First, let's get the freezing thing out of the way. Modern cryonics doesn't freeze, it vitrifies. Very important difference. The difference between freezing and vitrification is clearly explained for the layperson in the Alcor FAQ:<p><a href="http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/vitrification.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.alcor.org/Library/html/vitrification.html</a>
<a href="http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.alcor.org/FAQs/index.html</a><p>Now here are a bunch of economics and cryonics thoughts:<p><a href="http://fightaging.org/archives/2009/06/cryonics-and-economic-incentives.php" rel="nofollow">http://fightaging.org/archives/2009/06/cryonics-and-economic...</a><p>"I note that the cryonics community, rather like the diverse libertarian community, possesses a sizeable minority with a great (and I think misplaced) belief in the power of contracts - of words on paper. You see it in the constitutionalists in the US or the fellows looking for loopholes in tax laws that will enable them to escape the IRS entirely. Words on paper, however, have only as much weight as there are economic incentives aligned with them."<p><a href="http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/01/you-cant-take-it-with-you.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2006/01/you-cant-take-it-...</a><p>"The trouble with property left undefended, as the ancient Egyptians and every other culture that buried wealth with the dead has handily demonstrated, is that no-one else's interests are aligned with yours."<p><a href="http://fightaging.org/archives/2009/04/pastinate-everyone.php" rel="nofollow">http://fightaging.org/archives/2009/04/pastinate-everyone.ph...</a><p>"You might recall the recently voiced suggestion that it's something of an accident of history that the cryonics movement is the cryonics movement versus the plastination movement. Plastination is plausibly just as good a way of preserving the fine structure of the brain into a future where a patient can be restored to life as low-temperature storage."
Let us make the (imho unjustified) assumptions that (a) folks in the future will have the technology to unfreeze and revive cryogenically frozen bodies and that (b) present-day cryogenically frozen bodies will last that long without getting unfrozen due to... whatever. Oh, and (c) that a revived cryogenically frozen person is actually the "same person" that went into the deep freeze, ie that it will be "me" conscious in the future rather than a disconnected consciousness who shares my memories.<p>Anyway, isn't it likely that the larger the cryogenic facilities the less likely they are to unfreeze you? If we had the opportunity to bring back a dozen neanderthals we probably would, because that would be fascinating.<p>But if we had the opportunity to bring back a hundred million neanderthals, and then had to figure out what to do with them (I'm thinking a series of District 9 style shantytowns would probably be the most likely scenario) we'd probably think it was kinder to leave them dead.<p>So if I were planning to freeze myself I'd be trying to discourage too many other folks from doing so. On the other hand, I'd also want to have a steady stream of a small number of people doing it well into the future, to keep the cryogenics companies active and solvent.