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I'm pretty sure if possible, serious anti-aging technogy will drop in price due to incredible market demand. It's highly unlikely the compound relies on resourc

I'm pretty sure if possible, serious anti-aging technogy will drop in price due to incredible market demand. It's highly unlikely the compound relies on resources that are extremely rare. Even if that were the case, someone would quickly find a way to replicate the procedure without the rare resources. Likely the things in the way would be governments and corporations trying to profit through IP. In that case, black market tech would be developed and you could likely go to an unregulated / 3rd world country to get the procedure done.

rz2k 13y ago
Just to be clear, increasing demand implies shifting the demand curve rightward, and increases the price. The dynamics of economies of scale that we are familiar with are related to chance that suppliers can lower their marginal costs if demand also justifies a fixed cost in suitable technology. And furthermore, if there is a big enough market and enough suppliers, the market price will approach the marginal cost of production. Imagine someone wants you to make a spoon that they'll buy from you. It takes you an hour to whittle one out of a piece of wood, and you charge $100. Then they want ten more using the exact same method you used on the first one. Ten hours whittling sounds like even more of a hardship than an hour, so you charge even more per spoon. A thousands spoons painstakingly whittled? Nope. Now imagine on the other hand, they want you to make them a plastic spoon. Making one plastic spoon is going to be a lot more difficult than whittling one wooden spoon. And yet, if they want enough of them, and you can use any technology, your costs might start to approach $0.01 per spoon. Anyway, since we think of anything that's to become a viable business in terms of how it can scale, it's easy to reverse the outcomes of changes in supply or demand in the base case where no technology or methods are changing.
- argumentum 13y ago
  I didn't say mere "increased" demand, I said "incredible" demand. I meant to imply that economies of scale would develop, as I imagine most will pay everything they have for the ability to live forever. (At least I would, as long as I was purely rational. I can imagine getting bored of life in 500 years or so, but I doubt it).

rz2k 13y ago

Just to be clear, increasing demand implies shifting the demand curve rightward, and increases the price. The dynamics of economies of scale that we are familiar with are related to chance that suppliers can lower their marginal costs if demand also justifies a fixed cost in suitable technology. And furthermore, if there is a big enough market and enough suppliers, the market price will approach the marginal cost of production. Imagine someone wants you to make a spoon that they'll buy from you. It takes you an hour to whittle one out of a piece of wood, and you charge $100. Then they want ten more using the exact same method you used on the first one. Ten hours whittling sounds like even more of a hardship than an hour, so you charge even more per spoon. A thousands spoons painstakingly whittled? Nope. Now imagine on the other hand, they want you to make them a plastic spoon. Making one plastic spoon is going to be a lot more difficult than whittling one wooden spoon. And yet, if they want enough of them, and you can use any technology, your costs might start to approach $0.01 per spoon. Anyway, since we think of anything that's to become a viable business in terms of how it can scale, it's easy to reverse the outcomes of changes in supply or demand in the base case where no technology or methods are changing.

argumentum 13y ago
I didn't say mere "increased" demand, I said "incredible" demand. I meant to imply that economies of scale would develop, as I imagine most will pay everything they have for the ability to live forever. (At least I would, as long as I was purely rational. I can imagine getting bored of life in 500 years or so, but I doubt it).