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Comment by sowbug | Hacker News Reader

The law generally frowns on "dead hand control" of real and personal property that's been passed on to successors. Society is believed to be better off if living people actually own what they own.

The classic legal example is the Rule Against Perpetuities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities), which limits how much control a will or trust instrument can exert over real property. You wouldn't believe the lengths people have historically gone to make sure their notion of "the right thing" happens for many years after they die.

As a sibling commenter said, if you don't want people to truly own your personal property when you die, then you should destroy it. Or consider giving it to someone else.

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"if you don't want people to truly own your personal property when you die, then you should destroy it. "

If I want to use something while I'm alive but don't want others to have/see/use/know about it, what's the best way to handle this? The problem here is that no one knows when they're going to die, or if they'll be lucid enough when they're close to take care of things like that.

I don't personally have this desire, so I haven't thought much about it.

I guess for online stuff make sure all means of access are behind passwords that will be lost when you die.

For physical property, seems like a hard problem unless you booby trap your stuff, which is illegal and inconsiderate -- not to mention that it will likely accelerate your own demise.

There is no ideal solution to this; if this is important to you, find someone (a person or a company) to handle your final wishes when you die.

But that agreement should be a private one, not something that the society should be enforcing. My 2c.

I think the most rational course of action would be to accept that this is impossible and to try not to worry about future events that you, by definition, will not be present to have feelings about.

Should we act this way with regards to all future events? Should I for example vote for leaders whom I believe will make decisions which make things better during my lifetime only to get much worse in the far future after I'll probably have died? If I have a disabled family member who will likely outlive me, should I ignore the fact that they will continue to require care after my death, when planning my financial affairs?

Those are actions you can take with expected outcomes, not impossible desires. The equivalent in this case would be destroying your work when you're alive, or asking your executor to destroy it with the understanding that your desires may be disregarded.

You might think that making sure your children will be cared for after you are dead is an impossible desire. You might think that leaving a will specifying your intentions for unpublished work is an action with an expected outcome. The line between actions with expected outcomes and impossible desires seems hard to establish.

Making sure your children will be cared for after you are dead is also impossible, but at least there are well-established legal processes to make an attempt. I think it's actually pretty easy to establish that line.

Disability and the need for care by others are not always the same thing. Please don't imply in your writing that everyone "disabled" needs care and financial support by family members, that is pretty much generalised patronisation. I have a disability, but nobody needs to take care of me, and I have my own (sufficient) income.

He didn't imply that

Simple, use a dead man's switch. The simplest form being some kind of data access which can be set to expire, and the expiration date can only be extended by you.

Simple for the audience on HN perhaps but not for the non-technical everyday person.

A conveyor belt with a button that needs to be held down for the belt to run, is a dead man's switch

A Google Drive folder which has a sharing policy set to expire in 30 days, is a dead man's switch

You don't need to be technical to use a dead man's switch.

For context, waqfs, an Islamic financial instrument [1], are hypothesised to have contributed to the end of the Islamic golden age. So many assets were tied up by the dead.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waqf

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