[extropy-chat] Cryogenics Economics- Estate Tax deferral?

Greg Burch gregburch at gregburch.net
Tue Mar 9 12:24:23 UTC 2004


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stephen J. Van Sickle
> Sent: Monday, March 08, 2004 10:35 PM
> 
> On Mon, 2004-03-08 at 21:31, Greg Burch wrote:
> 
> > A successful reanimation would throw the life insurance industry 
> > into a death spiral (arrrrggghhh!)  
> 
> Would it really?  Certainly there have been cases of people missing and
> presumed dead, declared dead by the court, and insurance collected, who
> then were found to be alive.  Of course, the majority of these cases
> probably involved actual fraud, but there must have been at least some
> case law on it...perhaps in the early days of life insurance, when the
> world was bigger and it was easier to get lost.

Oh sure, such things have happened and (as you suspected) still infrequently happen. But my point was about life insurance in general:  Life insurance is the ultimate business based on the qualities of people's behavior in large numbers, and a successful reanimation would, I hope, change that.  The problem is this: life insurance is NEVER a good bet for the "life insured": if you win, you lose (i.e. die).  If you live longer than the insurer expects, you pay the insurer MORE.  Even people of modest intelligence will figure out that life insurance isn't a good deal in more and more circumstances -- at least at the scale and for the reasons most people buy life insurance -- if they think they have a chance at vastly extended lifespans.

This isn't to say that some kind of actuarily-based insurance product connected to both death-chances and cryonic suspension couldn't be crafted (life actuaries are fiendishly clever folks), but it would have to look quite a bit different -- legally and financially -- from current life insurance products.

GB -- http://www.gregburch.net



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