ANTIcarrot wrote:Buritot wrote:I don't think the dead partners of Goldman-Sachs are in any legally justified position to demand pension since there are many precedents of regular people willing their worldly wealth to their second lifes which in turn acknowledges these being separate persons as well as the originals dying.
They might try changing the legal definition of death. It has been done before based upon changing medical knowledge. Brain/head transfers are not completely unprecidented in medical theory. Nor science fiction. They could make a case that they have 'moved to another country' rather than 'ceased to exist'; which is what death is supposed to mean. They also (potentially) have the financial clout to hire high-ticket lawyers and do things the complicated judicial way (and maybe even probono) rather than the easy way, which is what most normal people are stuck with. Of course becoming ex-pats this way would cause more economic and political restrictions, but the executives might prefer that set of rules to losing everything.
But yes, it would be very bad for everyone on Earth is the second-lifers got their way. But since when do most people care how much their happiness inconveniences other people? I fear any restristrictions the HEA imposes upon the upcoming 2nd life economies will in the long run be as effective as restrictions Britain tried to impose on the post-revolution America.
I think you've hit it on the head. I've been trying to tease out an idea of how to deal with this to avoid two sets of unintended consequences:
-On the one hand, you don't want to encourage euthanasia, suicide, etc. for social reasons (if nothing else). You want to avoid insurance companies having
too much incentive to pull the plug early. You also don't want to create a situation where middle class people end up in Hell and are suddenly impoverished (or where people kill themselves to duck big debts, for example).
-On the other hand, you don't want to create a situation where the economy on Earth is stuck offering pension payments to people for 5000 years. 30 years is hard enough to support IRL; the burden for more is probably going to be untenable. Of course, pension plans are already in a broad enough decline...
To proffer a guess, I would expect that pension plans would probably come to contain a one-off death benefit, payable to the person when they get to Hell. You'd probably get a provision for early death as well. One could also see a government offering a limited version of this to people on the condition that they don't take other citizenship upon getting there (preventing a brain drain is always a good idea).
As to the Goldman scenario itself, I'd guess that if Goldman is smart, they'd offer the dead guys a portion of money they'd get over the ensuing thirty years as a lump-sum payment...enough to get them to go away, but less than the combination of legal fees, possible payments multiplied by the chance of those payments being forced on them, and time value of money involved in the suit (i.e. the ability to get their bonus this side of 2020) would cost them.
I don't think "perpetual obligations" are going to fly, by the way. That said, temporary obligations of some form are likely to be created in future contracts in lieu of permanent ones existing automatically (though enforcability is going to be another mess). The big sticking point is going to be contracts written prior to the liberation of Hell but still in force in some form which don't make provision for this stuff and which operated under a presumption that was quite clearly and plainly made false (i.e. that the dead can't exactly get back into communication with the living).
Finally, I'd say that you have a funny case of competing interests: Those alive now mostly have an arguable interest in having death redefined (as it will extend their benefits) so long as retroactive application is limited. Those not yet born have an interest in it not being redefined (as they'd be picking up the tab). Nobody wants to get stuck digging ditches for the next 200 years, after all, and voters have a funny way of voting themselves money from the public dole.
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