New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | April 13, 2005

Ron Bailey shortens the lifespan of Charles Mann's chicken-little reporting on longer lifespans.

Comments

|4.13.05 @ 3:15PM|#

Women in their sixties are giving birth to healhty children?

Yes, just as people are traveling in space and calves are born with two heads. It's hardly a trend and it's difficult to say when it will be commonplace.

|4.13.05 @ 3:30PM|#

Those evil, Godless, anti-family childfrees, actually having the nerve to enter their 40s without performing their reproductive duties! Where are the internment camps when you need them? "The Handmaid's Tale" should have been used as a government manifesto, if you ask me.

|4.13.05 @ 3:31PM|#

It doesn't matter whether women can bear children in their 60's or not, there's nothing concrete to suggest that longer lifespan is in any way related to lower birth rates. I would imagine that birth control and abortion are a much larger factor. Let's not forget that children are really something that will just happen whether you plan to have some sort of extended adolescence or not.

There is little doubt that the median age has an effect on a society, but Mann's musings are not based on anything but conjecture. I mean, his ideas might make a fun little Sci-Fi story, but they're hardly something to take seriously, at least as far as they're currently presented.

Mike|4.13.05 @ 3:37PM|#

I agree that it's fairly stupid to worry too much about the increasing lifespan. But I think it's also important to point out that, although the average lifespan has gone up by around 25 years since 1900, almost half of that increase is thanks to the reduction in infant mortality. In 1900, if you made it to 10, chances are you would make it to 60 or 65. If you made it to 60 in 1900 you might get to 75, while in 2000 you are likely to get to 80. The improvements are far less dramatic at the old end of the range than the young.

We may find that, contrary to the alarmists (and futurists) predictions, average lifespans of 100+ years are somewhat unlikely.

Dan H.|4.13.05 @ 4:07PM|#

So this clown thinks that allowing people to live longer will be economically damaging? This may be the stupidest idea I've ever heard.

Look at it this way: When people are born, they become an economic liability, and remain one until they are 20-30 years old. They are a net drain on the economy. Then they become productive, and as they gain experience and knowledge in their careers their productivity goes up. Then they retire, and become a net drain on the economy again. Then they die, and that huge investment in their education and the value of their experience is lost.

So, for a person who lives to 80, they'll spend 25 years in retirement, and 25 years being educated. Then they start to become productive, and spend maybe only 10 or 15 years in 'peak earning' form.

Now imagine changing that equation, so that a person spends 25-30 years being educated, then goes out to become a productive member of society for another 100 years. What a huge boon to society, and to the economy!

As for choosing not to have children... I think it might be the opposite. A lot of people don't have kids now precisely because their productive years are so short, and they don't want to cut into them to raise a family. But if they know they can work to 40, build up a decent lifestyle first, then have children and spend 20 years in child-rearing mode, THEN return to full-time careers or even go back to school and learn a new career, it makes the decision to have kids a lot easier.

And think of the savings to Social Security. Right now, the system has to accumulate enough money over a 30-40 year span to pay for a 15 year retirement. That's a huge drag on the worker. But if you can work for 100 years before retiring, the percentage of your income required for retirement is much lower, allowing more money to be re-invested, spent on education, etc.

The same goes double for medicare. Today, the total lifespan medical burden is very high for an individual because we spend significant portions of our natural lives at stages where we require lots of medical care (infancy, childhood, pregnancy, and old age). If you can stretch out the 'healthy' period in between those extremes, the amount of money we need to spend on health care as a percentage of our total lifetime earning power drops. Obviously this changes if we have to take $15,000 in drugs each year as the author contends, but it looks to me like he pulled that number straight out of his ass. As Bailey mentions, even if those drugs started out that expensive, within 17 years the patents will expire and they'll become dirt cheap. So the average annual cost over 100 years would be much, much lower.

I think the economic reality of life extension is exactly the opposite of what Charles Mann thinks.

|4.13.05 @ 4:09PM|#

The important thing is that this technology will allow brain-damaged women to remain in a persistent vegetative state for longer than we ever dared to dream. Hallelujah.

|4.13.05 @ 4:16PM|#

MK has the best comment!

|4.13.05 @ 4:20PM|#

I'm not sure children can be considered a net drain on the economy. The amount of money spent on children is significant, and the amount of jobs dedicated to producing goods for children must be just as significant.

|4.13.05 @ 4:32PM|#

I won't sweat the loss of intergenerational wealth and power transfers, but I do worry a little (but only a little) about another social dynamic that would be disrupted by longer lifespans -- the attrition of old ideas and attitudes.

Take the civil rights landscapes of today compared with 30 years ago. Some progress comes from the pontificators and the agitators changing the hearts and minds of people who were hostile to blacks/gays/whoever. But I submit that much of that progress is demographic -- the younger generations grow up in different circumstances and have different attitudes than their elders. Many societal changes happen because the makeup of society changes, not because individual members of society change. Based on current trends, for example, in a generation Americans will be much more open to the idea of gay marriage even if not a single American alive today changes his/her opinion about it.

Mortality is a natural predator of conservatism* and life-extension technology will have an adverse effect on dynanism in the society. Would we have wanted for Earl Warren or Marge Schott to have the benefits of life extension technology?


* - I mean conservative in the dictionary sense meaning static, resistant to change. Not the political sense, which could mean all sorts of things.

|4.13.05 @ 4:32PM|#

Stretch,
Isn't that what's commonly known as the broken window fallacy? At least much of the elderly built up capital to spend on their unproductivity.

Kids just drain beer money from my friends with kids. :)

|4.13.05 @ 4:46PM|#

Immmortality: not likely
100+ year mean lifespans: very likely

we could do it today if everyone exercised and practiced caloric restriction; wait a few decades and we'll have a pill to mimic those effects

|4.13.05 @ 4:48PM|#

It would be a broken window fallacy if I stated that kids significantly added to the economy.

It's surely not one to one, but that money is going to be invested or spent on something, whether it's teddy bears or an Armani suit. I think far more money is spent on children than on the elderly, and far less entitlements are paid out to children than the elderly. I could be wrong about that. I'm just not sure that kids have a net negative impact, and if they do, I can't imagine that it's really significant, or at least that it's nearly as significant as the elderly.

|4.13.05 @ 5:11PM|#

Stretch,
There are quite a few entitlements for children. [Note I am not stating which entitlements for children I support or oppose, just listing examples]
Education is a huge one. Primary, secondary and post-secondary costs are the biggest line items in most state budgets.
Day care.
Most welfare and medical coverage for the poor are targeted specifically to children (granted, they have less use for medical services than the elderly).
Tax deductions for people with children.
Then you have the entire slew of laws foisted on us "for the children" (that doesn�t really count, just wanted to throw it in).

By saying they�re not a net drain on society ignores that kids cost us a lot. I�m not saying some of the investments aren�t justified, we need someone to run the economy when I�m gumming oranges, but there�s an immense initial investment.

|4.13.05 @ 5:16PM|#

Well, however much kids might cost, if investments in children were a net drain on the economy then the Shakers (or whatever the religion was that forbade sex even for married couples) would have more money then Bill Gates right now.

|4.13.05 @ 5:28PM|#

Mo, you're absolutely right, but considering that SS and MC are the largest items in the Federal budget, I'm not sure that public education etc actually equals that. Like I said, I'm just not sure that they're a net negative, and I'm pretty sure that they don't cost as much as the elderly. I could be wrong on one or both counts.

Look at it this way, assuming there's no behemoth gov't handing out checks (one can dream, no?), I think that everything comes out pretty even. Though both children and old folks might cost an individual personally, every dollar spent (more or less) helps the economy overall.

|4.13.05 @ 5:28PM|#

whatever the religion was that forbade sex even for married couples
Boy, that movement must've lasted a really long time.

|4.13.05 @ 5:54PM|#

Mo and thoreau

Actually the Shakers were quite prosperous. You're right, they forbade sex, but increased their numbers through conversions but especially by taking in orphans. Many of the orphans stayed but because there was no coercion (they were also non-violent) many (maybe most) left for "normal" lives. The vast majority had positive memories of their upbringing which featured a sort of unconditional love combined with a firm but not harsh discipline.

By taking in orphans they served a valuable social function. As the State took over Child Welfare functions part of their supply of new recruits dried up.

I don't know how much of an economic drain Shaker children were. They were introduced to hard work at an early age.

And, yes Mo, celibacy is usually given as the reason for the demise of Shakerism. They did, however last over 200 yrs. There was a TV documentary a few years ago about the last surviving Shakers. There were something like seven very elderly ones living somewhere in Maine or New Hampshire.

Sam Grove|4.13.05 @ 6:04PM|#

It's not spending that benefits the economy, it's productivity. The typical person, over his/her lifespan is/should be, a net producer, ie. procuing more then he consumes. When a child or infirm, a person is a net consumer.

The need for productivity to exceed consumption is to have savings, make investments, etc. To advance civilization.

It's a matter of what our purposes are.

The real problem before us is the capacity of government to surivive even though it consumes more than it produces. When that difference exceeds the difference between our ability to produce more than we consume, the we are in for it.

PintofStout|4.13.05 @ 6:05PM|#

The real worry is that AARP's membership may explode! We can't handle the geezers we have now. We are surely doomed!

|4.13.05 @ 6:25PM|#

The real worry is that AARP's membership may explode! We can't handle the geezers we have now. We are surely doomed!

Can you imagine if the voting bloc of unproductive citizens doubles or triples? They'll be all over Washington DC like zombies, uttering "givvvee usss more monneyyyy". If you think politicians can't say no to seniors now, just wait 30 years. It's going to be horrifying.

|4.13.05 @ 6:26PM|#

i dont know if anyone else has pointed this out, but "life span" has not changed one bit. the most that anyone lives is 120 years. few make it that far, but no one makes it past.

"life expectancy" steadily increases as science and medicine make their gains...

mike

|4.13.05 @ 7:58PM|#

In the past, twenty- and thirty-year-olds had the chance of sudden windfalls in the form of inheritances.

Who are all these 20 and 30 year olds whose parents are dying off? Don't people live to be 70-80 nowadays?

Or by "in the past" does he mean, "back in Shakespeare's day"?

Most people i've ever known, their parents didn't die till they were in their 50s and 60s, not their 20s and 30s -- so had they been laying around all that time waiting for their folks to bite the dust, they'd have been horribly out of luck. Fortunately, they lived their lives assuming they wouldn't inherit anything till they were much older, and managed to actually make something of themselves, without the benefit of a giant windfall during their youth.

Maybe this guy is a trust fund baby who just can't understand how normal people do it?

|4.13.05 @ 9:01PM|#

My father died when I was 32, actually last year. The government responded by giving my mother a generous death benefit of $255.00. My father paid all those social security taxes for almost 40 years so I guess my mother will have to decide what to do with the all the money. She could by a tropical island and support me forever if only she invests that 255 fucking bucks wisely

|4.13.05 @ 10:35PM|#

There is only one solution (and posters on this site have mentioned it before): soilent green.

|4.13.05 @ 10:48PM|#

"'From religion to real estate, from pensions to parent-child dynamics, almost every aspect of society is based on the orderly succession of generations,' declares Mann."

Wasn't almost every aspect of society once based on the assumption of high infant mortality?

|4.13.05 @ 11:13PM|#

David T,

Pretty much dead on, but I think it was the assumption of high mortality, period.

|4.14.05 @ 2:14AM|#

What if medical advances make it so that the only way for people to die is to have their heads cut off with swords?

And, even worse, what if the executioners become stronger with every head that they take?

Wouldn't that be awful? I think we should abandon any further research on slowing aging, for the sake of the children.

|4.14.05 @ 2:25AM|#

There can be only ONE!

Matt|4.14.05 @ 6:30AM|#

All the more reason to make sure Social Security is euthanized long before we make any more serious advances in longevity.

|4.14.05 @ 11:47AM|#

"I have something to say. It's better to burn out than to fade away!" - Kurgan

Bear with me... the quote makes a strange sort of sense in the context of this thread.

Who wouldn't want to be healthy and whole for a LONG life-time and then die by decapitation as opposed to a long, slow slide into the inability to control one's bodily functions? Decapitation seems a pretty instantaneous, i.e. painless, way to go, at least in the movie.

clarityiniowa|4.14.05 @ 2:58PM|#

rob - Quick and painless, maybe, but pretty irrevocable if you change your mind in the middle. Count me anti-decapitation, and pro-head. ;-)

|4.14.05 @ 7:09PM|#

Ok, Anyone else want anything while I'm ordering?

I've got an order for quick, painless death after near-immortality and 2 down as "pro-head"! (Andrea Dworkin is no doubt fiercely shouting obscenities from one of the deeper circles of Hell...) ;>

|4.14.05 @ 9:49PM|#

Decapitation seems a pretty instantaneous, i.e. painless, way to go, at least in the movie.

Not for the executioner who seemed to writhe in pain amidst broken glass and bolts of lightning.

|4.15.05 @ 10:32AM|#

LOL! Good point...