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Comment by powertower | Hacker News Reader

I envision a world where, due to technology and science, everyone stops aging after 25.

A clock will be constantly visible on your forearm and time will be the only commodity in the world, in which you'll get paid and make payments in.

After the age of 25, you'll get 1 to 75 years of "time" deposited in your account. The clock on your arm will decrement by default as time passes, and increase/decrease as you earn/spend.

When your time expires (the clock reaches zero), you die.

Most people will live day-to-day, only having 24 hours of time in any given moment. Others will have millions of years on their clocks.

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      I envision a world where ...

You could try being a little more original: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/

'In Time' itself could try being a little more original - the main premise probably comes from either a great late-80s short called 'The Price of Life' (http://vimeo.com/16265933) or a 1970s Lee Falk story, 'Time is Money'.

I would only hope that there would be a place on earth where time moved slower than anywhere else -- call it something like 'New Greenwich'.

This plot doesn't make any sense.

Time is the ultimate currency.

Gold is only backed by the agreement of its scarcity; otherwise, it has no value (outside its physical usefulness as a material).

Fiat currency is only backed by the confidence of a nation; otherwise, it has no value.

Time is a currency that's backed by your life.

It is as real as it gets.

Why would time be of any value if nobody is ageing after 25?

I'm trying to fill in the gaps in the author's thinking, but I imagine it something along the lines that keeping you "aged" 25 requires resources. So time is sort of a proxy currency for the resources required to keep you alive. If you run out of time you don't have anything to purchase the resources to keep you living.

The difference between Time in this scenario and Gold, is that the value of time will be based on artificial scarcity.

The scarcity of Gold on the other hand is very real. Gold is limited and while it is possible to synthesize gold, the cost of doing that is great and does not scale.

Which is why I think the world you mention is impossible: we cannot even stop the piracy of music. Artificial scarcity is not sustainable. Once all the people will be able to live forever, they will live forever. What makes you think these "clocks" will be unbreakable?

And even if the technology will be perfect, do you really want to have on your hands a huge angry mob of people with less than 24 hours to live? Good luck with that ;-)

That didn't stop them making a movie about it: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1637688/

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