This actually reminds me of a movie trailer I saw the other day, for a movie called In Time. (Note: I am not at all endorsing it or saying you should see it. Apparently, it sucks! lol)
General premise of the sci-fi world- People live normally until 25. Then you stop aging and get a glowy little clock on your arm, that counts down how much time you have left to live. “Time” is pretty much their version of money. You work for time. You trade time for goods, etc. Rich people live forever; Poor people die very young. (pretty much imagine if over-drafting your bank account once means that you die)
Anyway, when I saw this preview, being the geek I am, I thought: “That doesn’t make sense!”
The reason it doesn’t make sense has to do with the extension v. replacement argument. Until the age of at least 16, and more generally 22-ish, people are a drain rather than benefit to society. The economic cost of maintaining a child is not equal to the output of a child. (I’m obviously not talking about love, and fulfillment of the parents, etc.).
This society’s idea is that people of working age would be required to provide the economic cost for their life. However what would actually end up happening is that the birth rates would climb sky high (since people die young, and you need some of your children to make it so that once you can’t keep working anymore they can provide hours for you). So society would be burdened with raising and educating a disproportionately large amount of children, but not getting full utility out of them. (aka they would start killing them off once they actually reached working/productive age)
In other words, society pays a lot to raise a kid, and then kills it after only getting a couple of productive years out of it. Does not compute.
So my thought, upon seeing this trailer, was that it would make no sense for that society to allow everyone to have children, and only rich people to live forever. It would make way more sense for that society to allow everyone to live forever, and only allow rich people (who could completely pay for their children’s upbringing) to have children. (I am not saying this is at all a “good” idea, but given the premise of the film, it was the much more reasonable alternative).
In other words, you can continue getting utility out of one person if they live forever, but if you are going the “replacement” route you constantly have to be pouring money into their education and upbringing.
Note: I am not actually arguing for extension over replacement in any society other than the rather far-fetched one presented in the movie.
This actually reminds me of a movie trailer I saw the other day, for a movie called In Time. (Note: I am not at all endorsing it or saying you should see it. Apparently, it sucks! lol)
General premise of the sci-fi world- People live normally until 25. Then you stop aging and get a glowy little clock on your arm, that counts down how much time you have left to live. “Time” is pretty much their version of money. You work for time. You trade time for goods, etc. Rich people live forever; Poor people die very young. (pretty much imagine if over-drafting your bank account once means that you die)
Anyway, when I saw this preview, being the geek I am, I thought: “That doesn’t make sense!”
The reason it doesn’t make sense has to do with the extension v. replacement argument. Until the age of at least 16, and more generally 22-ish, people are a drain rather than benefit to society. The economic cost of maintaining a child is not equal to the output of a child. (I’m obviously not talking about love, and fulfillment of the parents, etc.).
This society’s idea is that people of working age would be required to provide the economic cost for their life. However what would actually end up happening is that the birth rates would climb sky high (since people die young, and you need some of your children to make it so that once you can’t keep working anymore they can provide hours for you). So society would be burdened with raising and educating a disproportionately large amount of children, but not getting full utility out of them. (aka they would start killing them off once they actually reached working/productive age)
In other words, society pays a lot to raise a kid, and then kills it after only getting a couple of productive years out of it. Does not compute.
So my thought, upon seeing this trailer, was that it would make no sense for that society to allow everyone to have children, and only rich people to live forever. It would make way more sense for that society to allow everyone to live forever, and only allow rich people (who could completely pay for their children’s upbringing) to have children. (I am not saying this is at all a “good” idea, but given the premise of the film, it was the much more reasonable alternative).
In other words, you can continue getting utility out of one person if they live forever, but if you are going the “replacement” route you constantly have to be pouring money into their education and upbringing.
Note: I am not actually arguing for extension over replacement in any society other than the rather far-fetched one presented in the movie.