I’m not proposing people will voluntarily opt to spend the rest of their existence in a suspended state just to save a few bucks, but there are a lot of circumstances where it would be convenient for people to stop existing, and then start existing again a little while later. If my partner and I wanted to buy a house, for example, it could be cheaper and faster for her to be on ice and me to live off dried pasta in a bedsit for six months than for us to simultaneously pay rent on a two-person place and save for a deposit.
I also find the assertion that little would change because of poor human long-term financial forecasting skills to be dubiously reasoned. The presence of cryo technology described above would provide more opportunities for people to make erroneous long-term financial plans. If I change my behaviour for a bad reason, I’m still changing it.
(It also has no impact on the removal of either human or investment capital; if that happened to a significant degree, it would fundamentally change a society’s capacity for output. That might not result in a significant change in interest rates, but it’s a bold claim to offhandedly say it won’t.)
I’m not proposing people will voluntarily opt to spend the rest of their existence in a suspended state just to save a few bucks, but there are a lot of circumstances where it would be convenient for people to stop existing, and then start existing again a little while later. If my partner and I wanted to buy a house, for example, it could be cheaper and faster for her to be on ice and me to live off dried pasta in a bedsit for six months than for us to simultaneously pay rent on a two-person place and save for a deposit.
I also find the assertion that little would change because of poor human long-term financial forecasting skills to be dubiously reasoned. The presence of cryo technology described above would provide more opportunities for people to make erroneous long-term financial plans. If I change my behaviour for a bad reason, I’m still changing it.
(It also has no impact on the removal of either human or investment capital; if that happened to a significant degree, it would fundamentally change a society’s capacity for output. That might not result in a significant change in interest rates, but it’s a bold claim to offhandedly say it won’t.)