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Wealthy 'Cryonauts' Put Assets on Ice
Carl Bialik writes "'You can't take it with you. So Arizona resort operator David Pizer has a plan to come back and get it,' the Wall Street Journal reports. Pizer is one of about about 1,000 members of the "cryonics" movement who plan to put their bodies on ice soon after death so that in the future, medical advances can save them. A small, wealthy subset of these cryonauts is exploring ways to leave their money to themselves. 'With the help of an estate planner, Mr. Pizer has created legal arrangements for a financial trust that will manage his roughly $10 million in land and stock holdings until he is re-animated,' the Journal reports. 'Mr. Pizer says that with his money earning interest while he is frozen, he could wake up in 100 years the richest man in the world.'"
he could wake up in 100 years the richest man in the world
Or he could wake up in 300 years in sick bay with no money at all.
David Pizer wakes up in the future and calls his accountant to find out how his account is doing. "Good news!" the man says. "Your ten million dollars has grown to almost one billion dollars!" David is ecstatic and they talk a minute more. Suddenly the phone chimes. "Please deposit one hundred million dollars for the next three minutes..."
Reminds me of the Star Trek Next Generation episode where they wake up people who were frozen. The doc cured them, and one guy wanted to check on his stocks. They thought he was nuts, because why would you need stocks when you could just ask the replicator for anything you wanted?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
The rule against perpetuities should probably stop this in most states. The point of it is to keep property from being tied up and being useless for long periods of time. I think it's probably a moot point until they actually manage to unthaw someone and then keep them alive for more than a second or two.
What?
Reminds me of this little sequence from Red Dwarf:
Holly: They're from the NorWEB Federation.
Lister: What's that?
Holly: NorthWestern Electricity Board. They want you, Dave.
Lister: Me? Why? What for?
Holly: For your crimes against humanity.
Lister: You what?!
Holly: Seems when you left Earth, three million years ago, you left two half-eaten German sausages on a plate in your kitchen.
Lister: Did I?
Holly: You know what happens to sausages left unattended for three million years?
Lister: Yeh, they go mouldy.
Holly: Your sausages, Dave, now cover seven-eighths of the Earth's surface. Also, you left seventeen pounds, fifty pence in your bank account. Thanks to compound interest you now own 98% of all the world's wealth. And because you hoarded it for three million years, nobody's got any money except for you and NorWEB.
Lister: Why NorWEB?
Holly: You left a light on in the bathroom. I've got a final demand here for one hundred and eighty billion pounds.
Lister: A hundred and eighty billion pounds!! You're kidding!
Holly, wearing glasses, nose and moustache: April Fool.
Lister: But it's not April!
Holly: Yeah, I know. But I can't be waiting six months with a red-hot jape like that underneath me hat.
groklaw, wired and slashdot. The holy trinity of work based time wasting.
You can't take it with you. So Arizona resort operator David Pizer has a plan to come back and get it.
Does anyone else think this sounds like a bad horror movie?
... You've been frozen for 150 years, but your Cryo company went under about 80 years ago. Actually that company has been bought and sold a number of times. You actually spent a few weeks in a meat locker in Chicago until a new facility could be found. Unfortunately we were legally obligated to dip into your "inheritance" to pay for emergency cooling and relocation. You still have a few dollars left, but after converting them into American Yen, it looks like you will have to go back to work. Mr Pizer? Are you listening to me? Ah... yes, where is the rest of your body? Well, you see after the last market crash the Cryo industry was forced to make a few, um, cutbacks. What now? Well, Mr. Pizer, you've lucked into a wonderful Brave New World, you know. You've been assigned to the circus with all the others. You'll be pulled by trained monkeys round the ring on a special cart along with the other heads. It doesn't pay all that well, but it will keep the feeding tube flowing and cover any back taxes owing. And it does make the children laugh! Mr. Pizer? Now don't be angry with me Mr. Pizer...
Is this sig nificant?
Perhaps rich people are the ones worrying about preserving their assets for the future, but I don't want people to get the impression that you have to be rich to be a cryonicist.
Maybe not, but the OP has a point: if and when you wake up, will it do you much good to wake up a) broke, and b) without a marketable skill? You'll be about as useful to the new society as a buggy driver is to ours. Worse, you'll probably have a huge medical bill--while you've paid for the suspension (although how can they guarantee the rate?) you couldn't have possibly paid for the cure that will bring you back, as they can't at this point know how expensive it'll be to give you the cure, since it doesn't exist.
Really, that sounds great. You might wake up someday, but you'll be broke, jobless, a relative idiot, nowhere to live, no friends or family, and maybe will have a crushing medical bill. Thanks, but I think I might prefer to stay dead.
--
$tar -xvf
So coming out of cryosleep is like graduating with a liberal arts degree, then?