Joining CI and then switching to Alcor later on to take advantage of perceived greater financial stability seems like defecting in the PD
I would hope their maintenance function is funded in a way that doesn’t depend on new contracts. Otherwise I’d have very low confidence in their long-term viability. So if switching contracts undermines CI, you don’t want to be registered with CI to begin with and your actions will have little likelihood of affecting someone who is already maintained by CI.
Actually, I was thinking the other way around—paying dues at CI and then not using their services can only be good for CI, right?
But not paying a few decades of dues at Alcor and then using their services may break one of their assumptions (“X percent of people that want to be frozen will join for Y decades before actually getting frozen”). If that’s the case, someone doing that would effectively be freeloading on all the people who did sign up early and pay dues for decades. I imagine that Alcor expects a lot of people to sign up later in life rather than earlier, and that is priced into their dues. However, I’d be surprised if they expect everyone to do that.
They charge a $25,000 or $50,000 fee for non-members—I would assume they would refuse you membership if you came to them very late in life. As far as their assumptions about at what age you can become a member, you may be right but I my guess is these fees are only used to support their front-office on a year-to-year basis.
Presumably I’d switch in time to avoid that huge penalty (which I wasn’t aware of, thanks). If I have a chance, I’ll try and dig around to see what those fees are for. If you’re correct, then it would seem that there’s no downside to signing up with CI and then switching in two or three decades.
(Other than the risk that I’d actually die between now and then and be frozen in an inferior way. But realistically, if I die between now and then it will most likely be a surprise and I doubt Alcor can do much better with surprises than CI; maybe I’m wrong.)
I would hope their maintenance function is funded in a way that doesn’t depend on new contracts. Otherwise I’d have very low confidence in their long-term viability. So if switching contracts undermines CI, you don’t want to be registered with CI to begin with and your actions will have little likelihood of affecting someone who is already maintained by CI.
Actually, I was thinking the other way around—paying dues at CI and then not using their services can only be good for CI, right?
But not paying a few decades of dues at Alcor and then using their services may break one of their assumptions (“X percent of people that want to be frozen will join for Y decades before actually getting frozen”). If that’s the case, someone doing that would effectively be freeloading on all the people who did sign up early and pay dues for decades. I imagine that Alcor expects a lot of people to sign up later in life rather than earlier, and that is priced into their dues. However, I’d be surprised if they expect everyone to do that.
They charge a $25,000 or $50,000 fee for non-members—I would assume they would refuse you membership if you came to them very late in life. As far as their assumptions about at what age you can become a member, you may be right but I my guess is these fees are only used to support their front-office on a year-to-year basis.
Presumably I’d switch in time to avoid that huge penalty (which I wasn’t aware of, thanks). If I have a chance, I’ll try and dig around to see what those fees are for. If you’re correct, then it would seem that there’s no downside to signing up with CI and then switching in two or three decades.
(Other than the risk that I’d actually die between now and then and be frozen in an inferior way. But realistically, if I die between now and then it will most likely be a surprise and I doubt Alcor can do much better with surprises than CI; maybe I’m wrong.)