I would imagine that if humans were immortal, the centralization of wealth and power under a few families would be even more extreme. Which is probably not good for the vast majority of humans.
Another thought I had was that revolutions over inequality almost always happen when there's a large youthful population. The old just don't have the energy or the future-focused outlook for big change. Inequality might be less stable if all adults had the health of their youth.
That's a very specific scenario, where everything happens to be going great for you. Do you honestly believe wealth inequality has no negative consequences for those at the bottom?
"But if we cure aging won't that mean that the ultra-rich will never go away??" That's what these conversations always seem to devolve into and it seems to miss the bigger picture.
With an average fertility rate of 1, which is higher than that of many countries including where I live, even complete immortality would lead to an asymptotic population. Since some people will still inevitably die in accidents even if aging is solved, a fertility rate of 1 would be a declining population even with unlimited lifespans.
> I am not convinced though, wealth seems to dissipate over long periods (e.g. most billionaires today did not inherit their wealth).
The single most reliable predictor of wealth BY FAR is being born into wealth. And arguably, it dissipates because it gets decentralized as it gets split up between heirs as it passed down to future generations which are typically less ambitious and focused on maintaining that power and wealth.
Imagine if Ghengis Khan, Stalin, Mao, Rothschild, Rockerfeller, all of the kings/royals/despots/dictators were immortal and still running the world - I don't think most people would want to live in that world.
I highly doubt that. I would guess that income and age would be much better predictors for example.
> I don't think most people would want to live in that world.
I would, if the other option was death.
Regardless, I doubt any of them would still rule the world had they not died of old age. Regimes survive despite the death of their rulers and fall while their rulers are still alive.
I'm talking about predictors of wealth for a new person. The age and income are both zero. If you have their income - you probably have their wealth already as well - nothing to predict.
And for the record, coming from wealth is the strongest predictor of future wealth. [0][1]
> I would, if the other option was death.
But you have no choice/option in my hypothetical scenario - you're born a slave and you die...
> Regardless, I doubt any of them would still rule the world had they not died of old age.
Really.... ? Why? All of the people I mentioned, maintained and grew their wealth/power their entire life up until their death. Having power/wealth is just a huge advantage if you're trying to gain/maintain power/wealth.
[0] https://www.ctpublic.org/education/2019-05-15/georgetown-stu... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/29/study-to-succeed-in-america-...
That's almost a tautology then. If you only know one thing about someone, that's also necessarily the best predictor for anything about them. However, it doesn't tell us much about whether wealth does concentrate over time.
> Really.... ? Why?
Because regimes change all the time despite rulers being alive. The death of a ruler by old age rarely triggers regime change, they just get succeeded by someone else. It's usually another event that triggers regime change (peaceful and violent revolutions, war, etc.). Immortal rulers wouldn't be immune to those events.
You can know a great deal about someone at birth, such as race, gender, country of origin, eye color etc. Yet you can accurately predict someone’s wealth at age 60 by looking at their parent’s wealth even though a babies income is generally 0.
Further wait until someone’s 10 and you can measure IQ, grades, etc and parents wealth is still #1. Wait even longer and high school GPA still isn’t nearly as useful.
No... it's not? Do you know what tautology means?
> If you only know one thing about someone, that's also necessarily the best predictor for anything about them.
Except it's not the only thing you know about them... so your point is kinda meaningless.
> However, it doesn't tell us much about whether wealth does concentrate over time.
There are soooo many studies supporting this, like the two I linked above, not to mention common sense.
It's like the most basic game theory + common sense - you have X people competing with each other, you give (0.001 * X) of those people massive advantages - who do you think is going to be winning?
Part of it is wealth becoming diluted with offspring and secondly being raised in wealth diminishes people value of money until it is too late.