already killed people who were able-bodied! (And some for stupid or trivial reasons: https://care.org.uk/news/2024/10/poor-lonely-and-homeless-opting-for-assisted-death-in-canada https://care.org.uk/news/2024/10/poor-lonely-and-homeless-op... )
N_Lens 1y ago
That conception of God sounds positively Eldritch!
- dsign 1y ago
  I was in need of a compliment today. Thank you :-) !
lotsofpulp 1y ago
> As I saw them, I was thinking that my 63% marginal tax was paying for it, while I part with 25% of my income after taxes to pay my mom’s pension. That monetary cost is nothing, I would gladly pay it for the rest of my life if it could give my mom a good life for that long. Her old age is my single biggest source of stress. That “monetary cost” is not nothing. It represents a share of the finite resources your tribe has (individual/family/city/country) being spent on something with little return for future generations. Developed countries are asking people who put in the effort to raise kids well to support those that don’t. That works when maybe 1 in 10 people don’t raise kids well, for whatever reason, but it doesn’t work so well when large portions of the population do not. And there very well may be a justification to not raise kids well, but the math is going to be the math regardless of justifications.
carlosjobim 1y ago
> But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce. Have you ever asked yourself what the purpose is of what you call "workforce"? Exactly what work are they doing that is more important than the survival of the native population? It's completely dehumanizing, and I can't find the logic behind it. If a geographical place needs constant influx of people from other places because the "system" there is slowly killing the population, then for what purpose should that continue?
Slava_Propanei 1y ago
[dead]
giardini 1y ago
dsign says "But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce." should be "immigration or automation are the only things that can replenish their workforce."

by dsign 1y ago

4gotunameagain 1y ago

> But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce. You cannot discount the destabilising potential of immigration, and the lowering of societal trust it comes with. As we saw multiple times, integration is the edge case and not the rule. It will be especially harder to integrate people the way the demographic pyramid is looking right now in "developed" countries. I would also question the desire of immigrants to pay for the welfare of the senile of their respective state, given the fact that they are more than likely to feel mistreated and wronged by the western, "developed" countries that will be hosting them. I am an immigrant (expat?). I don't enjoy paying contributions for the welfare of the people who played in a huge role in the reasons I had to emigrate.

simianparrot 1y ago
I appreciate you being honest, but I also don't want people like you to immigrate to my country. How are you so sure of the role our old people played in your reasons for emigrating? Even if you're in the US and from a country the US has actively destabilized, how many of the people on welfare -- old and/or infirm -- were instrumental in the actions that led to the destabilization of your country? How many of these people had any active choice? This is why we need strong vetting of immigrants.
- 4gotunameagain 1y ago
  Apart from the complex topic of political complicity, I am talking about events and actions that the majority of the local population supported. I would of course have to reveal quite a bit about me in order to be more specific. But even if I were an immigrant to the US from Venezuela or any of the tens if not hundreds countries that the US destabilised, I would indeed think of the majority of US's population as complicit. The people that are against such acts seem to always be the minority.
  - simianparrot 1y ago
    Then why would you move there?
  - whodidntante 1y ago
    There are plenty of countries to go to that are not complicit in your home countries issues if your issue is with the US. Russia and China have well above average lifestyles based on PPP. So do many South American countries, as well as Japan, and South Korea and other Asian countries. Also a number of countries in the middle east. Yes, I understand the US is a very very bad country. I am also a very very bad person because I am very grateful, proud, and and supportive of this country for providing my family an opportunity to thrive even though it took decades for my "type" to be accepted and not discriminated against. My grandparents fled from other countries to be here, for a better life. Note that I say "opportunity", because nothing was handed to my grandparents or my parents. They were given opportunity, not a subsidized life. They were also, as many immigrants have been, discriminated against for decades, but never complained or held grudges. I am a huge believer in immigration, but have zero tolerance for those demanding to be supported or who commit crimes or those that choose to come here and bitch about this country. There are plenty of other places to go to.
    - 4gotunameagain 1y ago
      Oh rest assured, I am not in the US. I would never do that. I find the mentality there insufferable. The mentality that you laid bare in your comment. About the land of opportunity, as long as the cost is externalised.
AlecSchueler 1y ago
> As we saw multiple times, integration is the edge case and not the rule. Is that true? Are you sure the edge cases where people didn't integrate aren't just bigger stories than the many many people who arrive and live normal boring lives? > question the desire of immigrants to pay for the welfare of the senile of their respective state, given the fact that they are more than likely to feel mistreated and wronged Maybe we could stop wronging and mistreating them? Or is that an important part of our European heritage?
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

kruffalon 1y ago

> But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce. Not in a sustainable way. Immigration is only viable as long as the countries of origin are so bad to live in so it's "better" to migrate. This is not really a world we want, is it?

DrBazza 1y ago
Don't forget that the recipient countries of immigrants are brain-draining the countries they're leaving. Arguably those motivated individuals are precisely those that should stay in their country and make it less 'bad'.
- kruffalon 1y ago
  Yes! But more importantly wealthy countries shouldn't depend on there being poor countries where women still have "too" many children but rather we should fix our own problems so we want and can have sufficient young people of our own (not said in a nazi way). And we should also redistribute wealth so there aren't any poor countries to exploit for natural resources, crops and people.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Redistributing wealth will not make poor countries rich. Most poor countries are poor because of bad governance, corruption, political problems (including armed conflicts), culture, and geography. I support some limited forms of foreign aid but when we simply redistribute wealth it mostly gets stolen or wasted without achieving any sustainable improvements.
- ACCount37 1y ago
  That's for them to decide, not you. I don't have enough cruelty in me to demand that someone should stay in Sudan and try to "fix" what's happening there.
  - Levitz 1y ago
    Do you have enough cruelty to promote immigration, grabbing the best people a country has to offer, leaving it in the gutter?

simianparrot 1y ago

> But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce. Unchecked immigration of people who do not share the majority of the destination’s cultural values leads to a monoculture that is terrible for everyone. Multiculturalism doesn’t work when everyone’s culture is equal everywhere. And unless it wasn’t obvious, I firmly believe in multiculturalism, but I believe we (here in Europe in particular) have been misled about what it should look like. And no it’s not about ethnicity. And that’s saying nothing about the impact on source countries as some other comments go into.

oezi 1y ago
As another European I don't understand your argument because Europe has seen so much internal migration over the hundreds of years that it is weird to argue it is leading to monoculture. Also unchecked migration to Europe is down to 200.000 people per year so less than 0.1% of population.
- simianparrot 1y ago
  I include poor vetting and integration as unchecked immigration if that wasn’t obvious. And do note that I wrote > people who do not share the majority of the destination’s cultural values No culture should nor can stay stagnant. But if we allow in people who do not share or wish to share a majority of our cultural values, which vary a lot between European countries as well, then we deteriorate what made our countries lucrative destinations for these people faster than we can maintain it. It’s not complicated. Why are all those people coming here if all cultures are equal?
  - orwin 1y ago
    I'm pretty sure US cultural slop destroyed more of my culture in the last 20 years than immigration ever did, and while immigrants are part of the movement for sure (especially English retirees, but also a lot of 2nd/3rd gen migrants from eastern Europe/North Africa), they're not the main driver.
    - 1y ago

hamandcheese 1y ago

> Wouldn’t it make sense to put a big chunk of budget into creating life-extension tech? Won't that just make the problem worse?

HeadsUpHigh 1y ago
Most longevity enhancing interventions that have worked in mice have extended healthspan and lifespan at the same rate.
- nradov 1y ago
  The interventions that have worked in laboratory mice seem unlikely to translate to humans. Those mice live in nice safe flat little cages where there's no risk of trauma or infectious disease. In the real world a frail old human will fall down the stairs, break a hip, lose mobility, and end up dead within a few years because of that original injury.
HighGoldstein 1y ago
Conceptually no, unless you specifically target end-of-life fatal ailments for some reason. Extending the healthy lifespan is a pretty reliable way to extend overall lifespan.

grues-dinner 1y ago

> Wouldn’t it make sense to put a big chunk of budget into creating life-extension tech? Only if it can improve life quality rather than length alone. Of course if we make it so you can live to 200 in the body of a 24-year-old and then suddenly drop dead, the good news is there will be no pensions to pay any more and the bad news is you will drop dead at your 180th year at work. Which is not to say I would not take that deal. Aging is brutal and I've just about had enough already!

lblume 1y ago
Historically, increases in total lifespan have always corresponded to increases in the length of healthy lives. People don't only live longer, they also live without being sick a whole lot longer.
- throw__away7391 1y ago
  Exactly. It is far more fantastical to imagine such lifespan improvements resulting in a planet of crypt keepers than one of external youth. What magic do you expect would keep such people alive?
  - grues-dinner 1y ago
    The same magic that keeps some people on quasi-life support for sometimes decades already. You could imagine entirely curing cancer, heart disease, frailty and infection but not brain degeneration, for example. Curing everything else except frailty also seems invidious, though with sufficiently good brain-machine interfaces perhaps that would be less of a problem: you can just float in anti-impact gel from 100 and 200 and mentally roam the wreckage of the internet! If AI takes over knowledge work, how you pay for your life support and data connection may become an issue.
    - throw__away7391 1y ago
      Weird that you say that because these life support systems are exactly what I had in mind as evidence to the contrary. Without such an external life support system attached keeping you alive, there's not going to be some drug that holds your body together in a zombified form. Whatever treatment sustains the health of your heart muscle will surely be equally helpful to all the other muscles in your body, as would whatever keeps your circulatory system and all the other tissues in all your other vital organs in working order. The alternative would be to encase the body in ever increasing layers of machinery, which is definitely not what anyone talking about life extension means.

joelthelion 1y ago

> So, we are paying an extremely high cost for letting God go on with His Slow Tormentous Cooking of Souls before Consumption, and things are only going to get worse, given the demographic expectations. Wouldn’t it make sense to put a big chunk of budget into creating life-extension tech? It's controversial, but I think it would be tremendously beneficial to our society if we accepted that death is (currently) inevitable and that past some point, assisted suicide is a lot better than artificially prolonging suffering at great cost for as long as possible.

DoctorOetker 1y ago
But then how would you justify the healthcare racket?
- baq 1y ago
  Ah, the good old ‘your medical bill is my dividend’ retirement plan.
A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
> assisted suicide is a lot better than artificially prolonging suffering at great cost for as long as possible. I beseech you to contemplate how badly this might be abused, and how monstrous the consequences could be. Even now MAID in Canada and other forms of assisted suicide in Europe have arguably gone way too far.
- okr 1y ago
  It is my life. Not yours. What you are afraid of is openly murdering people.
  - A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
    There are lots of ways for you to end your life. You do not have to involve government or society. You do not require sanction or assistance. The only people who might require assistance and sanction are those who are so catastrophically ill that they cannot function independently at all. But MAID has already killed people who were able-bodied! (And some for stupid or trivial reasons: https://care.org.uk/news/2024/10/poor-lonely-and-homeless-opting-for-assisted-death-in-canada https://care.org.uk/news/2024/10/poor-lonely-and-homeless-op... )

N_Lens 1y ago

That conception of God sounds positively Eldritch!

dsign 1y ago
I was in need of a compliment today. Thank you :-) !

lotsofpulp 1y ago

> As I saw them, I was thinking that my 63% marginal tax was paying for it, while I part with 25% of my income after taxes to pay my mom’s pension. That monetary cost is nothing, I would gladly pay it for the rest of my life if it could give my mom a good life for that long. Her old age is my single biggest source of stress. That “monetary cost” is not nothing. It represents a share of the finite resources your tribe has (individual/family/city/country) being spent on something with little return for future generations. Developed countries are asking people who put in the effort to raise kids well to support those that don’t. That works when maybe 1 in 10 people don’t raise kids well, for whatever reason, but it doesn’t work so well when large portions of the population do not. And there very well may be a justification to not raise kids well, but the math is going to be the math regardless of justifications.

carlosjobim 1y ago

> But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce. Have you ever asked yourself what the purpose is of what you call "workforce"? Exactly what work are they doing that is more important than the survival of the native population? It's completely dehumanizing, and I can't find the logic behind it. If a geographical place needs constant influx of people from other places because the "system" there is slowly killing the population, then for what purpose should that continue?

Slava_Propanei 1y ago

[dead]

giardini 1y ago

dsign says "But immigration is the only thing that can replenish their workforce." should be "immigration or automation are the only things that can replenish their workforce."