Re: The new death penalty

Jeff Bone (jbone@activerse.com)
Tue, 03 Aug 1999 01:19:39 -0500


> According to that theory*, then, estate taxes should be run to the
> hilt, because life is invariably fatal. (extropians? anyone?
> Bueller?)

Invariably fatal... for now. I'm willing to bet that at least someone
on this list will live to see "effective immortality" achieved --- i.e.,
the point where the average life span increases at or greater than one
year for each year. Even so, the projected average lifespan (as of now)
has a theoretical max of about 600 years from an actuarial standpoint.
(ref? anyone?) Seems you're likely on average to die in an accidental
fashion in about that amount of time, even if aging and all other
disease conditions are eliminated.

We'd better get busy on the brain uploading and backup front, as well as
work out some good, distributed, fault tolerant
consciousness-transferral technology. People. ;-)

ObPolitical: Estate taxes and laws against trust in perpetuity are more
of the same old garbage. What I want to know is this: what gives
anyone else the right to claim or exercise control over *my* resources
without my explicit consent, ever, under any condition? It's worse than
a bad idea, it's one of the closest things to philosophical / moral
"evil" I can think of. (Oh, god, not that one again... ;-)

$0.02,

jb