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Comment by serjester | Hacker News Reader

Here’s an interesting thought experiment for you - if you could trade 20 years of your life for 10 billion dollars, would you? Just step in a room and walk out a billionaire.

I have yet to meet someone that would accept the offer. So if you do the math, they value their time at a shockingly high rate. I’d argue, trading the best years of your life for an early retirement is the same proposal.

Steve Jobs would have given his fortune many times over to have a couple extra years. Why trade the best years of your life for an uncertain future?

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I think it's worth playing this out a bit, because I'd claim there's an exponential curve here.

Offer someone 500m (hell, even 1m for many) for one year, and I doubt you'd find many who would say no. There's a margin at which you would be losing so much life experience that you wonder what you even live for (20y), while shorter periods (1, 2, 5, even 10y) aren't so defined.

Also, I read this as you lose 20y from the point of the deal (eg. 20yold coming back as a 40yold) rather than taking years off the end of your life, which I suspect is a more palatable interpretation for most.

When I have that 10 billion, I might want to extend my life just to enjoy it more, like all the rich people do. But right now? I don’t even need to think twice to accept that offer lol. My time isn’t that precious when 50% of it is spent working for food and shelter, and trying to stay fit so that I don’t stop being capable of working.

I'm curious if you have kids?

This proposal could be thought of a couple ways. Maybe I prematurely age 20 years? That sounds pretty bad. I'm currently 42. That would make me effectively 62. With twin 3 year olds and a 6 year old. That doesn't sound fun.

But what sounds even worse is they won't graduate from high school until I'm 77. Decent odds I would die before then. Even with 10 billion. Fuck that.

The other interpretation could be: the world moves on but you "fast forward". Well, I likely get to see my kids as adults, but it all zipped before my eyes.

And that sucks too. Things moves so fast at younger ages, and so far from 0-6 each age is unique, different experience. And I would never want to fast forward over that.

Maybe if I were still hanging out, playing games, and talking with friends - sure. What's 20 years - maybe I'm a little worse at games. But kids change the whole thing for me.

That was my thought too. Childhood feels so bad to many kids yhat the would happily jump 20 years ahead especially if that meant turning into billionaires. Some of them hope they'll achieve exactly that with effort and luck, and you'd be giving it to them for free.

No I don't have kids, which is why I'm able to imagine making that choice. I agree different people will have different choices, just that the parent might need to ask a different demographic.

Even with kids, parents that aren't well off often sacrifice their wellbeing for their family. For example, people that work two jobs for a total of 16-18 hours a day aren't rare where I live. They are aware this affects their health, shortens their life span and their time with kids, but they make the choice so that their family could survive.

I think you're severely underestimating what 20 years mean for your body. I'm a very fit 37 year old, and I very much notice the continued wear and tear. Recovery takes a lot longer, and the body just isn't as limber as it used to be. Partying for days on end, or some extreme sports, and maybe even some intellectual persuits are just WAAAAAY harder then they were 20 or 15 years ago. I can still do them all, but someone who thinks it's a good idea to trade in their 20s for more free time in their 40s is in for a rough surprise.

Have you considered TRT?

What's TRT?

Testosterone Replacement Therapy

I'm not considering that at all, no. From talks with all my peers, it's pretty obvious to me that this is the very normal aging process, and TRT has too many known side effects (and unknown 2nd order side effects) to be worth it

If I could use the money to reform all economies to have a land value tax and implement a -5% interest rate on cash then surely the importance of the bottom 95% of humanity's billions of years in aggregate would massively outweigh 20 of mine. Not to mention that I myself would benefit from peace and stability which could be worth 20 years if I were to die in a conflict that cuts my life short, not to mention all the technological progress that would be accelerated and thereby improve the healthcare system.

A lot of people already sacrifice 20 years of their life to bring benefits to the world.

> -5% interest rate on cash

You mean a property tax specifically on cash? Why?

It would be more interesting to ask how many people would trade one month for 40 million. Or six months for 250 million. It’s the same exchange rate, but I think you’d get many more takers.

I think the real problem is you’ve never met anyone who has any idea what to do with 10 billion dollars.

> if you could trade 20 years of your life for 10 billion dollars, would you? Just step in a room and walk out a billionaire.

i think it depends on which 20 years are taken - the old ones, where you're unable to anything anyway, or the young ones, which you'd need to enjoy that 10 billion?

Obviously the 20 years from the moment of asking so their best, healthiest years of all they have.

I would do that, go from 100 to 80 years is fine by me.

If I knew how much time I have with those 10b, yes for sure.

I would stop working today, would create my dream farm etc travel the world etc.

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