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Decius comments on Cryonics as Charity - Less Wrong
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Where did the resources to put them into cryonics come from?
Consider the few data points in recorded human history: Has the doubling time of economic growth remained fairly constant, or varied widely? Is it more complicated to assume that growth in in general exponential, with the amount of free resources determining the exponent, or to assume that the size of the economy is proportional to the product amount of the most-limiting resource at the time (Labor, arable land, electric power) and the efficiency of use of that resource at that time? Either way, further explanations are required to discuss the variation of the data from the prediction.
From... what they earned while alive (or in rare cases, from others who choose to spend earnings on them). Where does any resources for anything come?
'Few'? Exponentials have been completely unambiguous for like 500 years and datapoints before then can be fit to an exponential.
I've never heard any economist say global growth and the Industrial Revolution was just this 'proportional' thing you are talking about. (eg.the Solow growth model without the 'technology' factor fits observed growth even worse than with the technology factor.) And I'm not sure what you're saying even differs from an exponential - what is an exponential but proportional growth, repeated every year?
So no, no further discussion is necessary. The point about cryonics patients helping long-term economic growth follows from the most basic points of economic theory and observed economic history.
500 years is 'few', yes. Especially considering that population~labor has been growing roughly exponentially for most of it.
With the advent of industrial equipment, labor is no longer as often the limiting factor.
Per capita income has also been going up! Massively! Why are you even bringing that up?
What does limiting factor mean here? Everything is a limiting factor in some sense, because supply creates its own demand.
Really? I don't see a large market for seawater. The supply is immense, so there should be a demand created for it, especially since it is used as a raw material for fresh water, a product which is in high demand in many areas.
The hypothesis that the market for labor will always clear is trivially falsified.
Real per capita income is simply total production divided by population. I doubt that real per-capita income has been increasing at anywhere near a constant power across history, rather than remaining roughly constant except during periods of technological development and/or social upheaval. In particular, pastoral societies have roughly constant total production (determined by the amount of arable land available and being used), and more labor does not produce more. Similarly for some other natural resources, such as properly managed fishing. More labor does not provide a larger sustainable catch.
Er... Maybe you should think a little harder.
Nations have fought throughout history and millions died for seawater - access to seawater, specifically, because there is so much seawater that you can use it as ultra-cheap fast transportation. (Russia alone fought several wars just to get one warmwater port anywhere, salt or fresh.) Besides that, seawater is sold commercially for fish and animal keeping; deep seawater is sold as a dietary supplement (popular in Japan); and much more importantly:
You even provided your own example! Desalinization plants are very expensive and produce expensive water... water that is feasible because seawater is free. Supply creates its own demand.
Oh for heaven's sake. Go look it up!
Why didn't anyone think to pump seawater into trucks and meet Russia's need for seawater? Because Russia didn't need seawater, it needed transportation links.
Desal plants typically don't have dirty water shipped to them, they are located where dirty water is. The limited resource consumed by their construction isn't seawater, it's location.
If sea levels rise, the added volume of seawater will not make desalination cheaper, just like a surplus of labor in the presence of labor price controls doesn't create a demand for labor at the controlled price.
At some point the escalating price does cause the curves to intersect; Russia didn't need seawater at the prices it would cost to build canals.
Which matters why? If you can put the desalinization plant by the ocean and pipe the clean water 85 kilometers to the city (as Australia is doing now, and similar to a planned canal in Israel), the oceanwater still is being consumed.
And consumption of the infinite ocean water is still higher than what it would have been if the supply were smaller. "Supply creates its own demand." Not a hard concept.
Finally, I'd like to ask: how on earth does any of this undermine my original point that cryonics patients increase an economy's capital by not consuming and hence increase long-term growth and net wealth? These are either accounting identities or borne out by many centuries of economic growth, and is a trivial claim.
A suspended person is economically as productive as a nonexistent person.
Nonexistent people have had zero impact on economy historically. Why would suspended people have an effect in the future?
And if supply created demand, there should be a huge demand for seawater, rather than a small demand. As it is, the demand for seawater is pretty much inelastic with supply.
So no such thing as capital exists, savings has no relation to growth, and suspended peoples' past life choices (like not spending scores of thousands of dollars on consumption) contribute exactly nothing to the economy! Of course!
I give up. You have no freaking clue about economics.
I've already pointed out the huge demand. Feel free to calculate how many millions of gallons all the uses I gave make up each year. I'm not wasting more of my time on you.