From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Mon Feb 04 2002 - 19:30:19 MST
Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
> I thought this article was rather interesting:
>
> Birth dearth can turn Japan into nation of ancients
>
> http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,644033,00.html
>
> If societies don't reorient their perspectives on maintaining
> the health (and work capacity) of individuals who are aging
> and move away from pension systems that are really wealth
> transfer systems (from the young workers to the older retirees)
> the downward spiral may get very messy indeed.
...as exacerbated by the transfer of young workers from countries
which fail to make this adjustment, to countries that do.
I recall seeing an article in Wired, some time ago, about robots
automating away all need for human work. But what about the reverse:
what if whatever little work remains, gets divided up among all humans
(and other sentient intelligences, for instance uploads) such that the
concept of permanent retirement is itself retired to history?
(Supporting evidence for this idea: medical research is finding that, in
general, to become senescent and sleep all your days away is to start
shutting down your body. I.e., non-active retirement is, medically
speaking, a cause of death. Not to mention, it's boring.)
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