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Technology Your Rights Online

Wealthy 'Cryonauts' Put Assets on Ice 538

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the is-this-fad-still-around dept.
Carl Bialik writes "'You can't take it with you. So Arizona resort operator David Pizer has a plan to come back and get it,' the Wall Street Journal reports. Pizer is one of about about 1,000 members of the "cryonics" movement who plan to put their bodies on ice soon after death so that in the future, medical advances can save them. A small, wealthy subset of these cryonauts is exploring ways to leave their money to themselves. 'With the help of an estate planner, Mr. Pizer has created legal arrangements for a financial trust that will manage his roughly $10 million in land and stock holdings until he is re-animated,' the Journal reports. 'Mr. Pizer says that with his money earning interest while he is frozen, he could wake up in 100 years the richest man in the world.'"
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Wealthy 'Cryonauts' Put Assets on Ice More

Wealthy 'Cryonauts' Put Assets on Ice

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  • Or.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by suso ( 153703 ) * on Sunday January 22, 2006 @11:39PM (#14536085) Journal
    he could wake up in 100 years the richest man in the world

    Or he could wake up in 300 years in sick bay with no money at all.

    • Re:Or.... (Score:4, Funny)

      by TheWanderingHermit ( 513872 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @12:15AM (#14536291)
      I was wondering if anyone would even want to waste the time to revive him at all. The world could be too overpopulated, or they could be fed up with cryonauts. Or the economy could have shifted so much he has no current currency.

      Or he could wake up in 30 years, travel back in time, start a company to rival his first one, get frozen again, wake up 30 years later (again), marry someone who was a kid when he knew her before, and live happily ever after on the royalties from both his competing companies.

      • Re:Or.... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Bald Wookie ( 18771 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @12:26AM (#14536351)
        "First one to revive me gets half my fortune."

        The upside is that your remaining money must be worth something, since it was a large enough bounty to bring about your revival.

    • Re:Or.... (Score:5, Funny)

      by SmurfButcher Bob ( 313810 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @12:16AM (#14536295) Journal
      ...or he could wake up in 300 million years, only to discover that Cockroaches do not USE currency.

    • Re:Or.... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jim Hall ( 2985 )

      Or he could wake up in 300 years in sick bay with no money at all.

      Wasn't there a Niven short story on this topic? I don't have the reference handy, but a guy with some terminal disease had his body frozen, expecting that a future generation would thaw him out when a cure had been discovered.

      Thing was, he was revived thousands of years later, and while they had long since found a cure for his disease, he suddenly found himself with no money or rights. Hundreds of years before, the courts had establis

  • You read it here first (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Rude Turnip ( 49495 ) <valuation AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday January 22, 2006 @11:40PM (#14536087)
    Three words for you my friends: tax evasion scam.
    Good night.

    • Re:You read it here first (Score:5, Funny)

      by Cutriss ( 262920 ) on Sunday January 22, 2006 @11:43PM (#14536104) Homepage
      Like Hotblack Desiato?
    • It does seem to be a way to avoid estate taxes. However, I doubt most people are doing it for this reason. The article suggests that the "so-called dynasty trusts" are typically used to "pay out funds to a person's children, grandchildren and future generations" and do not need to have anything to do with cryogenics. You can get the tax scam without the cryo.

      These people are doing it to avoid the dread of death. I don't think it should be legal. What if everyone who died just tied up their assets thi

      • actually, most of the time, they are. remember, most Trustee's earn a raw percent on the value they add to the portfolio they are managing. It just happens to be that a lot of money that used to have different risk profiles will all start tohave the same risk profile. Not good or bad, just different.
    • Yeah, this will last for a couple of years and then the loophole will close. There's no way that the government will tolerate large chunks of revenue being slucked permanently out of the economy.
    • I guess if you plan on skipping out on one of life's certainty's, you may as well plan on skipping the other!

  • What will actually happen is..... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EGSonikku ( 519478 ) <petersen DOT mobile AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday January 22, 2006 @11:43PM (#14536101)
    Duh, he'll just wake up in a few hundred years after his consciousness is transferred into the memrouy wiped body of a convict, and recieve RNA memory injections and learn to pilot interstellar world seeding ships.
    • Yeah, sure, next thing you're going to tell is is that he's going to be bit on the toe by a cat that's a snake. That's highly unlikely. More likely his organs will be harvested and his assets taken by the state. If he's lucky they'll keep his brain frozen, but that's unlikely - it'll be considered a waste of resources.

  • Old joke... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SiliconEntity ( 448450 ) on Sunday January 22, 2006 @11:43PM (#14536102)
    David Pizer wakes up in the future and calls his accountant to find out how his account is doing. "Good news!" the man says. "Your ten million dollars has grown to almost one billion dollars!" David is ecstatic and they talk a minute more. Suddenly the phone chimes. "Please deposit one hundred million dollars for the next three minutes..."

  • Before any says... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Eightyford ( 893696 ) on Sunday January 22, 2006 @11:44PM (#14536105) Homepage
    Before anyone says that this guy is greedy and should give the money to charity, I'd like to point out that there's little chance that he will come back to life unthawed, and if he doesn't spend the money it makes us all just a tiny bit richer.
    • You mean the banks richer, right? (or possibly the state his is a resident of, his lawyers, or possible a distant relative who hires an attorney to argue that this guy will *always* be a popsicle).

      • Re:Before any says... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by c_forq ( 924234 ) <forquerc+slash@gmail.com> on Sunday January 22, 2006 @11:53PM (#14536161)
        The banks yes, but also everyone that uses the same currency as him. Taking that much money out of circulation should help increase the value of the bills in your wallet right now.
        • The banks yes, but also everyone that uses the same currency as him. Taking that much money out of circulation should help increase the value of the bills in your wallet right now.

          Bingo! I had a friend once who saw the movie Dead Presidents and he could not understand that printing money and giving it away would be a bad thing. On a side note, I was shocked recently when I found out that the US government or Alan Greenspan or whatever does this very thing.
        • The banks yes, but also everyone that uses the same currency as him. Taking that much money out of circulation should help increase the value of the bills in your wallet right now.

          Pfff! 10 million is infinitessimal in relation to even the minted and coined (M0) money supply (AKA "cash"), which is itself already fairly small in comparison to the full (M3) money supply as a whole. On top of that the value of the money supply is additionally at the mercy of a myriad of external forces. In the larger scheme o

  • STTNG (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Profane MuthaFucka ( 574406 ) <busheatskok@gmail.com> on Sunday January 22, 2006 @11:44PM (#14536108) Homepage Journal
    Reminds me of the Star Trek Next Generation episode where they wake up people who were frozen. The doc cured them, and one guy wanted to check on his stocks. They thought he was nuts, because why would you need stocks when you could just ask the replicator for anything you wanted?
    • Replicators can make Orian sex slaves? Sweet!

    • Re:STTNG (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MBGMorden ( 803437 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @12:40AM (#14536419)
      Unfortuneatly for our "real" situation makers of everything from candy bars to bath soap would cry foul if replicators were ever invented. "Pirates" would be trading templates for items all over the place, but the technology would be villified beyond belief.

  • Comical ethics of advance technology... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Sunday January 22, 2006 @11:47PM (#14536126)
    There was a horror comic in the early 80's that has a story that I still remember.

    A rich man who was dying had enough money to develop the technology to put himself on ice until medical technology was advance enough to cure his disease. He wakes up about 50 years later to find out that medical technology did indeed advance greatly over the years. But there was no cure for his disease. Instead, he was revived so the doctors could harvest his limbs for the veterans of the last World War who lost their arms and legs. Since he was beyond cure, the doctors figured his limbs were still useful to humanity. Advance technology rendered the rich man a basketcase.

  • Rule against perpetuities (Score:5, Informative)

    by Peyna ( 14792 ) on Sunday January 22, 2006 @11:47PM (#14536128) Homepage
    The rule against perpetuities [wikipedia.org] should probably stop this in most states. The point of it is to keep property from being tied up and being useless for long periods of time. I think it's probably a moot point until they actually manage to unthaw someone and then keep them alive for more than a second or two.
    • Rule against perpetuities??

      Then how do you explain the f'ed up Copyright system??

    • The rule against perpetuities, in most states, has an exemption for reversions to the original grantor. Furthermore, the original grantor fills in all the gaps created by grants that violate the rule against perpetuities. This means that it would present no bar to a person's estate retaining money even hundreds of years in the future. That said it would likely raise some very interesting legal issues.

      Furthermore, many states have recently effectively eviserated the old common law rule against perpetui

  • Doubtful legality (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Raindance ( 680694 ) <johnsonmx@@@gmail...com> on Sunday January 22, 2006 @11:47PM (#14536129) Homepage Journal
    I'd suspect that the legal status of someone that's, well, legally dead would be rather iffy. And for good reason- why should we set aside economic power for inactive (and potentially never-to-be active) members of our society? I think the burden of proof that this should be possible lies on them.

    There's also things such as Adverse Possession that could throw a wrench into things. I'd recommend that any 'cryonauts' conceive of any post-death, pre-revival arrangements to be tentative at best.

    • Re:Doubtful legality (Score:5, Insightful)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @12:12AM (#14536273)
      I'd suspect that the legal status of someone that's, well, legally dead would be rather iffy.
      I'm reminded of the Pharoahs of Egypt, who wanted so badly to "take it with them" that they were buried with great riches and even their own (living) servants. Fast forward a few thousand years to the explorers/theives who plundered the remains. There nobody around to protect whatever ownership rights the mummies thought they had over their loot.

      All I can say is, let it go. You don't own anything in perpetuity, not even the water and dirt your body is made of.

      • Fast forward a few thousand years to the explorers/theives who plundered the remains.

        Most of them weren't that lucky. Many of the tombs were plundered within generations of their being sealed (most likely by the people/families that built and knew the secrets of the tombs.) There's a few tombs in the VOTK that are populated with nearly a hundred mummies iirc,.. the priests were forced into moving the mummies into concentrated spots so they were better able to protect them from the plunderers. This
  • Since he would have recently died before being frozen, he can wake up in 100 years and be the crappiest-feeling richest guy on earth! They say money can't buy everything.
  • Hope he hasn't got any greedy family members. The lawyers will end up with it all when the jackals decend.

  • Family members (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RedWizzard ( 192002 ) on Sunday January 22, 2006 @11:48PM (#14536133)
    This scheme was mentioned in at least one of Niven's books. It didn't work - surviving family members took the estate to court to get at their rightful inheritance. I think that's a pretty likely outcome. Another likely outcome is that the estate management will embezzle it (it's not like you can watch them closely when you're dead). It's also possible the government might decide to seize it, if it's a tempting enough target.

    • Re:Family members (Score:3, Interesting)

      by pmancini ( 20121 )
      The estate could claim that his state of inanimation does not constitute death and that the freezing process is part of a long medical procedure.

      Of course his greedier heirs would then have themselves frozen with orders to be revived when he wakes or is declared dead!
  • So your trust fund has guardians. Big deal. What are you going to do, audit them? You're frozen.

    The funds will be slowly leeched until you finally thaw and die, and at that point someone inherits it.

    Also, if there is any kind of "$#!+ hits the fan" scenario, the government will confiscate these trust finds to finance the war. Again, you will thaw and die.
    • "The funds will be slowly leeched until you finally thaw and die, and at that point someone inherits it. "

      One small correction: You must be legally dead before you can be frozen (in the US at least). Anything else would be considered assisted suicide.
      • Well, doesn't that open a legal pandora's box?

        So, you are legally dead if you are frozen. If you are legally dead, and then revived, is our legal system prepared to handle that? Especially if you are revived some 50 years later.

        "Yes, your honor, I was dead, but now I am alive again, and I want my things back."

        I think a lot of cases would have to be decided to understand how to handle someone who comes back.
    • No, actually, many trusts run on their own quite nicely.

      Why? A properly maintained trust *is* a business in and of itself. It's lifetime employement for the maintainer and a host of other people. You don't need to kill the Golden Goose, you just need to keep it going.

      Ideally, the maintainers of the fund for "The Frozen" will plan on freezing themselves, as well. It's something that would keep running indefinitely.
      • The thing about existing trusts is that there is actually some person or organization who owns it, and needs to have it run properly. The administrators of the fund know that one day they may be called to task by the benefactor of the trust (or whatever you call them.) They can be sued or put in jail or whatever.

        However, if the owner of the trust is on ice, they really can't check up on the administrators. If you schluff money off the top, or orchestrate things to get the money into your hands, who is goi

  • H.G. Wells did it (Score:4, Informative)

    by 246o1 ( 914193 ) on Sunday January 22, 2006 @11:50PM (#14536149)
    In "When the Sleeper Wakes," a guy is in a coma for a thousand years, wakes up and his money has taken over the world. Highly recommend it, but that's because I like Wells a lot.

  • Meanwhile in Applied Cyrogenics ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by slashbob22 ( 918040 ) on Sunday January 22, 2006 @11:52PM (#14536158)
    "Terry: Welcome to the world of tomorrow!
    Lou: Why do you always have to say it that way?
    Terry: Haven't you ever heard of a little thing called showmanship? Come, your destiny awaits!"

    Futurama Pilot

  • Don't forget to turn off the light! (Red Dwarf) (Score:5, Funny)

    by Artega VH ( 739847 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @12:01AM (#14536198) Journal
    Reminds me of this little sequence from Red Dwarf:

    Holly: They're from the NorWEB Federation.
    Lister: What's that?
    Holly: NorthWestern Electricity Board. They want you, Dave.
    Lister: Me? Why? What for?
    Holly: For your crimes against humanity.
    Lister: You what?!
    Holly: Seems when you left Earth, three million years ago, you left two half-eaten German sausages on a plate in your kitchen.
    Lister: Did I?
    Holly: You know what happens to sausages left unattended for three million years?
    Lister: Yeh, they go mouldy.
    Holly: Your sausages, Dave, now cover seven-eighths of the Earth's surface. Also, you left seventeen pounds, fifty pence in your bank account. Thanks to compound interest you now own 98% of all the world's wealth. And because you hoarded it for three million years, nobody's got any money except for you and NorWEB.
    Lister: Why NorWEB?
    Holly: You left a light on in the bathroom. I've got a final demand here for one hundred and eighty billion pounds.
    Lister: A hundred and eighty billion pounds!! You're kidding!
    Holly, wearing glasses, nose and moustache: April Fool.
    Lister: But it's not April!
    Holly: Yeah, I know. But I can't be waiting six months with a red-hot jape like that underneath me hat.
  • We all know that Elvis is still alive. Oh yeah, don't forget to pay royalties if you paint his image on black velvet.

    Hmmmm, Thank you, thank you very much.

  • Scary (Score:5, Funny)

    by tmandry ( 710511 ) <tmandry@gmail.RASPcom minus berry> on Monday January 23, 2006 @12:05AM (#14536232)

    You can't take it with you. So Arizona resort operator David Pizer has a plan to come back and get it.

    Does anyone else think this sounds like a bad horror movie?

  • My greatest fear would be getting frozen, and then being successfully thawed, except that the freezing process leads to permanent impotency. Frostbite of the cock, one might say.

    Then again, I have not sustained, let alone maintained, an erection in a couple of decades. So maybe getting cryogenically frozen wouldn't be that harmful after all.

  • It seems to me that the easiest way to do this is to freeze yourself, hopefully in a way that your DNA won't degrade. Once cloning technology is viable, have yourself cloned, and leave your money to your eventual clone.

    If mind transfer technology is available, then do that, but that might be a ways further off.

  • You don't have to be rich. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by f1r3br4nd ( 16047 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @12:11AM (#14536269)
    Perhaps rich people are the ones worrying about preserving their assets for the future, but I don't want people to get the impression that you have to be rich to be a cryonicist.

    That mistaken assumption [alcor.org] is what caused me to take so long to take the plunge.

    I'm a grad student, I make 20k/year, and I have a cryo contract. As a full-time student I pay $199 annually and my life insurance policy ($90k coverage) premiums cost about $1k per annually. If I wanted to, I could have taken out a term life insurance policy and I'd be paying in the low hundreds, but since by definition this is an arrangement you'd want to make for the duration of your life, I thought it would be better to lock in a good whole life insurance rate while I'm still young and healthy. Plus my policy has a safety margin of $10k over the $80k neurosuspension fee [alcor.org].

    And that's me, a starving PhD student. Some of you people with real jobs can fund your cryo policy, and toss some money into a trust fund for yourself, and have some left over for charity and heirs.

    Cryonics is a long-shot, but unlike many other beliefs about life after death, it doesn't contradict the observed laws of physics. I don't ridicule those beliefs or take any action to restrict them, no matter how alien to my way of thinking they may seem. I therefore expect a free and pluralistic society to reciprocate this courtesy toward my own beliefs.
    • Looks like your fees go up quite a bit after you stop being a student. Even if they don't, suppose you instead got a modest 7% interest on that $199/year over 45 years -- that would give you $60,844.60 to play with in your dotage. Anyhow, good luck with the frozen head thing ;-)

    • Re:You don't have to be rich. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Johnny Mnemonic ( 176043 ) <mdinsmore&gmail,com> on Monday January 23, 2006 @12:28AM (#14536354) Homepage Journal

      Perhaps rich people are the ones worrying about preserving their assets for the future, but I don't want people to get the impression that you have to be rich to be a cryonicist.

      Maybe not, but the OP has a point: if and when you wake up, will it do you much good to wake up a) broke, and b) without a marketable skill? You'll be about as useful to the new society as a buggy driver is to ours. Worse, you'll probably have a huge medical bill--while you've paid for the suspension (although how can they guarantee the rate?) you couldn't have possibly paid for the cure that will bring you back, as they can't at this point know how expensive it'll be to give you the cure, since it doesn't exist.

      Really, that sounds great. You might wake up someday, but you'll be broke, jobless, a relative idiot, nowhere to live, no friends or family, and maybe will have a crushing medical bill. Thanks, but I think I might prefer to stay dead.

      • Re:You don't have to be rich. (Score:5, Funny)

        by RFC959 ( 121594 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @12:38AM (#14536401) Journal

        will it do you much good to wake up a) broke, and b) without a marketable skill?


        So coming out of cryosleep is like graduating with a liberal arts degree, then?
      • It never ceases to astound me how many things there are out there that people think are worse than death. To me, death is the one definite way to lose whatever game we're playing. Maybe people have a more literal belief in heaven than I do. Maybe people are in deep denial about the implacable finality of death. It's none of my business, though. Some people would rather be dead than stupid and broke, and I respect their beliefs.

        Call me a throwback then, because I'd rather be alive and keep on struggling to s
      • No job skills? I dispute that. He'd be the ultimate authority on our current period of 'history', and considering the amount of information being stored in DRM-locked formats on short-term digital media, he might wake up in a future that knows almost nothing about this time.
      • Maybe not, but the OP has a point: if and when you wake up, will it do you much good to wake up a) broke, and b) without a marketable skill? You'll be about as useful to the new society as a buggy driver is to ours.

        Or maybe, if you wake up you'll be assigned to a position in society based on your capabilities. Haven't you watched Futurama?

  • Instant (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RickPartin ( 892479 ) * on Monday January 23, 2006 @12:12AM (#14536271) Homepage
    The one cool thing about freezing yourself that no one seems to mention is the process, if successful, will seem instant to you regardless of how many hundreds of years you're out for. Thinking of it that way makes it seem way more appealing. It's like a crude form of time travel.

    • Re:Instant (Score:3, Insightful)

      by thesandtiger ( 819476 )
      Who's to say one wouldn't have dreams? Or just some kind of low-level pseudo-consciousness? Or something else entirely?

      I'm not saying that any of those are possible, but I am saying that, since no human being has ever been frozen, suspended for a "long" period of time, and then thawed and revived, saying anything about the subjective experience is an iffy proposition.

      I suspect that you're right - likely there'll be no notice of the lapsed time - but I wouldn't rule anything else out.

      Me, I'll probably get fr

      • Re:Instant (Score:3, Insightful)

        by malsdavis ( 542216 ) *
        If you were having thoughts of anykind, "low-level pseudo-consciousness" or whatever, you would NOT be cryogenically frozen. Thoughts require large amounts of chemical reactions to occur in the brain and the whole point of cryogenics is to stop chemical reactions from happening as they are also what causes ageing.

        So by the very definition of cryogenics you would be thoughtless and completely unconscious for the entire time. Apart maybe from any wake-up period which possibly might be required during reanimat

    • Re:Instant (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @01:01AM (#14536511) Homepage
      The one cool thing about freezing yourself that no one seems to mention is the process, if successful, will seem instant to you regardless of how many hundreds of years you're out for.

      Heh. You hope it seems instantateous, at least. Until we thaw one of those suckers out and reanimate 'em, we won't know if they wake up saying "what was that?" or "OH MY GOD WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG, THE ETERNAL FREEZING LIMBO!!!!!!!!!"

  • Mr Pizer, please wake up now... (Score:5, Funny)

    by rmpotter ( 177221 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @12:12AM (#14536276) Homepage
    ... You've been frozen for 150 years, but your Cryo company went under about 80 years ago. Actually that company has been bought and sold a number of times. You actually spent a few weeks in a meat locker in Chicago until a new facility could be found. Unfortunately we were legally obligated to dip into your "inheritance" to pay for emergency cooling and relocation. You still have a few dollars left, but after converting them into American Yen, it looks like you will have to go back to work. Mr Pizer? Are you listening to me? Ah... yes, where is the rest of your body? Well, you see after the last market crash the Cryo industry was forced to make a few, um, cutbacks. What now? Well, Mr. Pizer, you've lucked into a wonderful Brave New World, you know. You've been assigned to the circus with all the others. You'll be pulled by trained monkeys round the ring on a special cart along with the other heads. It doesn't pay all that well, but it will keep the feeding tube flowing and cover any back taxes owing. And it does make the children laugh! Mr. Pizer? Now don't be angry with me Mr. Pizer...
     

  • Who would want you? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bhhenry ( 83946 )
    Funny to see this article so soon after viewing Final [imdb.com], a movie about a man who wakes up in a mental ward after being cryogenically frozen and then finds himself a ward of the state in more than one way. Or the Philip K. Dick story I just read about a man who travels into the future, but isn't worried about making his way, because he is a doctor, and society can always use a doctor, right?

    Seriously, if the technology worked as planned, what would you do after being thawed? Go back to grade school to catch

  • So... Even if we do get enough advances medically to do this, tell me why on earth would we /want/ to revive someone so selfish and materialistic as to want to do this? Sorry, couldn't help myself.

  • decisions (Score:2, Insightful)

    by wall0159 ( 881759 )
    The difficult part would have to be deciding when to cut one's losses with life and be frozen. Persumably, if he waits until he's actually dead, it might be too late...

    "I figure I have a better than even chance of coming back," he says. *laughing* based on WHAT?? Just goes to show - wealth doesn't corrolate with intelligence.

    (personally, I reckon his chances are more like 42%... ;-)

  • Reality cheque (Score:3, Funny)

    by HermanAB ( 661181 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @12:20AM (#14536321)
    As Robert Heinlein put it: "If you invest a substantial sum of money at a good interest rate, compounded monthly, it will eventually be worth nothing."
  • We all know that your body is but a temporary home for your soul or your spirit.

    When the body dies, your spirit (**you**) move on. This should be very familiar with you Pagans
    out there. (Remeber that Sahman; Haloween; is the time when we re-unite with the spirits of our
    dead ancestors).

    Yes, science may be able to resurrect a dead body.

    But, what soul will inhabit it at that time? Most likely it will be either someone else or perhaps
    no soul at all. Perhaps you will end up with a 'living vegstible' with no spir
  • ...or, he could let his savings accumulate for 1000 years and then spend it on a single anchovy.
  • Assuming for the minute that this will ever work (which currently is likely a crock of shit), why not just buy a bunch of gold, and bury it some random place in the ocean that you've memorized the GPS co-ordinates for? Gold is unlikely to decrease in value very much, so it should hold its value over a few hundred years. If you could somehow do this yourself (anyone you pay to help will likely just come back the next month of after you're dead and take the gold), it seems fairly foolproof.
  • Soon after he dies, his estate will reorganize and decide that meetings must take place in the south of France, and other exotic locations. 20 or so years from now, the money will run out, the body will be thawed and put in the ground.

  • Tax Em (Score:4, Funny)

    by Deliveranc3 ( 629997 ) <deliverance@level4 . o rg> on Monday January 23, 2006 @02:23AM (#14536835) Journal
    You heard me... Tax the icicles.

  • This is Nothing New (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @03:38AM (#14537068) Homepage Journal
    When the Pharohs were placed in their reincarnation devices (The pyramids) they tried to take it all with them, too. I expect the results will be similar for the modern day people who are trying to cheat death. I don't believe that our current level of technology can preserve a body well enough to fix it at some future date and I don't believe that the current infrastructure is reliable enough to keep a body frozen for 100 years much less several. In fact, I doubt the current bunch of frozen dead guys will hold up as long as the Egyptians who were mummified thousands of years ago. My money's on them all quietly ending up in some medical waste bin somewhere within 40-50 years time.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @03:44AM (#14537089)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • asset trusts limited to living beneficeries (Score:3, Insightful)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @10:43AM (#14538972)
    Generally states limit the lifetime monies held by nonliving entities (trusts) to living beneficies or one generation thereafter. Family/dynasty trusts like the Rockefellers or Kennedies have to renewed each generation.
    To be blunt, the even the dead cant avoid taxes forever. The concept of the dead and unborn owning assets is alien to current law.

  • Synaptic degeneration (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TheSync ( 5291 ) on Monday January 23, 2006 @10:59AM (#14539082) Journal
    I think the big problem in cryonics is that after 5 minutes of hypoxia, synapses start to degenerate. I really think this is a significant information loss, not something repairable. Even if you could put some of the neurons back together, you will have a hard time figuring out which neuron is connected to which and with what strength.

    Perhaps your body could come back, but unless you are frozen pretty much immediately upon onset of lethal hypoxia, the brain you come back with will not be much like your own.

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