Future Shock - Leader Competition of the Economist
The Economist held its annual Generations conference and Leader competition. The leader is supposed to be for an Economist edition in 2030. I did submit an entry - and won. Here's my leader, which won me a trip to the Economist in London.
Future Shock
When the Methuselah Mouse Prize was awarded ten years ago, hardly anyone took note. Yet it was, as it turns out, a watershed moment. The M-Prize for short, set up by the late Aubrey de Grey, a biogerontologist from the former University of Cambridge, was awarded in 2020 to a joint team of of Stanvard and Oxbridge Universities. Their discovery lets healthy mice live forever or at least to outlive their human masters.
Published last week in Science, a scientific journal, the joint team reported on a positive test of their treatment on humans. Lethal diseases and accidents aside, a first drug will expand the average lifespan to may be 150 to 200 years (for obvious reasons there is no longitudinal study yet). The Federal Drug Administration approval seems only weeks away.
This discovery spurs challenges of historic proportions. The reverberations will be felt in every corner of our lives from ethics to politics, business, economics, culture, and the environment.
Firstly, the innovation prompts questions of ethics: Who will have access to this type of drug? Who’s live will be cut short without the medicine? The drug will be expensive. Regardless of relative wealth of a country not everyone will be able to afford the treatment. Will governments around the globe be obliged by vote seeking politicians to expand public health care plans?
We take the firm view that any drug administration shall be a matter of individual choice. Should the populace of a country wish to include anti-aging drugs in their public health care plans they should be able to do so. As opposed to previous buy now and pay later schemes – better known as let your children pay up – this proposal by design ensures that the beneficiaries will also be the debtors.
The impact of the discovery on the economy will be great and grave. National pension schemes are built around an average live expectancy and a given retirement age. Both were on the rise over the last fifty years with the growth of the live expectancy outpacing any pension age increase by far. Many national pension schemes were thus already on the brink of failure after the financial crisis of 2009. The great economic crash of 2013 pushed pension schemes across the globe into the abyss.
For the next ten years the toxic combination of pension obligations, high debt levels and too timid deleveraging ensured that most developed countries were caught in a trap. The inflationary measures applied by America’s Federal Reserve annihilated the soft signs of economic recovery and destroyed the Sino-American relationship for good. China itself caught in a demographic trap was furious at the devaluation of its dollar denominated foreign reserves. China was no longer able to buy off social unrest which led to the longer march of 2020.
These global upheavals pale besides the challenges imposed by a life expectancy of 200 years. The raised retirement ages, recently lifted to an average of 72, will not suffice to balance the national accounts. The raise will cause turmoil in the labor markets. At current growth rates the world economy is not in a position to absorb the additional grey work force. The outcome will be higher unemployment rates, particularly amongst the youngest and the oldest. That is unless the labor markets are set free in which case the average salaries will take a deep dive. With higher unemployment expenditures and lower payroll taxes the national budget will not balance. Without decisive action the lost decade will turn out to be a lost century.
Therefore the retirement age must rise to 150 at least. This is the only option for pension schemes to have a faint chance of avoiding yet another collapse with devastating consequences for the frail world economy. Additionally we support calls for a new generational contract. This contract must be footed on two core principles: A fair and balanced intergenerational settlement plus a significantly higher pension age.
There is one net beneficiary of live expectancy 200: the environment. We expect a swift conclusion of the Reykjavik treaty on global climate change when the delegations and later the heads of state meet in Iceland next month.
Today Reykjavik’s boardwalk is lined with palm trees where there were no trees only twenty years ago. The ever-accelerating pace of climate change will lead to widespread duress beyond the removal of some island populations in the Pacific Ocean. With a life expectancy at 200 one or the other politician will think hard about saying yet again no to tough emission cuts. No politician wants to walk a boardwalk turned desert when he’s 165. Longer life expectancy is a boon: We are all held accountable within our life spans for decisions on climate change.
Not everyone sees this discovery with a good eye. Critics call for a worldwide ban of the drug. We disagree. To begin with, the critics exaggerate their case. It is simply not true to state that this future shock will lead irreversibly to war and universal mayhem. Changes will be radical yet will happen more slowly than they argue.
This newspaper’s support for the forces that press forward is undiminished. A rational look at this discovery shows many more benefits to mankind than drawbacks. There is no reason, as some suggest, banning this anti-age treatment and thus obstructing our progress. Yet toddlers will soon become a rare variety. A T-Prize anyone?
