"That's amazing," he said. "Convincing a young person to buy life insurance? That has to be the greatest scam ever."
Why is it a scam? The low rate of implied interest in whole-life policies? (Not that existing interests or returns are anything to write home about...)
Costs would likely fall, and this would be good for cryonicists in general.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/5w1/the_cost_of_universal_cryonics/
Increasing the demand for cryonics increases the demand for life insurance policies; thus insurance companies have a strong incentive to increase the demand for cryonics. Many large insurance companies would like nothing more than to usher in a generation of young people that want to buy life insurance.1
Going back to the previous question - the more capital that is looking for returns, the less returns are available. Hence, the more long-term capital looking for long-term returns, the worse the long-term returns...
A quick Googling says that ad spending by insurance companies exceeded $4.15 billion in 2009.
See above. Rational agents would spend on advertising up to the point where its marginal returns falls below other strategies; advertising is an arms race. Diamond advertising is famous, yes, but it was a very long time ago, is faltering in modern times, and is famous for how exceptional it is.
It's not obvious that young people would or should sign up. Time seems to make a big difference in quality of cryopreservation (at least, if you go with Alcor; with CI the preservation is apparently low-enough quality delays may not matter much). Young people are the most likely to die of things like accidents and crime rather than nice predictable diseases, are they not?
Young people are the most likely to die of things like accidents and crime rather than nice predictable diseases, are they not?
Indeed, I think that, if I die before negligible senescence is achieved for humans, it's more likely to be something which makes me a good organ donor but a bad cryonic patient (e.g. an accident or homicide) than vice versa (e.g. a disease). Or am I just rationalizing my choice not to sign up for cryonics?
My uncle works in insurance. I recently mentioned that I'm planning to sign up for cryonics.
"That's amazing," he said. "Convincing a young person to buy life insurance? That has to be the greatest scam ever."
I took the comment lightly, not caring to argue about it. But it got me thinking - couldn't cryonics be a great opportunity for insurance companies to make a bunch of money?
Consider:
Almost a year ago, Strange7 suggested that cryonics organizations could run this kind of marketing campaign. I think he's wrong - there's no way CI or Alcor have the money. But the biggest insurance companies do have the money, and I'd be shocked if these companies or their agencies aren't already dumping all kinds of money into market research.
What would doing this require?
I want to live in a world where cryonics ads air on TV just as often as ads for everything else people spend money on. I really can see an insurance company owning this project - if they can a) successfully revamp the image of cryonics and b) become known as the household name for it when the market gets big, they will make lots of money.
What do you think? Where has my reasoning failed? Does anyone here know anyone powerful in insurance?
Lastly, taking a cue from ciphergoth: this is not the place to rehash all the old arguments about cryonics. I'm asking about a very specific idea about marketing and life insurance, not requesting commentary on cryonics itself. Thanks!
1 Perhaps modeling the potential size of the market would offer insight here. If it turns out that this idea is not insane, I'll find a way to make it happen. I could use your help.
2 Consider what happened with diamonds in the 1900s: