Imagine you have two groups of people: Group A and Group B. You are voting on a technology that can prevent 90% of deaths in Group A. Do you vote yes or no?
If you vote no, congratulations, you just condemned a large group of people to continue dying for the sake of egalitarianism.
(The reason this thought experiment is powerful is that it strips the scenario of value-judgments such as "elite" and "poor.")
By voting no, you just condemned 900,000 people in Group A to eventually die, simply because you wanted to prevent them from becoming the ruling elite.
Stated differently, you had the power to prevent 900,000 deaths (and in fact many more than that, moving forward), and you chose not to because of ideology.
Surely it is better for people to not die - to not cease to exist - even if that means they rise to the top of the social hierarchy?
Personally I agree with the logic that if we have the choice between 0 and 100,000 people living for ever we pick 100,000 (Even if that 100,000 include such greats as Un and Assad). Having said that If I had the choice between 100,000 living forever and 3 billion people living forever with less private jets in the world I'd pick the later. Perhaps I'm cynical but if we do indeed get this tech I'm a lot less confident about my values being satisfied in the second instance than the first.
But I wouldn't argue with you that the majority of these 'elite trimmings' set the society back. The question is after the set back does it move forward faster than it was or in a better direction (Often the answer to this would be hugely reliant on your personal values).
Not unless they're going to be benevolent rulers, no.
I will not grant people immortal life so that they can make everyone else's lives into a living hell.
We eradicated smallpox for everyone, without distinction between rulers and ruled. That's the difference!
a rising tide lifts all boats.
"A witty saying proves nothing." -- Voltaire
You may want to familiarize yourself with the history of smallpox eradication before continuing this debate. The vaccination was available mostly in wealthy countries first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox#Eradication
"...coordinated efforts against smallpox went on, and the disease continued to diminish in the wealthy countries. By 1897, smallpox had largely been eliminated from the United States.[66] In Northern Europe a number of countries had eliminated smallpox by 1900, and by 1914, the incidence in most industrialized countries had decreased to comparatively low levels..."
Notwithstanding the daughter comment that disproves this, try substituting 'smallpox' for 'cancer'. Cancer treatment is by no means available to everyone, or even the majority, yet it extends lifespans (of good people and dictators alike). Should we not have developed treatments for cancer?
Evidence or rationale supporting this conclusion?
Compound interest works intergenerationally as well as within a lifetime, so that doesn't seem to be much of an argument.
Remember, this is a scenario where we're talking about 1% of the population getting life-extension while everyone else remains stuck with 80-120 years of maximum lifespan. Those indefinite folks are going to get very wealthy very quickly (as in, within one century), because they can afford to wait for long-term investments to pay off in a way nobody else can.
Right, so compound interest isn't magic as long as you have taxes (and, actually, compound interest per se is rarely a problem when you have taxable interest, appreciation of capital assets that works like interest but isn't is the problem -- and it comes about specifically because of the choice to give tax-favored status to long-term capital gains.) Estate taxes are a mechanism that works to mitigate the problems caused by favoring capital income when death is a reliable periodic effect, but you could acheive much the same effect in a progressive income tax system, without sensitivity the frequency of death, by simply not giving long-term capital gains a tax-favored status, and treating income as income, especially if you add more upper-range marginal tax brackets for super-high-end incomes.
However, given a capitalistic or otherwise zero-sum/proprietarian social system, I cannot support inegalitarian life extension as moral. You need a broadly egalitarian society and broadly egalitarian life-extension.
Medicine and life extension as a public service is great. As a private luxury of the rich it's abominable.
Think about the implied statement of making radical life-extension available to the rich alone! "Whereas I will live to 160, you will only live to 80. Because I can afford these treatments, it means my life has double the moral worth of your life."
If you honestly believe that moral worth and financial net worth are two different things, you cannot support setting lifespan in accordance with money. Period.
Imagine you have two groups of people: Group A and Group B. Group A is living longer but unhealthy and Group B is living shorter but extremely healthy , which one do you pick - I rather pick Group B ... dont know whether Calico will be about living longer or living healthier - its not a easy thing to crack but I hope they succeed ...