Elf Sternberg

I'm saying the opposite: that it will be the arrogant, self-absorbed people who will most aggressively seek life-extension treatments, no matter what the consequences (if any) may be to everyone else. Because, you see, they are Very Important. More important than you.

Oh, ok. I agree with you, then. By definition, no matter how much I would seek life extension for my hedonic reasons ("life is fun"), I will probably not seek it as aggressively as someone who sought it for egotistic reasons ("I am the center of the universe").

But those like you and I and Elf are rather different. Those who are More Important Than You or I will deem such reasons as unworthy of access to Their Immortality Pills. And they will see any life-extension medication as a limited resource that is rightfully theirs, since They are Very Important. (Many of them see "marriage" as some sort of finite resource, after all.)

Possibly, yes. However, I see any pressure that they could exert based on this belief as trivial compared to the immense market pressure that would be generated by the "immortality pill" manufacturers to expand their market by bringing production costs and hence prices down.

Understand, I do not regard the immortality suppliers as likely to do this for altruistic reasons (though, who knows, one or two might surprise us in that regard). They will do it for economically selfish reasons -- because, as the technology progresses, there will be money to be made at lower and lower prices, serving wider and wider markets.

Something similar has happened with every other good and service that has been around long enough to allow the principle time to operate: I don't see why anagathics would be any different in this regard.

Nevertheless, banning technology won't do any good.

Instead, it would do immense harm, the more as it was successful, and also because it would mostly be unsuccessful. You would get a black market commodity that people would be even more willing to kill for than they are currently willing to kill for narcotic drugs! You would get law enforcement struggling to ensure that people die. The corruptive possibilities of all this are terrifying.

Better to make people pay for the indirect as well as the direct consequences. (To whit: if you want to live to 150, don't expect the rest of us to foot the bill for it, and expect to be working until age 130.)

Past a certain point, anagathics would become cheap enough that they would be provided free at low-cost or free clinics, just like antibiotics in many cities and countries today. However, if they extend youth rather than merely forestalling death, this really isn't a problem, provided that one changes the allowable benefits collection ages in public pension plans to match the changes in life expectancy.

Admittedly this is a political problem, but should we let such a problem rob us of the chance at eternal, or even extended, life?