I think you are overestimating how many people would choose immortality. If one were wealthy with a steady stream of unlimited income, I can see why it would be appealing. If one were a blue collar working man that had been at the construction site every day for 40 years and has just enough saved to retire comfortably at 67 and live until they are 80-85, what then? Go back to work for another 40 years just work your guts out and take another 20 year break? To live forever would mean you need not just the how but the means. Very few people have this capability.
Good response. But there are so many things I find wrong with your post. In my scenario, I asked you to imagine familiar possibilities because we do not actually know what life will be like a 100 years from now (or however long it'd take to achieve it). In reality, life would be very different. For one, why would you ever stop working? You would be a man of 90, but you'd feel like a youth in his 20s (physically). You're telling me that I'm underestimating the number of people who would choose to extend their perfectly healthy existence because they would not want to continue working? I don't think so. People retire now because they become old, tired, and sickly. They would like to enjoy the decade or two they got left.
Another, even more important point; you're assuming scarcity based lifestyles are the only ones possible. Not so. There may come a time where the notion of money and resource exchange becomes obsolete. Imagine this:
1. A cheap and ubiquitous source of energy. Futuristic fusion reactors are one possibility. But other options may be possible in the far future. Harvesting anti-matter from the radiation belt, for example. Maybe even Casimir Effect and other kinds of zero-point energy harvesters. Another option would be massive solar sails orbiting the sun and transmitting captures energy as coherent light. I can think of a thousand possibilities that do not violate understood laws of physics.
2. A fully automated and extensive recycling system that wastes very little. Additionally, we would have vastly more resources available through advanced mining/extracting/collecting techniques, and exploitation of extra-terrestrial resources (asteroids, gas giants, rocky planets, etc).
3. Cheap and sophisticated personal fabricators. Have you heard of 3d printers? They are devices you can buy for a few thousand dollars. You download models from the internet, and the printer will create it for you, one microscopic layer at a time. They were conceived only a couple of decades ago, and they have already dropped in price a few dozen times over, and become more and more useful. They are still very limited (very few material choices, limited colors, limited circuitry capabilities, kind of slow, and others). In time - regardless of whether immortality becomes feasible- such fabricators will be able to create a vast array of objects, from food to cars to computers, and all you'd need is the raw materials.
I can go on and on, but my point is, people will find a way to live productively. Our current paradigms are not the only possible ones.
