Who Pays For Econiche Genetic Upgrades

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Kromm

but its deliberately controversial decisions about whether humans would accept artificial life forms, or being engineered or even copied, and bizarre states founded on political ideals that would be wildly speculative at best and deemed "implausible" today at worst.

It is a nice touch. Though most of them are not all [that] far out. At least in part because, well, almost nothing is. Societies can and have come to accept the previously unthinkable or reject things that have been the norm for time immemorial on surprisingly short timescales.

[RyanW]

One idea that might work is...

We'll cover the cost of the thermoregulation treatments, of course, with suitable cost of living allowances to cover the extra food you'll need. It's all a standard part of the contract for our on-site staffing. Oh, you were hoping to start a family? Well, if you sign on for an extra two years, we'll cover the cost of upgrades that'll have your kids considering 20 below t-shirt weather. (Please ignore the fact that you're signing up hypothetical future people to be unable to tolerate working in any industry but the ones we are dominant in)

[dcarson]

The medical industry would also lobby, that's more things they get paid to do.
I can see local populations like Inuit and Sami making themselves more comfortable where they already live.
I can see religious/ideological groups wanting to move away from the general society doing it so they can live where they won't be "contaminated". Either new ones or ones like the Mennonites. It would be a offshoot but they have a wide range of what tech they think is OK to use. A inherited change is very high tech but doesn't tie you to society later on.

[Pursuivant]

Kromm's point about the cost of genetic upgrades being paid for by future gains is the crux of the matter.

Whether motivated by dystopian or protopian factors, everyone benefits from people who are genetically upgraded, even if it's only simple gene-fixing.

Health Insurance and National Health Systems stand to save billions of dollars, even in just a few years, by encouraging people to have kids who are more resistant to disease and are guaranteed to be free of problems such as ADHD, asthma, cancer or diabetes.

The value of having guaranteed smarter citizens, or future employees, is incalculable. It's estimated that even a few points of childhood IQ loss due to lead exposure or other factors results in tens of thousands of dollars in lost lifetime earnings.

By contrast, the benefits of just a few points of IQ gain (however you measure such things) is likely to result in significant increases in lifetime earnings and well as reduced risk of costly social problems such as criminal activity or teen pregnancy.

Another factor is that smarter or better adapted genetic upgrades take less time to educate, resulting in significant educational cost savings. If every kid graduates from high school at age 16, you reduce education costs by 16% and potentially add 2 years of earning/taxpaying potential.

Econiche genetic upgrades can also represent a significant future value to governments or corporations who want citizens willing to live in less hospitable territories or who want future soldiers or space colonists to maintain their territorial claims.

Parents might also have their own philosophical or religious motivations for eco-niche upgrades. What better way to guarantee that your kid will won't move to the city and will respect their traditional culture than making them better adapted to their "native" environment? Jung! or Hopi families might choose to have desert-adapted genemod kids, while Inuit or Sami families might choose Arctic-adapted genemods like the Misha. If the tribal government is offering subsidies, the choice is even easier.

Finally, don't forget that very few people do unskilled or semi-skilled manual labor on the THS setting. Instead, a typical working class job might be a "bot boss" who programs and maintains a fleet of specialized robots. Skilled trades workers willing to operate in difficult environments make serious money and there are plenty of families who encourage their kids to follow a particular trade because of the economic security it offers.

Parents might not laugh at their kid "only" being a lumberjack based in the Canadian or Siberian wilderness if it's a guaranteed lifetime job that pulls in as much money as an upper middle-class professional would earn and takes far fewer years of education to obtain. Add in government or corporation subsidies and marketing and eco-niche genetic upgrades become much more appealing.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Parents might not laugh at their kid "only" being a lumberjack based in the Canadian or Siberian wilderness if it's a guaranteed lifetime job that pulls in as much money as an upper middle-class professional would earn and takes far fewer years of education to obtain.

Yeah, the idea that they would laugh at it is a "tell me you know nothing about a natural/primary resources-based economy without saying you know nothing about it" thing. Living in Canada as I do, I know people who work in fisheries, lumber, mining, petroleum, etc.: My closest friend in the late 1980s was a fisherman, my entire former family-in-law were miners, my best buddy of the 1990s is in mineral exploration, my cousin is in the oil biz, etc. These people make more money than anyone less than an associate at a major law firm. The reason why not everybody does it is that it's tough work . . . tougher physically than being that lawyer is mentally and socially. So, a technological innovation that lowers the barrier would be huge, and not something to laugh at.

[Anthony]

The other thing is... $60k or so isn't actually that high a cost as child raising goes, particularly at THS wealth levels.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The reason why not everybody does it is that it's tough work . . . tougher physically than being that lawyer is mentally and socially. So, a technological innovation that lowers the barrier would be huge, and not something to laugh at.

Another thing that sets these sorts of resource extraction jobs apart is that they are dangerous. U.S. OSHA collects stats on workplace deaths and why they occur. Once you eliminate deaths due to auto accidents, the most risky jobs, IIRC, are fisherman (drowning), lumberjack (trauma, usually from falling objects or equipment rollovers) and farmer (auto accidents and machinery accidents).

A family of fisherfolk might happily choose to have aquatic-adapted kids, allowing them a sporting chance of survival if they fall overboard in rough or cold seas. A family of pearl divers or oyster farmers living in more temperate conditions would happily have pressure-adapted kids to avoid decompression sickness and long-term ailments caused by scuba diving. (And if time is money, time you don't have to spend decompressing on your way to the surface means more time at the worksite or doing useful work elsewhere.)

A more radical move, or a logical move by a second- or third-gen biomod family, would be to have fully aquatic kids allowing them to go where the fish are.

One very popular gene-fix would be Taboo Trait (Bad Back) which would eliminate an extremely common source of crippling workplace injuries. National Health, and possibly Health Insurance Corporations, would gladly pay parents to get that genemod for their kids.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Another thing that sets these sorts of resource extraction jobs apart is that they are dangerous. U.S. OSHA collects stats on workplace deaths and why they occur. Once you eliminate deaths due to auto accidents, the most risky jobs, IIRC, are fisherman (drowning), lumberjack (trauma, usually from falling objects or equipment rollovers) and farmer (auto accidents and machinery accidents).

For farmers there are also a lot of injuries inflicted by farm animals, especially pigs and cows.

[Kromm]

"Society is built on ore, lumber, and petroleum, and fed by farmers and fishermen" is going to hold true on some level even in the Fifth Wave. The existence of more removes (e.g., "the vat makes the protein, the nutrients in the vat come from ___," or the "nanomachines make the gadget, the feedstock comes from ___" . . . add as many layers as you need) might inject more middlemen taking a cut, but on the other hand, the massive population and their megaprojects, and regular space travel, will elevate the size of everybody's share. In that context, it's only logical to pay to ensure that the people doing the primary extraction can do so uninterrupted; just add the price to that of the resources. The real question is whether upgraded people can compete with remote workers operating various drones and shells, which is harder to judge.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The real question is whether upgraded people can compete with remote workers operating various drones and shells, which is harder to judge.

Why not both?

Given potential hassles with connectivity in remote areas, limits to drone and shell programming and similar potential problems, it makes sense to have human(oid) experts relatively close to the work site in case a job has to be done "manually" (i.e., in person using machinery or directly-controlled drones).

Assuming that eco-niche upgrades happen before full telepresence shells, etc. become economical, you've got a population of skilled local experts who can easily be trained to use the new technology. The fact that they also happen to be well-adapted to the environment is a bonus.

Mom and dad Misha Upgrade actually had to schlep out into the Siberian/Northern Canadian wilderness to do their jobs. Their kids are trained to use cybershells do do most of the work, with with robots, etc. managing routine tasks for themselves. If the Aurora Borealis is playing hob with satellite links, however, or a software glitch bricks the entire cybershell fleet, the kids still know how to trek out into the wilderness to do the job "the old fashioned way" like their parents did, with minimal productivity losses.

While competition from telepresence workers in more populated areas puts economic pressure on eco-niche upgrade locals, they've still got a competitive advantage.