Comment by stego-tech
9 hours ago
The longer someone lives, the more potential value they can contribute to a society. The opportunity cost is something we've figured out from a medical perspective, but shareholders want returns today, not returns fifty years from now.
That is what we need to address.
The government says that people can stop contributing to society when they reach 67. Some governments completely block you from continuing working.
Some governments recognize that the longer people life, the more pensions / social security / healthcare resources need to be paid to that person.
its much cheaper for governments for people to just die when they retire, tax their wealth at 40% and then free up resources (housing or healthcare) for the next generation.
It’s odd because many other industries like wineries, nut orchards, etc. do all play the long term game successfully.
Even medical drugs take a while to develop but somehow the sales has to be “right now”.
>The longer someone lives, the more potential value they can contribute to a society.
This is questionable. Highly populous countries have worse living conditions than moderately populous ones, currently.
> Highly populous countries have worse living conditions than moderately populous ones, currently.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/population-density-vs-pro...
There does not look to be a strong correlation between population density and income, at least on a log-log scale across countries. But I would guess that these numbers hide a trend for cities to be richer than rural areas (subsistence farming etc).
Highly populous countries were colonized and robbed off their resources until recently.
Better living conditions cost more money per family, which leads to less children.
The longer someone lives, the more potential value can be squeezed.
This is how they should think.
I don't like the squeezing mindset but if people contribute to their health insurance and don't use those services because they're healthy it could be seen as squeezing those patients but it really isn't, it's just how insurance should work.
They could use profit in 50 years, but it will possibly be someone else's profit.
If the executive lives longer it is their profit.
It could be a different company's profit.
>The longer someone lives, the more potential value they can contribute to a society.
This is a function of how old the sick person is, as well as how severe their sickness and hence recovery will be. The data says, for the most part, healthcare is needed when one is close in age to exhausting their body’s capability anyway.