Fight Aging!

A panel session titled "What If You Are Still Alive in 2100?" was held at the World Economic Forum's 2016 meeting last week. I point this out as an indicator of the degree to which the idea of treating aging to greatly extend healthy life spans is percolating into the broader mainstream, with ever more people recognizing both the great opportunity for individuals, as well as the fact that existing institutions of entitlement and wealth transfer fall apart when people live in good health for decades longer than is presently the case. In effect those systems have already failed, are already terrible, fragile, and unethical, and already represent considerable economic risk, but those involved have few incentives to take anything but the most damaging path of ignoring the problem:

Chances are, most of us haven't asked ourselves the question: What if I live until 2100? Most people would probably pin the average human lifespan at somewhere around 70 to 80 years old. But within academia there are some serious discussions being had about what the world will look like when the average person lives past 100. But those discussions are only just beginning to permeate governments and the business world. "What's clear is the major restructuring of life that we think is going to happen with regards to longevity - corporations are not prepared for this. Governments are not prepared for this. It will rest with the individual both working on their own and collectively who will be the agents of change. I expect to see and we are certainly monitoring some amazing experiments occurring over the next decade as people come to terms with what it really means to live 100 years."

It's clear the idea of pushing people out of work at 60 is already behind the times. If we're working longer, we're going to need to keep on learning. So economists think there'll be a shift among people at an older age from a notion of leisure to a notion of recreation. In an elongated life, there will be new life stages. The idea of leisure, work, and retirement will be turned on its head. Individuals will take their own individual paths and have the capacity to transform themselves. The UK government predicts that a child born today will live to 85. That's "obviously ridiculous" but there's a clear reason why governments are sticking to these kinds of estimates, rather than extending life expectancy forecasts to nearer 100. "The reason why they are doing that is that all our pension schemes would go under water and would look more and more like a Ponzi scheme." Corporations and individuals need to realize employees need to work into their 70s and mid-70s - and they'll have to save.

Link: http://www.businessinsider.com/davos-what-if-i-live-to-2100-2016-1