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Comment by kubiiii | Hacker News Reader

Plus what companies from 50 years ago are still around?

It's not because companies disappear that assets do. Buildings, machineries, lands, are passed on to new owners. Now I'm not sure in which category of assets "frozen dead body" falls into, though.

A frozen body is a liability to owners – there is every incentive for them to lose it or otherwise facilitate its loss. There is also no drawback, as there is no one who would notice or complain if they do.

Not sure... if you have a famous frozen person and the technology to unfreeze people ever comes to be, you could make money on "reviving a legend", kickstarter style, to recover the costs involved during the years.

Fine – that frozen body is an asset. But any random frozen body is not.

Not only are they in a contract, but Alcor is only going to be staffed by people committed to advancing the cause of cryonics. They don't have some shady fly by night low bidder maintaining their patients.

If you put one in a storage unit, possibly yes, but not with a dedicated nonprofit staffed by experts in the field.

I am talking about what the incentives are, and you are replying with, essentially, “Surely they wouldn’t do such a thing!”. Maybe not, but that’s not the point. The incentive is what I’m talking about. And the fact is that a head or body and a contract is a straight liability, with nobody (literally!) to complain if they don’t fulfill their part.

If you want to argue that they would stand to lose more PR and goodwill than it would be worth, that would actually be a point you could make, but now I’m just writing your argument for you.

Alcor is specifically structured for longevity - their money is invested to provide long term (longer than human life) returns to ensure their operation. As it is, ongoing maintenance is cheap - they receive a delivery of liquid nitrogen every week IIRC, which is used to top up the dewars, but it is weeks to months between required top ups, with no power required.

Seems like quite many companies have actually survived for centuries: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_companies

No matter what happens, we can rest assured that IBM will be around.

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