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3 traps in cryonics
Posted by
jonano
,
08 January 2008
·
1,389 views
3 cryonics traps envisioned by Charles Platt:
Trap #1. "Our organization needs help. If you do your thing instead of helping us, you will weaken us. If we collapse, you will have nothing. Therefore, you should NOT COMPETE WITH US." (This seems to be what Jordan is thinking.) I call this "The Whining Monopoly Scenario" since the organization seeks to preserve a monopoly of its market segment by whining about its delicate condition.
Trap #2. "Our organization cares for cryonics patients who must be protected at all costs. If you criticize our organization or reveal embarrassing facts, you will empower hostile legislators or others who will try to shut us down. Therefore, you should say NOTHING NEGATIVE ABOUT US." I call this "The Perpetual Hostage Scenario," since the cryonics patients are serving exactly the same role as hostages.
Trap #3. "You'll be dead before you have time to build a new organization to save yourself." I guess the only answer there would be to establish your organization as a cult and surround yourself with young acolytes.
------------------- (2 more things to understand)
On another side,
I already said it once, that alcor is wasting alot of money already and that alcor is operating at large for nothing.
alcor is too big.
they should operate smally.
they should be small.
no bureaucracy.
that's how the best countries are working, with less bureaucracy, less structure, less papers, less operation costs.
That is not wise to operate so largely.
We should delete all the jobs at alcor.. my suggestion.
they claim to be there in the next 100 years? when most companies are unable to do so? what the hell..
any comments?
------------------------
from
http://mthollywood.b....anissimov.html
Cryonics Finances
Michael Anissimov said in a comment (http://www.haloscan....7066376/#160218), “[C]ryonics wouldn't be useful just if the Singularity were close. It would be useful if the Singularity happened in a thousand or even a million years, as long as you can keep the corpuscles from melting in the meanwhile.” My reaction to this is that, even if you grant every other technological claim of cryonics, you’re going to have a very hard time keeping the corpuscles from melting because the cryonics organizations are so rinky-dink.
I’m not a financial expert, but I’ve been around enough accountants to know that they’re concerned about the ability of businesses to stay in operation. If you invest in a business, after all, you want to be sure that it will keep paying on its obligations. The picture I get from visiting cryonic services web sites, like Alcor and The Cryonics Institute is that they are underfunded and amateurishly run. I’ve already cited two cryonics providers that have gone under. Organizations like these would be highly speculative as investments; it would be even more unwise, it seems to me, to trust your frozen remains to them with the object of having them in a condition to revive at some future date, perhaps thousands or millions of years hence.
Here’s the best estimate I can make of Alcor’s annual income. According to their web site, enrolled members pay a membership fee (over and above the amounts they must pay for getting into the freezer when the time comes) of $398 a year. Their most recent figures say they have “more than 710” members (gee, how many is that?). My calculator says this should generate an annual income of $282,500. As of 2002, Alcor’s patient care trust fund amounted to 2.2 million dollars. Let’s assume a 5% return on this money, or $110,000. They collect preservation fees a few times a year when members deanimate. This covers the costs of freezing, plus additional money that goes into the trust fund.
If you think about it, about the most Alcor takes in must be under $500,000 a year. They have to pay staff salaries from this, plus rent, plus the liquid nitrogen, plus insurance and electricity for a really, really big air conditioning bill.
So how is this money managed? Not well. An e-mail to members posted on their site says
As of the end of August, 2005, Alcor had about $115,000 in external debt, $96,000 in a business line of credit and the remainder on credit cards. There were accounts payable of about $79,000, $29,000 of which were more than 30 days past due. The then-current accounts payable of approximately $50,000 consisted mostly of construction charges, liquid
nitrogen, perfusate chemicals, and rent.
The Patient Care Trust was owed $120,000 for patient funds collected and not passed on, though this was more than offset by both billed and unbilled patient care expense. Approximately $40,000 of additional building expenses will come due in the near future. (This is only the portion due from the general fund, since part of the construction is a new patient care bay. The Patient Care Trust is responsible for that portion.)
Comprehensive Member Standby (CMS) fees were being deposited in general funds on receipt, and for the previous five months were not being transferred to the CMS fund. The CMS fund is owed about $37,000 that was collected on its behalf; but CMS has not been billed for two cases.
These oversights are considered to be violations of Alcor policy, and the accounting system is being corrected to ensure such breaches do not happen again in the future. The Board has voted to transfer $250k from the Endowment Fund to cover all past due bills. (This transfer is independent of the $150k that was transferred from the endowment to cover the funds stolen from a member's pre-paid suspension account.) This second transfer of funds is sufficient to bring our accounts up to date, leaving the Endowment Fund with a balance of $530,000. These transfers are due to unusual cash needs this year, not any insolvency in the organization.
I particularly love the oh-by-the-way about a stolen $150,000. This would correspond to half their membership income for a year, and they had to transfer money from principal to make it up. In fact, they seem to be depleting their capital at remarkable speed. My impression is that only dumb luck has kept Alcor going this long. I doubt if they could survive a single lawsuit, yet cryonics as a field is something of a litigation magnet.
The Cryonics Institute doesn’t make as much detailed information available on its site, but its sales pitch matches the discount carpet store in the mall outside of town:
CI is the only organization with no debt, no stockholders, and no landlords. We own our patient care facilities outright, and all our officers and directors donate their services voluntarily.
Their fees are so low as to be disturbing if you’re expecting them to be around for any length of time. I haven’t been able to track down specific membership numbers on their site, but they say they have somewhat fewer paying members than Alcor. Let’s say it’s 600. The annual membership option for Cryonics Institute members is $120 per year, so 600 members, if all paid annual dues, would bring in $72,000 per year. Even leaving out rent, we’re talking about building maintenance, insurance, heating and (of course) cooling, web hosting, and minimal staff salaries. They claim they’re getting by on freebies from members, but it isn’t wise to assume all this will continue. Again, I doubt if the organization could survive a single lawsuit.
(It's worth pointing out, by the way, that the Cryonics Institute says they save money on outside auditors because their Treasurer audits their books. This, ah, is a reason to have outside auditors, not a reason to say you're saving money! See the Alcor theft of $150,000 above. It appears that neither of these operations has adequate financial controls, and while this isn't Enron level boodle, there's enough in the pot to serve as a real temptation.)
Neither organization has anything to say about contingency planning. If they mean to stay in business for decades, centuries, millennia, what about power outage? Natural disaster? The need to move out of a bad neighborhood? I see no evidence that anything has been set aside for inevitable developments like these.
To judge from my comments here, as well as the reactions to my posts on cryonics forums and blogs, cryo-fans think they’re part of an elite vanguard. Frankly, I think they’re suckers. While nobody in the field seems to be getting rich – that is, except for guys like Reynolds, who make some amount of money by glamorizing it in the media – these organizations don’t look like they can keep going for 20 or 30 years, much less the thousands that guys like Anissimov expect.
Trap #1. "Our organization needs help. If you do your thing instead of helping us, you will weaken us. If we collapse, you will have nothing. Therefore, you should NOT COMPETE WITH US." (This seems to be what Jordan is thinking.) I call this "The Whining Monopoly Scenario" since the organization seeks to preserve a monopoly of its market segment by whining about its delicate condition.
Trap #2. "Our organization cares for cryonics patients who must be protected at all costs. If you criticize our organization or reveal embarrassing facts, you will empower hostile legislators or others who will try to shut us down. Therefore, you should say NOTHING NEGATIVE ABOUT US." I call this "The Perpetual Hostage Scenario," since the cryonics patients are serving exactly the same role as hostages.
Trap #3. "You'll be dead before you have time to build a new organization to save yourself." I guess the only answer there would be to establish your organization as a cult and surround yourself with young acolytes.
------------------- (2 more things to understand)
On another side,
I already said it once, that alcor is wasting alot of money already and that alcor is operating at large for nothing.
alcor is too big.
they should operate smally.
they should be small.
no bureaucracy.
that's how the best countries are working, with less bureaucracy, less structure, less papers, less operation costs.
That is not wise to operate so largely.
We should delete all the jobs at alcor.. my suggestion.
they claim to be there in the next 100 years? when most companies are unable to do so? what the hell..
any comments?
------------------------
from
http://mthollywood.b....anissimov.html
Cryonics Finances
Michael Anissimov said in a comment (http://www.haloscan....7066376/#160218), “[C]ryonics wouldn't be useful just if the Singularity were close. It would be useful if the Singularity happened in a thousand or even a million years, as long as you can keep the corpuscles from melting in the meanwhile.” My reaction to this is that, even if you grant every other technological claim of cryonics, you’re going to have a very hard time keeping the corpuscles from melting because the cryonics organizations are so rinky-dink.
I’m not a financial expert, but I’ve been around enough accountants to know that they’re concerned about the ability of businesses to stay in operation. If you invest in a business, after all, you want to be sure that it will keep paying on its obligations. The picture I get from visiting cryonic services web sites, like Alcor and The Cryonics Institute is that they are underfunded and amateurishly run. I’ve already cited two cryonics providers that have gone under. Organizations like these would be highly speculative as investments; it would be even more unwise, it seems to me, to trust your frozen remains to them with the object of having them in a condition to revive at some future date, perhaps thousands or millions of years hence.
Here’s the best estimate I can make of Alcor’s annual income. According to their web site, enrolled members pay a membership fee (over and above the amounts they must pay for getting into the freezer when the time comes) of $398 a year. Their most recent figures say they have “more than 710” members (gee, how many is that?). My calculator says this should generate an annual income of $282,500. As of 2002, Alcor’s patient care trust fund amounted to 2.2 million dollars. Let’s assume a 5% return on this money, or $110,000. They collect preservation fees a few times a year when members deanimate. This covers the costs of freezing, plus additional money that goes into the trust fund.
If you think about it, about the most Alcor takes in must be under $500,000 a year. They have to pay staff salaries from this, plus rent, plus the liquid nitrogen, plus insurance and electricity for a really, really big air conditioning bill.
So how is this money managed? Not well. An e-mail to members posted on their site says
As of the end of August, 2005, Alcor had about $115,000 in external debt, $96,000 in a business line of credit and the remainder on credit cards. There were accounts payable of about $79,000, $29,000 of which were more than 30 days past due. The then-current accounts payable of approximately $50,000 consisted mostly of construction charges, liquid
nitrogen, perfusate chemicals, and rent.
The Patient Care Trust was owed $120,000 for patient funds collected and not passed on, though this was more than offset by both billed and unbilled patient care expense. Approximately $40,000 of additional building expenses will come due in the near future. (This is only the portion due from the general fund, since part of the construction is a new patient care bay. The Patient Care Trust is responsible for that portion.)
Comprehensive Member Standby (CMS) fees were being deposited in general funds on receipt, and for the previous five months were not being transferred to the CMS fund. The CMS fund is owed about $37,000 that was collected on its behalf; but CMS has not been billed for two cases.
These oversights are considered to be violations of Alcor policy, and the accounting system is being corrected to ensure such breaches do not happen again in the future. The Board has voted to transfer $250k from the Endowment Fund to cover all past due bills. (This transfer is independent of the $150k that was transferred from the endowment to cover the funds stolen from a member's pre-paid suspension account.) This second transfer of funds is sufficient to bring our accounts up to date, leaving the Endowment Fund with a balance of $530,000. These transfers are due to unusual cash needs this year, not any insolvency in the organization.
I particularly love the oh-by-the-way about a stolen $150,000. This would correspond to half their membership income for a year, and they had to transfer money from principal to make it up. In fact, they seem to be depleting their capital at remarkable speed. My impression is that only dumb luck has kept Alcor going this long. I doubt if they could survive a single lawsuit, yet cryonics as a field is something of a litigation magnet.
The Cryonics Institute doesn’t make as much detailed information available on its site, but its sales pitch matches the discount carpet store in the mall outside of town:
CI is the only organization with no debt, no stockholders, and no landlords. We own our patient care facilities outright, and all our officers and directors donate their services voluntarily.
Their fees are so low as to be disturbing if you’re expecting them to be around for any length of time. I haven’t been able to track down specific membership numbers on their site, but they say they have somewhat fewer paying members than Alcor. Let’s say it’s 600. The annual membership option for Cryonics Institute members is $120 per year, so 600 members, if all paid annual dues, would bring in $72,000 per year. Even leaving out rent, we’re talking about building maintenance, insurance, heating and (of course) cooling, web hosting, and minimal staff salaries. They claim they’re getting by on freebies from members, but it isn’t wise to assume all this will continue. Again, I doubt if the organization could survive a single lawsuit.
(It's worth pointing out, by the way, that the Cryonics Institute says they save money on outside auditors because their Treasurer audits their books. This, ah, is a reason to have outside auditors, not a reason to say you're saving money! See the Alcor theft of $150,000 above. It appears that neither of these operations has adequate financial controls, and while this isn't Enron level boodle, there's enough in the pot to serve as a real temptation.)
Neither organization has anything to say about contingency planning. If they mean to stay in business for decades, centuries, millennia, what about power outage? Natural disaster? The need to move out of a bad neighborhood? I see no evidence that anything has been set aside for inevitable developments like these.
To judge from my comments here, as well as the reactions to my posts on cryonics forums and blogs, cryo-fans think they’re part of an elite vanguard. Frankly, I think they’re suckers. While nobody in the field seems to be getting rich – that is, except for guys like Reynolds, who make some amount of money by glamorizing it in the media – these organizations don’t look like they can keep going for 20 or 30 years, much less the thousands that guys like Anissimov expect.
