When Oscar Wilde observed that “the young are always ready to give to those older than themselves the full benefit of their inexperience”, he was specifically talking about America. But that was in 1882. Today, to borrow Le Monde’s famous headline, “we are all American” – at least, judging by the sudden enthusiasm for touting “woke” children as moral and political exemplars. As Whaleoil has reported, we are exhorted to believe that immature humans who are barely capable of feeding and clothing themselves are founts of wisdom somehow denied to us sclerotic deplorables.
Well, I have bad news for these righteous infants: we wicked Boomers and Xers are going to be around and voting for quite a while yet.
Don’t just take my word for it, listen to the hard-nosed bean-counters. Forget “green” investment: grey investment is where the smart money is.
One of the biggest investment opportunities over the next decade will be in companies working to delay human death, a market expected to be worth at least $600 billion by 2025, according to one of Wall Street’s major investment banks.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch analysts Felix Tran and Haim Israel believe that genome sequencers such as Illumina, high-tech players such as Alphabet and biotech companies such as Novartis are on the cusp of “bringing unprecedented increases to the quality and length of human lifespans.”
Innovation in genome science, big data and “ammortality,” which includes wearable technology and products in the so-called wellness space, could soon prolong healthy human life well beyond 100 years, BofA told clients Wednesday…Extending human life to new bounds — long the domain of science fiction novels — could increasingly be a compelling way to make money in the public markets.
“Ammortality” refers to medical technologies allowing humans to live healthier, better and longer. But the big money guys are also investing in the future of the planet. Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution allowed billions to thrive and improved the environment at the same time by enabling more food to be produced on less land. Much as greenies may hate “factory farming” and genetic modification, these are the keys to the new green revolution that’s well on its way.
Future of food companies, which are expected to ensure “healthier eating and sustainable humanity on the planet,” include Dow DuPont and WW International. These companies, according to BofA, should leverage agricultural gene editing as well as healthier lifestyles and consumption.
cnbc.com
Of course, the perpetual miserablists fret that these life-extending technologies will remain the preserve of the ultra-rich. This is nonsense. As the history of capitalist innovation shows, every new technology at first enjoyed by the wealthy quickly flows down to the proles. Think of everything from automobiles to international travel to big-screen TVs.
The conceit of modern leftists is that the young have some magical stranglehold on morality and wisdom. This is the typical egotistical arrogance of youth. The fact is that youth, as Theodore Dalrymple says, is a ghastly synergy of supreme ignorance married to unbridled egoism.
As our own SB says, our elders have far more raw experience of sustainable living that their arrogant, cosseted descendants. The about-to-break wave of life-extending technologies means that we oldies will be around to give the arrogant young pups a good clip over the ears for a while yet. Life extension, as one writer notes, will happily unite the vitality of youth with the wisdom of maturity.
Eventually, even the priggish children of the modern left might acquire the wisdom of maturity. The good news is that we’ll still be around to tell, “Told you so”.