A Future World of Haves and Super-Haves SU Global Summit 2018

Peter Diamandis discusses how extreme poverty is being eliminated.

Peter Diamandis has started 22 companies.

Reputation will a higher currency than having more capital.

Things will tend towards the cost of energy, materials and data.

We can have a world where everyone has energy, smartphones, AI in the cloud, healthcare delivered via devices and AI. We can provide equal access to basic needs.

There will also be those who are mega-rich.

A world of have and super-haves is better than a world of haves and have-nots.

Diamandis did not discuss these quotes but they are applicable

This relates to some of the quotes of The Water Abundance XPRIZE is a $1.75 million competition, challenging teams to alleviate the global water crisis with energy-efficient technologies that harvest fresh water from thin air. Teams will revolutionize access to fresh water by creating a device that extracts a minimum of 2,000 liters of water per day from the atmosphere using 100% renewable energy, at a cost of no more than 2 cents per liter.

The Water Abundance XPRIZE will create decentralized access to water, giving people the power to access fresh water, whenever and wherever they need it.

42 thoughts on “A Future World of Haves and Super-Haves SU Global Summit 2018”

  1. In a world of have’s and super-have’s – the have’s will be told they are ‘have not’s’ in order for politicians to gain power. Look at the US, people at the poverty line live better lives than the Roman Emperors, yet they are have not’s now. As Christ said – the poor will always be with us. We just keep redefining poor upwards, which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. It’s peoples’ impulse to cure the problem by bringing people down to the level of the poor that’s the problem. See Venezuela for the current illustration.

  2. In a world of have’s and super-have’s – the have’s will be told they are ‘have not’s’ in order for politicians to gain power. Look at the US people at the poverty line live better lives than the Roman Emperors yet they are have not’s now. As Christ said – the poor will always be with us. We just keep redefining poor upwards which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. It’s peoples’ impulse to cure the problem by bringing people down to the level of the poor that’s the problem. See Venezuela for the current illustration.

  3. I say this with a certain sadness: IF this diagnosis of The Future is even remotely accurate, “The rest of Us” haven’t much future to look forward to at all. Really. Seriously. It is dâhmned depressing to consider a world where the super-über-rich become ever more super-über-rich, where the middle class is eroded by the commodity-nature of future employment into those scraping along with their phoney-baloney jobs, always in peril of being made redundant at the whim of an Uberlord needing to fulfill her cleptocracy’s mandate for ever-higher profits and lower costs. And to be eroded by the very-soon-to-come advent of VERY competent self-learning robotics. Which very likely can — and will — take over most-every job where people hold their slim margin of value. Mr. Wang (don’t take this wrong, Brian… its just rhetoric) has a hard-on for Life Extension. Life extension? For whom, and WHY? If one is denied the opportunity to earn a decent wage or land a long-term “safe” career because of the über-super-competitors and their penchant for automation, then who exactly is going to afford the incontrovertibly EXPENSIVE L.E. treatments? Its not like you’ll be able to pick up a bottle of LE pills at CVS for $5.99 for a month’s worth. You’ll have to add a LOT of zeroes to that. $5.99 × 1,000 = $6,000/mo. Maybe even that’s cheap: if you somehow were to land a good enough job to have a spare $75,000 after-tax income, you might be in the top 10% of all earners in America (at this point … what about Nigeria?). I’m pretty certain that until Hêll freezes over (and has glaciers), the cost of real, working, invisibly “wonderful” Life Extension therapy will require an income of MILLIONS a year, and a pretty sizeable fraction at that. Is this Humanity’s destiny? Do YOU want to live in it, Oh Regular Mensch? Well … if you’re a bright young thing, you’ll be able to rise above 99.9% of your peers, land a high-profile, high-politic job that demands absolutly NOTHING

  4. I say this with a certain sadness: IF this diagnosis of The Future is even remotely accurate The rest of Us”” haven’t much future to look forward to at all. Really. Seriously.It is dâhmned depressing to consider a world where the super-über-rich become ever more super-über-rich”” where the middle class is eroded by the commodity-nature of future employment into those scraping along with their phoney-baloney jobs always in peril of being made redundant at the whim of an Uberlord needing to fulfill her cleptocracy’s mandate for ever-higher profits and lower costs. And to be eroded by the very-soon-to-come advent of VERY competent self-learning robotics. Which very likely can — and will — take over most-every job where people hold their slim margin of value. Mr. Wang (don’t take this wrong Brian… its just rhetoric) has a hard-on for Life Extension. Life extension? For whom”” and WHY? If one is denied the opportunity to earn a decent wage or land a long-term “”””safe”””” career because of the über-super-competitors and their penchant for automation”” then who exactly is going to afford the incontrovertibly EXPENSIVE L.E. treatments? Its not like you’ll be able to pick up a bottle of LE pills at CVS for $5.99 for a month’s worth. You’ll have to add a LOT of zeroes to that. $5.99 × 1000 = $6000/mo. Maybe even that’s cheap: if you somehow were to land a good enough job to have a spare $75000 after-tax income you might be in the top 10{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of all earners in America (at this point … what about Nigeria?). I’m pretty certain that until Hêll freezes over (and has glaciers) the cost of real working”” invisibly “”””wonderful”””” Life Extension therapy will require an income of MILLIONS a year”” and a pretty sizeable fraction at that. Is this Humanity’s destiny? Do YOU want to live in it Oh Regular Mensch? Well … if you’re a bright young thing you’ll be able to rise above”

  5. I’ve heard this “the poor live better than Roman emperors/Medieval Kings/1900 Billionaires” line a few times, and I don’t buy it. Well, if we ignore the fact that the Emperors and Kings tended to get murdered with annoying regularity. If you offered me the lifestyle of those guys, but no antibiotics/internet/cars/airconditioning… I’d take that in a second. Now, I am a healthy, straight male. If I had serious medical or mental issues (or I was a woman) then I would rethink my position. But for a normal guy that swap would be great. I can’t argue with people on the other side of the world about how to restructure society? But I can argue with actual social leaders about how to do it, and then actually give it try. I can’t order in music or entertainment from the other side of the world? But I can order in actual musicians or entertainers to substitute that. Yes, there will be elements of discomfort that sheer wealth and power couldn’t deal with at that point. And I would probably die a decade or two earlier than my current expectation. But overall, it would be like the most fantastic, all expenses paid fantasy camp… for life. (I might regret my decision when I was older though…)

  6. I’ve heard this the poor live better than Roman emperors/Medieval Kings/1900 Billionaires”” line a few times”” and I don’t buy it.Well if we ignore the fact that the Emperors and Kings tended to get murdered with annoying regularity.If you offered me the lifestyle of those guys but no antibiotics/internet/cars/airconditioning… I’d take that in a second.Now I am a healthy straight male. If I had serious medical or mental issues (or I was a woman) then I would rethink my position. But for a normal guy that swap would be great.I can’t argue with people on the other side of the world about how to restructure society? But I can argue with actual social leaders about how to do it and then actually give it try.I can’t order in music or entertainment from the other side of the world? But I can order in actual musicians or entertainers to substitute that.Yes there will be elements of discomfort that sheer wealth and power couldn’t deal with at that point. And I would probably die a decade or two earlier than my current expectation. But overall it would be like the most fantastic”” all expenses paid fantasy camp… for life.(I might regret my decision when I was older though…)”””

  7. To claim poverty is decreasing just because people who used to lead subsistence lifestyles now have to belong to the cash economy is misleading at best. Someone who could work a small plot of land to feed his family, with maybe a few chickens and a goat, might be better off than a migrant worker with no permanent home, sleeping away from his family with 12 other guys, working 12 hours/day just to scrape enough together for a couple of bowls of rice/day and some rags to call clothes. Even if it isn’t quite that bad, you can still be poor if you have to pay more than 50% of income for shelter, another 30% for food and clothes. That leaves precious little for transportation, education, and God forbid, getting sick.

  8. Can you clarify what you find so attractive about the ’emperor life’? You listed some clear downsides, and a few work-arounds, but the only benefit I think I saw you mention was increased agency/power over your environment, and maybe an associated perception of greater purpose in life? The biggest downside of being poor today might be the pain of seeing how much better the lives of many others are, and the resulting feeling of powerlessness to improve one’s condition and status.

  9. LOL… talk about a non-sequitur. Probably not original, but I like it enough that I’ll start using it in competitive dinner discussions. BTW, I do think it is remarkable that how today, an (well) above average bloke or lass, with nothing more than a Cell Phone (of the smartish variety, like an Android or Apple, etc.), can in an hour or less come up with a fairly sophisticated medical diagnosis of an unusual condition … based on nothing more than the superficial presenting evidence and Google (or Bing, or …) as The Tool. Good enough in fact that if one were marooned in a primitive village, far from the trappings of Western orthodoxy, one might be able to take curative measures on a hapless victim of this or that, or the other thing. And if one is already “scientifically inclined and medically semi-competent”, well … you and your Google can do MUCH better than most-every smelly witch-doctor. Not sure how that fits into your “then I must be smarter than all the computer scientists”, but perhaps along the lines of “With my Google skilz, I am most certainly smarter than most every Witch Doctor in the Bush”. Has a nice ring about it. Magician? To the spear thrusting natives and their milieu of fly-shrouded grubby kids, it would seem so. Powerful magic. GoatGuy

  10. The wealth argument is almost like saying my sell phone’s internal computer is better than all the computers up to the year X so “I” must be smarter than all the computer scientists before year X.

  11. Good points all… and I share them with you even though we are on different ends of the political spectrum. The real question here is what does one do with these doubts? I’m sure that even if all of us that believe this way got together and tried to march in the streets we’d be ignored by the people currently scrambling to survive the slow squeeze being applied them. By the way, this part of the posting has nothing to do with anything. It’s just to trick the stupid comment system into letting me remove and repost a one word edit. Sheesh Brian, anything is better than this junk.

  12. Good points all… and I share them with you even though we are on different ends of the political spectrum. The real question here is what does what do with these doubts? I’m sure that even if all of us that believe this way got together and tried to march in the streets we’d be ignored by the people currently scrambling to survive the slow squeeze being applied them.

  13. To claim poverty is decreasing just because people who used to lead subsistence lifestyles now have to belong to the cash economy is misleading at best. Someone who could work a small plot of land to feed his family with maybe a few chickens and a goat might be better off than a migrant worker with no permanent home sleeping away from his family with 12 other guys working 12 hours/day just to scrape enough together for a couple of bowls of rice/day and some rags to call clothes.Even if it isn’t quite that bad you can still be poor if you have to pay more than 50{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of income for shelter another 30{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} for food and clothes. That leaves precious little for transportation education and God forbid getting sick.

  14. Can you clarify what you find so attractive about the ’emperor life’?You listed some clear downsides and a few work-arounds but the only benefit I think I saw you mention was increased agency/power over your environment and maybe an associated perception of greater purpose in life? The biggest downside of being poor today might be the pain of seeing how much better the lives of many others are and the resulting feeling of powerlessness to improve one’s condition and status.

  15. LOL… talk about a non-sequitur. Probably not original but I like it enough that I’ll start using it in competitive dinner discussions. BTW I do think it is remarkable that how today an (well) above average bloke or lass with nothing more than a Cell Phone (of the smartish variety like an Android or Apple etc.) can in an hour or less come up with a fairly sophisticated medical diagnosis of an unusual condition … based on nothing more than the superficial presenting evidence and Google (or Bing or …) as The Tool.Good enough in fact that if one were marooned in a primitive village far from the trappings of Western orthodoxy one might be able to take curative measures on a hapless victim of this or that or the other thing. And if one is already scientifically inclined and medically semi-competent”””” well … you and your Google can do MUCH better than most-every smelly witch-doctor. Not sure how that fits into your “”””then I must be smarter than all the computer scientists”””””””” but perhaps along the lines of “”””With my Google skilz”””” I am most certainly smarter than most every Witch Doctor in the Bush””””. Has a nice ring about it. Magician? To the spear thrusting natives and their milieu of fly-shrouded grubby kids”””” it would seem so. Powerful magic. GoatGuy”””

  16. The wealth argument is almost like saying my sell phone’s internal computer is better than all the computers up to the year X so I”” must be smarter than all the computer scientists before year X.”””

  17. Good points all… and I share them with you even though we are on different ends of the political spectrum. The real question here is what does one do with these doubts? I’m sure that even if all of us that believe this way got together and tried to march in the streets we’d be ignored by the people currently scrambling to survive the slow squeeze being applied them.By the way this part of the posting has nothing to do with anything. It’s just to trick the stupid comment system into letting me remove and repost a one word edit. Sheesh Brian anything is better than this junk.

  18. Good points all… and I share them with you even though we are on different ends of the political spectrum. The real question here is what does what do with these doubts? I’m sure that even if all of us that believe this way got together and tried to march in the streets we’d be ignored by the people currently scrambling to survive the slow squeeze being applied them.

  19. Even ten bucks a day for LE, assuming that was the lowest price available anywhere, despite COLA differences, would still make it pretty restrictive. Half a dozen to a dozen countries would have a lot of people able to get it (but not nearly all the people in those countries) and in the poorer countries only the elite would be getting it (and maybe a few of their most loyal servants). Overlords that live a thousand years could only make the inequality far, far worse. Warren Buffet made 99.7% of his current money after the age of 52. What few shreds of balance we have rely on death’s reset button. But back to the article. “A world of have and super-haves is better than a world of haves and have-nots.” This is comparing absolute poverty to relative poverty. Better is relative and relative is better but it is still not good. If you are some trillionaire’s serf, it hardly matters if you have a ten room air-conditioned house with a garden and swimming pool, lots of nice clothes and vehicles, great food, free education, and a solid retirement plan. You are still chattel. Yet, until they get hungry, too many potential voters will do nothing about it (and then they will probably do the wrong thing).

  20. Even ten bucks a day for LE assuming that was the lowest price available anywhere despite COLA differences would still make it pretty restrictive. Half a dozen to a dozen countries would have a lot of people able to get it (but not nearly all the people in those countries) and in the poorer countries only the elite would be getting it (and maybe a few of their most loyal servants). Overlords that live a thousand years could only make the inequality far far worse. Warren Buffet made 99.7{22800fc54956079738b58e74e4dcd846757aa319aad70fcf90c97a58f3119a12} of his current money after the age of 52. What few shreds of balance we have rely on death’s reset button. But back to the article.A world of have and super-haves is better than a world of haves and have-nots.””This is comparing absolute poverty to relative poverty. Better is relative and relative is better but it is still not good. If you are some trillionaire’s serf”” it hardly matters if you have a ten room air-conditioned house with a garden and swimming pool lots of nice clothes and vehicles great food free education and a solid retirement plan. You are still chattel. Yet until they get hungry”” too many potential voters will do nothing about it (and then they will probably do the wrong thing).”””

  21. increased agency/power over your environment, and maybe an associated perception of greater purpose in life” are a pretty huge deal, once you’ve got food, shelter, clothing, and all that basic stuff. I’d throw in the complete freedom from having to do most of the basic chores in life. No food prep, no cleaning, nothing like that. Though transport is much slower and more strenuous. Albeit riding a horse has the same general “fun” aspects of riding a bike (which I often choose to do despite having a car available), it also has the same disadvantages of complete vulnerability to the environment. And lastly, social status.

  22. I’d use the term “have more ability” than “smarter”. Smart is generally considered to be a personal quality, while having the ability to do something is usually acknowledged to be a system effect of both yourself and the tools and resources you have at your disposal.

  23. increased agency/power over your environment” and maybe an associated perception of greater purpose in life”” are a pretty huge deal”” once you’ve got food shelter clothing and all that basic stuff.I’d throw in the complete freedom from having to do most of the basic chores in life. No food prep no cleaning”” nothing like that. Though transport is much slower and more strenuous. Albeit riding a horse has the same general “”””fun”””” aspects of riding a bike (which I often choose to do despite having a car available)”” it also has the same disadvantages of complete vulnerability to the environment.And lastly”” social status.”””

  24. I’d use the term have more ability”” than “”””smarter””””. Smart is generally considered to be a personal quality”””” while having the ability to do something is usually acknowledged to be a system effect of both yourself and the tools and resources you have at your disposal.”””

  25. Diamandis reportedly has a medical degree. Has he ever even practiced medicine? It’s not unheard of for someone to get an MD but then do other things with his life, like the full-time writer Michael Crichton. At least Crichton left a stack of published novels and some film adaptations to show for his efforts. But what has Diamandis got to show for his various science fiction-sounding projects which make him look like he can’t focus on and follow through with anything that is reality-based and useful? If Diamandis had stuck with practicing medicine, by contrast, the grounding in empirical reality with consequences for making bad decisions would have given him something better to do with his expensive education.

  26. Diamandis reportedly has a medical degree. Has he ever even practiced medicine? It’s not unheard of for someone to get an MD but then do other things with his life like the full-time writer Michael Crichton. At least Crichton left a stack of published novels and some film adaptations to show for his efforts.But what has Diamandis got to show for his various science fiction-sounding projects which make him look like he can’t focus on and follow through with anything that is reality-based and useful?If Diamandis had stuck with practicing medicine by contrast the grounding in empirical reality with consequences for making bad decisions would have given him something better to do with his expensive education.

  27. I’d throw in the complete freedom from having to do most of the basic chores in life. No food prep, no cleaning, nothing like that.” Yeah that’s a huge benefit of being wealthy. But what happens in the (near?) future when robots are able to perform most of those chores, at a cost that’s less than that of comparable human labor?

  28. I’d throw in the complete freedom from having to do most of the basic chores in life. No food prep no cleaning” nothing like that.””Yeah that’s a huge benefit of being wealthy. But what happens in the (near?) future when robots are able to perform most of those chores”””” at a cost that’s less than that of comparable human labor?”””

  29. “I’d throw in the complete freedom from having to do most of the basic chores in life. No food prep, no cleaning, nothing like that.”

    Yeah that’s a huge benefit of being wealthy. But what happens in the (near?) future when robots are able to perform most of those chores, at a cost that’s less than that of comparable human labor?

  30. Diamandis reportedly has a medical degree. Has he ever even practiced medicine?

    It’s not unheard of for someone to get an MD but then do other things with his life, like the full-time writer Michael Crichton. At least Crichton left a stack of published novels and some film adaptations to show for his efforts.

    But what has Diamandis got to show for his various science fiction-sounding projects which make him look like he can’t focus on and follow through with anything that is reality-based and useful?

    If Diamandis had stuck with practicing medicine, by contrast, the grounding in empirical reality with consequences for making bad decisions would have given him something better to do with his expensive education.

  31. “increased agency/power over your environment, and maybe an associated perception of greater purpose in life” are a pretty huge deal, once you’ve got food, shelter, clothing, and all that basic stuff.

    I’d throw in the complete freedom from having to do most of the basic chores in life. No food prep, no cleaning, nothing like that. Though transport is much slower and more strenuous. Albeit riding a horse has the same general “fun” aspects of riding a bike (which I often choose to do despite having a car available), it also has the same disadvantages of complete vulnerability to the environment.

    And lastly, social status.

  32. I’d use the term “have more ability” than “smarter”. Smart is generally considered to be a personal quality, while having the ability to do something is usually acknowledged to be a system effect of both yourself and the tools and resources you have at your disposal.

  33. Even ten bucks a day for LE, assuming that was the lowest price available anywhere, despite COLA differences, would still make it pretty restrictive. Half a dozen to a dozen countries would have a lot of people able to get it (but not nearly all the people in those countries) and in the poorer countries only the elite would be getting it (and maybe a few of their most loyal servants). Overlords that live a thousand years could only make the inequality far, far worse. Warren Buffet made 99.7% of his current money after the age of 52. What few shreds of balance we have rely on death’s reset button.

    But back to the article.

    “A world of have and super-haves is better than a world of haves and have-nots.”

    This is comparing absolute poverty to relative poverty. Better is relative and relative is better but it is still not good. If you are some trillionaire’s serf, it hardly matters if you have a ten room air-conditioned house with a garden and swimming pool, lots of nice clothes and vehicles, great food, free education, and a solid retirement plan. You are still chattel. Yet, until they get hungry, too many potential voters will do nothing about it (and then they will probably do the wrong thing).

  34. To claim poverty is decreasing just because people who used to lead subsistence lifestyles now have to belong to the cash economy is misleading at best. Someone who could work a small plot of land to feed his family, with maybe a few chickens and a goat, might be better off than a migrant worker with no permanent home, sleeping away from his family with 12 other guys, working 12 hours/day just to scrape enough together for a couple of bowls of rice/day and some rags to call clothes.
    Even if it isn’t quite that bad, you can still be poor if you have to pay more than 50% of income for shelter, another 30% for food and clothes. That leaves precious little for transportation, education, and God forbid, getting sick.

  35. Can you clarify what you find so attractive about the ’emperor life’?
    You listed some clear downsides, and a few work-arounds, but the only benefit I think I saw you mention was increased agency/power over your environment, and maybe an associated perception of greater purpose in life?

    The biggest downside of being poor today might be the pain of seeing how much better the lives of many others are, and the resulting feeling of powerlessness to improve one’s condition and status.

  36. LOL… talk about a non-sequitur. Probably not original, but I like it enough that I’ll start using it in competitive dinner discussions.

    BTW, I do think it is remarkable that how today, an (well) above average bloke or lass, with nothing more than a Cell Phone (of the smartish variety, like an Android or Apple, etc.), can in an hour or less come up with a fairly sophisticated medical diagnosis of an unusual condition … based on nothing more than the superficial presenting evidence and Google (or Bing, or …) as The Tool.

    Good enough in fact that if one were marooned in a primitive village, far from the trappings of Western orthodoxy, one might be able to take curative measures on a hapless victim of this or that, or the other thing. And if one is already “scientifically inclined and medically semi-competent”, well … you and your Google can do MUCH better than most-every smelly witch-doctor.

    Not sure how that fits into your “then I must be smarter than all the computer scientists”, but perhaps along the lines of “With my Google skilz, I am most certainly smarter than most every Witch Doctor in the Bush”. Has a nice ring about it. Magician? To the spear thrusting natives and their milieu of fly-shrouded grubby kids, it would seem so. Powerful magic.

    GoatGuy

  37. The wealth argument is almost like saying my sell phone’s internal computer is better than all the computers up to the year X so “I” must be smarter than all the computer scientists before year X.

  38. Good points all… and I share them with you even though we are on different ends of the political spectrum. The real question here is what does one do with these doubts? I’m sure that even if all of us that believe this way got together and tried to march in the streets we’d be ignored by the people currently scrambling to survive the slow squeeze being applied them.

    By the way, this part of the posting has nothing to do with anything. It’s just to trick the stupid comment system into letting me remove and repost a one word edit. Sheesh Brian, anything is better than this junk.

  39. Good points all… and I share them with you even though we are on different ends of the political spectrum. The real question here is what does what do with these doubts? I’m sure that even if all of us that believe this way got together and tried to march in the streets we’d be ignored by the people currently scrambling to survive the slow squeeze being applied them.

  40. I’ve heard this “the poor live better than Roman emperors/Medieval Kings/1900 Billionaires” line a few times, and I don’t buy it.

    Well, if we ignore the fact that the Emperors and Kings tended to get murdered with annoying regularity.

    If you offered me the lifestyle of those guys, but no antibiotics/internet/cars/airconditioning… I’d take that in a second.

    Now, I am a healthy, straight male. If I had serious medical or mental issues (or I was a woman) then I would rethink my position. But for a normal guy that swap would be great.

    I can’t argue with people on the other side of the world about how to restructure society? But I can argue with actual social leaders about how to do it, and then actually give it try.

    I can’t order in music or entertainment from the other side of the world? But I can order in actual musicians or entertainers to substitute that.

    Yes, there will be elements of discomfort that sheer wealth and power couldn’t deal with at that point. And I would probably die a decade or two earlier than my current expectation.

    But overall, it would be like the most fantastic, all expenses paid fantasy camp… for life.

    (I might regret my decision when I was older though…)

  41. I say this with a certain sadness: IF this diagnosis of The Future is even remotely accurate, “The rest of Us” haven’t much future to look forward to at all. Really. Seriously.

    It is dâhmned depressing to consider a world where the super-über-rich become ever more super-über-rich, where the middle class is eroded by the commodity-nature of future employment into those scraping along with their phoney-baloney jobs, always in peril of being made redundant at the whim of an Uberlord needing to fulfill her cleptocracy’s mandate for ever-higher profits and lower costs.

    And to be eroded by the very-soon-to-come advent of VERY competent self-learning robotics. Which very likely can — and will — take over most-every job where people hold their slim margin of value.

    Mr. Wang (don’t take this wrong, Brian… its just rhetoric) has a hard-on for Life Extension. Life extension? For whom, and WHY? If one is denied the opportunity to earn a decent wage or land a long-term “safe” career because of the über-super-competitors and their penchant for automation, then who exactly is going to afford the incontrovertibly EXPENSIVE L.E. treatments? Its not like you’ll be able to pick up a bottle of LE pills at CVS for $5.99 for a month’s worth.

    You’ll have to add a LOT of zeroes to that. $5.99 × 1,000 = $6,000/mo. Maybe even that’s cheap: if you somehow were to land a good enough job to have a spare $75,000 after-tax income, you might be in the top 10% of all earners in America (at this point … what about Nigeria?). I’m pretty certain that until Hêll freezes over (and has glaciers), the cost of real, working, invisibly “wonderful” Life Extension therapy will require an income of MILLIONS a year, and a pretty sizeable fraction at that.

    Is this Humanity’s destiny?
    Do YOU want to live in it, Oh Regular Mensch?

    Well … if you’re a bright young thing, you’ll be able to rise above 99.9% of your peers, land a high-profile, high-politic job that demands absolutly NOTHING of you except … bodaciousness and a willingness to step on the shoulders of every person around you who’s even slightly less competent at the step-on-heads game.

    Wow.
    Not amusing.

    Perhaps I’m showing the inevitable signs of Growing Old Gracelessly.
    Grumpy Old Man syndrome.

    But I think not: increasingly, I’m seeing signs that The Next Generation is having extraordinary difficulties using their phoney-baloney deeply indebted College educations to land jobs that either significantly use their (nearly pointless) skills, or that offer decent compensation and opportunity to dig out of both their debt and to rise within the firm. Precious few jobs of that kind left.

    GOM syndome?
    How about “Eyes wide open, and disappointed at the apparent trendlines” syndrome?

    [b]Goat[/b]Guy

  42. In a world of have’s and super-have’s – the have’s will be told they are ‘have not’s’ in order for politicians to gain power.
    Look at the US, people at the poverty line live better lives than the Roman Emperors, yet they are have not’s now.
    As Christ said – the poor will always be with us. We just keep redefining poor upwards, which isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. It’s peoples’ impulse to cure the problem by bringing people down to the level of the poor that’s the problem. See Venezuela for the current illustration.

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