History Fridge / InTime

* Will gives the million-year capsule to a little girl to deliver to the time-line charity, because only someone under 25 whose clock isn't active can be trusted to pass it on rather than use it for themselves.

* Since people have the chance at living forever with the current technology, it makes sense that no "newer" technologies, other than those concerning the life extension, would be developed. After all, since now you could possibly live forever, what more do you need. (This is also probably why the rich guy kills himself.) As Bruce Willis said in 'Film/DeathBecomesHer'', "and then what?" This reminds this troper of ''Series/TheTwilightZone'' episode "A Nice Place to Visit," where the crook's "Heaven" turns out to be "the other place" because he just gets whatever he wants, whenever he wants it. What kind of life is it to always have to watch out for accidents and assassinations? Pretty lousy.

*** Or it's ''capitalist Taiwan'' (though that doesn't make it exclusive certainly)--the situation you described, particularly the limited fields of work available to the population (and limited sources of income), and where deliberate price shifts can and usually do happen faster than any sort of mathematical tendency towards "correction" is a common phenomenon throughout the historic developing world. Among said nations, those recovering from war (or post-colonial states, which are often one in the same) were plagued by shortages of food and consumer good options for decades (in Taiwan's case, well in to the 1980s): being a free-market state doesn't mean twenty coffee shops spring up overnight, being a ''rich'' free-market state does. You wouldn't find unlimited jobs, or unlimited grocer options, in postwar Taiwan (or modern day Haiti), as the massive corporate conglomerations of the 1990s didn't get that way by competing with each other to sell coffee at the best price. Unless you're going to claim they're actually communist states, which is a [[JustForPun hard sell]].

* What's to be done? That is, even if someone benevolent, wise and disinterested came to be in charge, how could they possibly make the system just? I see 4 possibilities given what we know they can do, besides the system they already have, which many obviously don't like. (1) Go back to the way it was, let everyone age like they do now. That essentially means denying care for sickness and weakness when it is available and doable. Basically like denying a cure for cancer if we had one. An unethical decision to say the least. (2) Remove the timers and let everyone be immortal. The movie points out why that's a problem; where would you put everyone? Alternatively, assuming everyone still needs food, they'd run out of it sooner or later and many people would die of starvation, which is arguably more cruel than dying of expired time. (3) Let everyone be immortal, but prevent anyone (legally or genetically) from having any more children. Oppressive, and would result in stagnation of culture, innovation, and happiness. (4) The most just system I can think of is to ration the same exactly amount of time to everyone, say 100 years, outlaw/disable time transfer, and go back to normal money for commerce. This means everyone gets to look and be as healthy as a 25-year-old for 76 years, but then you die. Arguably better than what they have or what we have, but it also means perfectly healthy people have to die for a fairly arbitrary reason. And more WMG-ily, (5) Let everyone be immortal, let them have children, but colonize other planets. Maybe they have the technology to do that by then. But it would only last for so long. It's a paradox. The technology to cure aging seems to be something that we are ethically bound to do if we can, but it leads to the world being a horrible place to live, and to the inevitability of unethical decisions one way or another.

** It's not stated that they can't work for time through capsules. There are two major reasons they may have designed the system to start at age 25: to prevent the farming of children for time, or to allow people in the ghettoes to procreate at least once and contribute to the workforce a bit before dying.

* The time units are the greatest social control device ever made. In actuality, the truly powerful actually have unlimited time. However, any mass uprising could potentially be eliminated instaneously through forcing the watches to hit zero. The reason why this isnt done in the movie? The powerful do not wa.t this capability known yet until they have gathered all that they feel worthy. Then they will force the units on everyone else, and then make two groups. Rich and poor. And press "Kill the poor" when they no longer need the labor force.
* ''In Time'' revolves around a society in which people stop aging at 25. We see rich people who are very, very old, and Weis is 90 years old. He has a daughter who is only 27. Unless his wife is far younger than him (impossible to tell in this world) his wife had Sylvia at a very old age, so women probably have children when they're older. Where's the horror? The reason that older women are at a greater risk for Down syndrome is because a woman's eggs are exposed to wear and tear, plus a greater risk of being exposed to mutagens in the environment, which puts them at a greater risk for nondisjunction during later stages of meiosis. The AppliedPhlebotinum that keeps everyone young might prevent the damage from typical wear-and-tear, but what about mutagens? We don't see anyone with disabilities in this world, and so I get two impressions from this: Either all babies (or at least all rich babies) are born from artificial means, which means there is probably a lot of eugenics (in the form of only selecting the very fit egg and sperm) going on (well, the world is pretty much filled with TheBeautifulElite) or, even worse, all babies with genetic or chromosomal disorders (or birth injuries) are either aborted, abandoned, segregated, or even killed at birth.

* What's to be done? That is, even if someone benevolent, wise and disinterested came to be in charge, how could they possibly make the system just? I see 4 possibilities given what we know they can do, besides the system they already have, which many obviously don't like. (1) Go back to the way it was, let everyone age like they do now. That essentially means denying care for sickness and weakness when it is available and doable. Basically like denying a cure for cancer if we had one. An unethical decision to say the least. (2) Remove the timers and let everyone be immortal. The movie points out why that's a problem; where would you put everyone? Alternatively, assuming everyone still needs food, they'd run out of it sooner or later and many people would die of starvation, which is arguably more cruel than dying of expired time. (3) Let everyone be immortal, but prevent anyone (legally or genetically) from having any more children. Oppressive, and would result in stagnation of culture, innovation, and happiness. (4) The most just system I can think of is to ration the same exactly amount of time to everyone, say 100 years, outlaw/disable time transfer, and go back to normal money for commerce. This means everyone gets to look and be as healthy as a 25-year-old for 76 years, but then you die. Arguably better than what they have or what we have, but it also means perfectly healthy people have to die for a fairly arbitrary reason. And more WMG-ily, (5) Let everyone be immortal, let them have children, but colonize other planets. Maybe they have the technology to do that by then. But it would only last for so long. It's a paradox. The technology to cure aging seems to be something that we are ethically bound to do if we can, but it leads to the world being a horrible place to live, and to the inevitability of inethical decisions one way or another.

* Will gives the million-year capsule to a little girl to deliver to the time-line charity, because only someone under 25 whose clock isn't active can be trusted to deliver it rather than use it for themselves.

* How common is suicide in this culture? Surely many of the poor eventually lose interest in running on this endless treadmill, especially given how probable it seems that a person gets to watch his family and friends die on it. Even among the rich, the ennui-based suicide, like the rich fellow at the beginning, is probably fairly common as people simply run out of new experiences and get bored. Suicide may end virtually all wealthy lives after a few centuries. Imagine all the lower-class lives sacrificed so that a few elite can live, say, three centuries instead of one, before willfully throwing away the life purchased at such massive human cost.

**** Interstellar travel might not be an available solution. Either it's impossible for some reason unknown today, or the in-universe technology is not yet sufficient.

** The idea never occurred to ThisTroper despite working in network security. However the idea that time must always flow from one wallet to the other and can never be created out of thin air was very reminding of...{{UsefulNotes/Bitcoin}}.

* Interstellar travel might not be an available solution. Either it's impossible for some reason unknown today, or the in-universe technology is not yet sufficient.

*** You have immortality. Imagine what some of the great minds could have figured out if the clock never ran out on them (and they kept on that line of work, of course). It wouldn't be a matter of 'if', just 'when'. Also 'learn how to colonize the universe so we don't have to start killing people' is a pretty good motivation.

** You make interstellar travel and colonization sound like a much simpler thing that it actually is.

*** Actually they are given 25 years to age naturally, you wouldn't want a world of people who look like children. The clock's activation seems to be what also activates the anti-aging gene splicing, based on the girl's dialog about when her clock started.

* Since people have the chance at living forever with the current technology, it makes sense that no "newer" technologies, other than those concerning the life extension, would be developed. After all, since now you could possibly live forever, what more do you need. (This is also probably why the rich guy kills himself.) As Bruce Willis said in DeathBecomesHer, "and then what?" This reminds this troper of the Twilight Zone episode "A Nice Place to Visit," where the crook's "Heaven" turns out to be "the other place" because he just gets whatever he wants, whenever he wants it. What kind of life is it to always have to watch out for accidents and assassinations? Pretty lousy.

* Something bugs me about the whole Overpopulation excuse for not letting everyone be immortal. ...Space is INFINITE. Yea not every place we can live is gonna be awesome and Earth-like immediately, but you can't just have people stuff it in their pants temporarily or send extra people into space to colonize and terraform other worlds or something? Why did everyone stop scientific progress after inventing immortality?

** The "quota" line especially reminded me of production quotas in command economies. Of course, you could also say it's a continent-spanning company town, which amounts to the same thing.