Something about prefering a decent retirement instead of being power hungry until the last second i guess. Then again, we have dudes like Bernie Sanders out there speaking up and fighting well past what he would need to retire comfortably.
When we deal with fascists, all rules must be broken.
Safeguard socioeconomic safety, harass them, intimidate them, silence them, every single one, til the last one is gone, and no new ones rise up. Only then may we be truly liberated and go back to normal levels of combatting fascism.
If anything, I might expect that if life expectancy increased enough, that in itself might create some pause for authoritarian leaders. Consider that it is rather rare for the dictator type to peacefully retire, they usually either die of some age/disease related cause, or they get overthrown in some way (rebellions, coups etc.) Its probably not possible to entirely eliminate the risk that such a thing will happen, so long as you actually require people to do things somewhere in your system. As such, there should be a theoretical amount of time before which it becomes statistically likely that a leader will be overthrown, and when overthrown, theres a high risk of death, or at least a lot of unpleasantness (imprisonment, exile with loss of quality of life).
What happens if you manage to extend lifespans enough that the average lifespan, especially for someone with excellent health monitoring like a world leader, significantly exceeds the span of time in which it can be expected an overthrow will occur? At that point, anyone that becomes a dictator is essentially signing up for a violent end and a life shorter than it could be if they didnt earn the ire of a country’s population (one that either will have more time to build up resentments if they have access to the tech too, or who will each feel personally doomed to an early death and therefore resentful if they dont).
I dont expect that this kind of thinking would mean no more authoritarians, I suspect greed for power is a bit too strong an impulse for them all to limit themselves in their own long term interest, but it might prevent some of them, and it isnt like not having longer lifespans prevents a new generation of evil world leaders from simply taking the place of the old.
But also: good leaders would live longer.
Evil ones are always stressed something will come topple them. You cannot be a dictator without living in fear yourself.
Fear creates hatred, and hatred greed.
The only cure to an evil leader is being shot.
Good leaders usually step down on their own anyway so a longer lifespan won’t change much
Something about prefering a decent retirement instead of being power hungry until the last second i guess. Then again, we have dudes like Bernie Sanders out there speaking up and fighting well past what he would need to retire comfortably.
When we deal with fascists, all rules must be broken.
Safeguard socioeconomic safety, harass them, intimidate them, silence them, every single one, til the last one is gone, and no new ones rise up. Only then may we be truly liberated and go back to normal levels of combatting fascism.
If anything, I might expect that if life expectancy increased enough, that in itself might create some pause for authoritarian leaders. Consider that it is rather rare for the dictator type to peacefully retire, they usually either die of some age/disease related cause, or they get overthrown in some way (rebellions, coups etc.) Its probably not possible to entirely eliminate the risk that such a thing will happen, so long as you actually require people to do things somewhere in your system. As such, there should be a theoretical amount of time before which it becomes statistically likely that a leader will be overthrown, and when overthrown, theres a high risk of death, or at least a lot of unpleasantness (imprisonment, exile with loss of quality of life).
What happens if you manage to extend lifespans enough that the average lifespan, especially for someone with excellent health monitoring like a world leader, significantly exceeds the span of time in which it can be expected an overthrow will occur? At that point, anyone that becomes a dictator is essentially signing up for a violent end and a life shorter than it could be if they didnt earn the ire of a country’s population (one that either will have more time to build up resentments if they have access to the tech too, or who will each feel personally doomed to an early death and therefore resentful if they dont).
I dont expect that this kind of thinking would mean no more authoritarians, I suspect greed for power is a bit too strong an impulse for them all to limit themselves in their own long term interest, but it might prevent some of them, and it isnt like not having longer lifespans prevents a new generation of evil world leaders from simply taking the place of the old.