I truly hope the cost of cryo falls rapidly in the next few years. A back-of-the-napkin calculation I did shows that if I wanted to pay forward for an option to cryopreserve my children (should they ever need it) I would have to save money for over 20 years, skipping on every life luxury for them and myself. It would be a bizarre life in which we would live like ascetic monks who spend most of their lives preparing to die and achieve Afterlife. Uncannily like religion.
If, aside from paying for cryo for my kids, I also wanted to pay for my own, my SO’s, and my parents, my brother etc, I would need to be effectively immortal just to put in enough work-hours.
Cryo might end up being the absolute pinnacle of elitist technology, because if you are not rich and Western enough, you are unlikely to ever afford it, and thus, destined to not only die, but watch your loved ones die as well while average Middle Class people from US or western EU would just chuck their sick loved ones into a freezer with a near certainty of their eventual survival and health.
The religions had it all wrong. In order to achieve Immortality in the After-life, you do not need to be good, or without sin, or pious, you just need to be able so save around 30-80k. If you can’t, well, sucks to be you. Should have thought of it before you decided to be born poor.
It definitely is not cheap. But it’s more manageable if you start young, especially if you’re using life insurance for funding. Or create a separate investment account and add to it every month.
I’d love to see the cost of cryonics fall. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening soon. For real economies of scale, we would need at least one or two orders of magnitude growth in members. It’s tough to reduce storage costs, although Alcor did it by using Steve Graber’s “Superdewar” design. (I helped by renegotiating the liquid nitrogen charges.) Achieving economies in standby services is difficult. Currently, Suspended Animation’s costs are heavily subsidized by Bill Faloon.
With 100x or 1000x more business, enabling the hiring of full time staff (especially surgeons and perfusionists) and dropping the large annual fee for getting medical personnel, costs for SST should be able to come down. With serious growth, membership charges could go way down. I wrote about this ten years ago, but it should mostly still be relevant: https://www.cryonicsarchive.org/docs/cryonics-magazine-2013-03.pdf
Which is a bit over 3 years of saving up every penny of the average wages where I live. If you subtract the average rent and starvation rations from that income, you’re up to 5.5 years. The first info I could find on google (from 2018) claims the average person here saves around $100 monthly, which gives you over 40 years of saving. This is only for one person. If you have multiple children, a SO, etc., that starts ballooning quickly. This is in a country which while not yet classified as developed, is almost there (Poland).
50k is a lot for pretty much most of the world. It’s the cost of a not very nice flat (i.e. middling location, or bad condition) here.
Depends where. Which is the whole issue. For the US average wage, yes. For non US people no. I agree that it’s a matter of priorities. But it’s also a matter of earnings minus costs. Both of which depend a lot on where you live.
A lot of people certainly could save a lot more. But usually at the cost of quality of life. You could say that they should work a job that pays more, or live somewhere where there is a lower cost of living, but both of those can be hard.
I’m not saying you’re wrong that it’s doable. The problem is that the feasibility is highly dependent on your circumstances (same as e.g. having an electric car or whatever), which can make it very hard for people who aren’t in affluent places.
Its in the ballpark of 50k. I support a family of 4 on 10k a year, round-ish. I can save about 1k-2k a year, If we live on a very, very tight budget. It would thus take me a century to pay for cryonics just for my immediate family, if the prices do not fall quickly enough.
I truly hope the cost of cryo falls rapidly in the next few years. A back-of-the-napkin calculation I did shows that if I wanted to pay forward for an option to cryopreserve my children (should they ever need it) I would have to save money for over 20 years, skipping on every life luxury for them and myself. It would be a bizarre life in which we would live like ascetic monks who spend most of their lives preparing to die and achieve Afterlife. Uncannily like religion.
If, aside from paying for cryo for my kids, I also wanted to pay for my own, my SO’s, and my parents, my brother etc, I would need to be effectively immortal just to put in enough work-hours.
Cryo might end up being the absolute pinnacle of elitist technology, because if you are not rich and Western enough, you are unlikely to ever afford it, and thus, destined to not only die, but watch your loved ones die as well while average Middle Class people from US or western EU would just chuck their sick loved ones into a freezer with a near certainty of their eventual survival and health.
The religions had it all wrong. In order to achieve Immortality in the After-life, you do not need to be good, or without sin, or pious, you just need to be able so save around 30-80k. If you can’t, well, sucks to be you. Should have thought of it before you decided to be born poor.
It definitely is not cheap. But it’s more manageable if you start young, especially if you’re using life insurance for funding. Or create a separate investment account and add to it every month.
I’d love to see the cost of cryonics fall. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening soon. For real economies of scale, we would need at least one or two orders of magnitude growth in members. It’s tough to reduce storage costs, although Alcor did it by using Steve Graber’s “Superdewar” design. (I helped by renegotiating the liquid nitrogen charges.) Achieving economies in standby services is difficult. Currently, Suspended Animation’s costs are heavily subsidized by Bill Faloon.
With 100x or 1000x more business, enabling the hiring of full time staff (especially surgeons and perfusionists) and dropping the large annual fee for getting medical personnel, costs for SST should be able to come down. With serious growth, membership charges could go way down. I wrote about this ten years ago, but it should mostly still be relevant: https://www.cryonicsarchive.org/docs/cryonics-magazine-2013-03.pdf
can you explain your calculations? isn’t cryo around 50k right now?
Which is a bit over 3 years of saving up every penny of the average wages where I live. If you subtract the average rent and starvation rations from that income, you’re up to 5.5 years. The first info I could find on google (from 2018) claims the average person here saves around $100 monthly, which gives you over 40 years of saving. This is only for one person. If you have multiple children, a SO, etc., that starts ballooning quickly. This is in a country which while not yet classified as developed, is almost there (Poland).
50k is a lot for pretty much most of the world. It’s the cost of a not very nice flat (i.e. middling location, or bad condition) here.
$100 per month of savings is incredibly low for average earnings. About 2%. It’s a matter of priorities.
Depends where. Which is the whole issue. For the US average wage, yes. For non US people no. I agree that it’s a matter of priorities. But it’s also a matter of earnings minus costs. Both of which depend a lot on where you live.
A lot of people certainly could save a lot more. But usually at the cost of quality of life. You could say that they should work a job that pays more, or live somewhere where there is a lower cost of living, but both of those can be hard.
I’m not saying you’re wrong that it’s doable. The problem is that the feasibility is highly dependent on your circumstances (same as e.g. having an electric car or whatever), which can make it very hard for people who aren’t in affluent places.
Its in the ballpark of 50k. I support a family of 4 on 10k a year, round-ish. I can save about 1k-2k a year, If we live on a very, very tight budget. It would thus take me a century to pay for cryonics just for my immediate family, if the prices do not fall quickly enough.