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Luke_A_Somers comments on Why is it rational to invest in retirement? I don't get it. - Less Wrong Discussion
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I didn't put it in the original, but it feels the reverse to me. Younger people have more taste buds, more tactile pleasure, more reason to signal to others, more uncertainty, more mobility. All of those seem to increase the amount of utilons one gets in a youth age as opposed to an old one.
So for example. Say I give, out of the blue, no strings attached, 500 Euros to a 70 year old man, and 500 to a 22 year old man.
Who do you think will make the most out of the money given?
The guy may go to a paintball, a theme park, begin a startup, buy a star wars clothing article, buy some narcotics and give a party, travel to the beach, pay 6 months of a course he always wanted to do. The older man has fewer good uses for it, and probably would just save it to keep it safe. He may give a party, but he can't stand in the party for long, or drink as much, probably he wouldn't begin a startup, or fulfill a childhood dream. He could, it is true, buy painkillers if he has chronic pain. A better TV-set, maybe.
But it still seems to me that the marginal utility of money is higher by a large factor when one is younger.
And this is in addition to all the other reasons I mentioned. Even if this is false, the other reasons stand on solid ground.
With the 500E, an old person could indeed get better pain meds that would allow them to basically function instead of living in hell.
A 70-year old is fully capable of doing the last four of the seven items you named (though he would be more likely to do the last three than the middle one). My grandfather finally gave up body-surfing when he was 85. It seems like you've imported 'be boring' into your definition of 'old person'. Plus, drug-fuelled party? Now THAT's a really high efficiency use of money. Really utilitarian.</sarcasm>
I'm not posting about efficiency, I'm posting about what people would, actually, on average, do, and how good that would be for them. You know, random people in the park, not utilitarians.
I remember seeing one of Aubrey the Grey presentations, and he said something like:
It is very simple, look.
Shows a picture similar of young women playing volleyball.
Shows another picture of old women sitting on a bench next to them
I'm really glad your grandpa has all that energy. My grandma used to walk 10 kilometers a day when she was 80, I couldn't catch up. But let's face it the way Aubrey faces it. It is not that 95% of elders are boring and don't want to go do what our ancestors did. It is just that they can't. They are not able to. It is painful, or impossible, or really hard, or socially frowned upon. I don't think older people spend more on food and wine because with experience people realize that the best things in life are food and drinks. I think they do it because there is nothing left for them to use their money on. It is a cruel world, and Woody Allen makes a good case for it: My next Life
Random people in the park are affected by utility theory whether or not they use it.