• Chainweasel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      3 years ago

      Yeah, I could see them making people work centuries to pay off the debt, or even worse, it only extends your life by a few years at a time and they turn it into a subscription service

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
          1·
          3 years ago

          There’s also the terrific book, Immortality, Inc. by Robert Sheckley, a book I bought on a whim when killing time in a college bookstore with a tiny sci-fi section and have since recommended to many people who thanked me for the recommendation.

          The concept is that in the future, it is discovered that there is an afterlife, but only a very small number of people can get there naturally. So a medical procedure is developed that allows people to get to the afterlife. However, only the wealthy can afford it. Once their afterlife is guaranteed (things can go wrong, but that’s another issue), they do things like start hacking people to death in the streets to commit suicide-by-cop because what have they got to lose?

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality,_Inc.

        • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
          1·
          3 years ago

          No. They transferred their mind to new bodies, called sleeves. They had laws against double sleeving, putting your mind into more than one body, cause that causes all sorts of issues. The tech was basically what you’re stopped to do for computers back up data and when something happens to the computer you put the same data on the new machine. The basic version was local storage called a stack that resided at the base of the neck. That’s why executions killed the person and the stack. The rich had offside backups as well.

          This is closer to In Time where the single body was kept alive and they used time to pay for things. The rich had thousands, probably much more, years stocked up. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen it.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
    1·
    3 years ago

    Nah, the ultra rich assholes would still want to wipe their asses with all the resources in the world, just to ensure “the poor and undesirables” don’t get to use it before them.

  • lugal@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 years ago

    That puts too much blame on individuals instead of the system. These aren’t bad apples, the system isn’t broken. The system works as intended, it’s just that most of us are on the losing end. Also: there is no alternative.