Paul Saffo, an American futurologist, recently told the Telegraph that the ultra-rich may slowly evolve into a separate species thanks to medical advances. Saffo imagines a world of replacement organs, sophisticated robots, self-driving cars, and artificial limbs that are superior to the real thing — all available to only the very wealthy. He says, “I sometimes wonder if the very rich can live, on average, 20 years longer than the poor. That’s 20 more years of earning and saving. Think about wealth and power and the advantages that you pass on to your children.” (HT: Economist’s View) [%comments]
Species Park Avenue?
TAGS: wealth
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A hundred years ago, only the super-rich had automobiles. A new technology may not be initially available to everyone, but if it lets you cheat death (why not download your consciousness into a computer?), it will eventually become available.
And who says those rich people are only interested in reproducing with other rich people? You don’t have to marry for wealth when you’re already rich.
Are we talking Almodovar’s film “Brazil” here? I suspect our species current tendency to self-destruct, possibly taking Gaia with it, ensure that this sci-fi medical scenario will never come to fruition. But maybe we’ll all (planet and persons) be lucky, and somehow we’ll snap out of the madness we now think of as normalcy.
It’s pretty much a guarantee that the rich will get these amazing technological and medical advancements first. However, if current technological economic trends continue, it is reasonable to assume that at some point the middle class and poor will get these technology eventually. As well, any flawed technology will be “field tested” on the rich and when perfected and the price of production brought down, the less fortunate will get their chance at this tech. Personally, I would never get first generation genetic augmentation.
If this were true than my mother should have lived years longer than her mother. My mom died at 86, her mother at 93 and from an economic standpoint, it should have been the reverse.
Economic determinism is not always the case. In China, the concept of blood relation superceded economic relation (and we are not talking blood in the genetic sense, but in the abstract.)
Apparently he doesn’t know much about evolutionary theory.
All improvements are expensive at first; only the rich can afford them. Then as the kinks are worked out, the price falls and eventually the improvements are available to everyone. So the rich do everyone a favor by paying for the learning curve. This should hold true for medical and genetic advances as well as cars and laptops.
Strange how he gives the computer – something that at first was only affordable for the very rich but eventually came down in price as technological improvements allowed cheaper manufacture of a much better good- as an example of another thing that has dramatically changed our lives. If these improvements do take place, it is hard to imagine they would be only limited to the rich for a long time. More likely, initially they would only be available to the rich, but after a time be affordable for all. And, as stated in the comments above, he seems to have a bad grasp of biology and what speciation entails.
Should the vast separation of wealthy and poor with a diminishing middle class (approaching zero) continue and it shows no sign of abating . . . Why not?
I suspect that they will be by social constructs separate and become as members of of what will be labeled as different races. The further it goes the gene pools will indeed differ.
That has already happened in many South American nations. Africa and Asia, too.
Two discrete groups: the superior promelgated by great assets will feel entitled by their superior “genetic” endownment, So, no guilt. Also, in part a self fulfulling prophecy.
Hasen’t this been done to explain IQ disparages between “racial” groups?
As time goes on this tendency will accelerate… We will then have the creation of a brave new world.