I don't particularly like death, but the potential societal stasis caused by longer lives is a problem as well. Already when living to our 80s and 90s, we can

I don't particularly like death, but the potential societal stasis caused by longer lives is a problem as well. Already when living to our 80s and 90s, we can see the top strata of the society (CEO level, Parliaments) overflowing with very old people who don't want to relax their grip on power. The current US Senate is older than the Brezhnev politburo, widely considered a gerontocracy, once was. It is the same elsewhere. Few powerful people are as self-aware as Benedict XIV. was, or their lust for power is simply too big. In autocracies, people like Putin, Erdogan, Khamenei and Xi built very resilient systems that could support them for decades, if not centuries, and death is the only way that can reliably get them out of the way. I suppose that not even the Americans would like to see various replays of Biden vs. Trump for several election cycles, and the Supreme Court is a veritable gerontocracy as well. If longevity research succeeds, the younger justices like Gorsuch and Barrett may well stay on the bench until 2070 or even longer, shaping rules for a world they will no longer understand. If we ever are to achieve very long lives, we need to expand into the universe as well, so that the younger generations can build their own domains somewhere else, unburdened by the dictates of the old.