Death is the one great equalizer between billionaires and the poor.
Remove that and we would get Eternal Robber-barons, which would be the new dragons.
But it is. We have progressed out of slavery over the years. Without those who were staunchly pro-slavery and who profited from it mightily dying, they would have been fighting against abolishing it to the tooth and nail over the years.
After we have been molded in our childhoods, we don't change from that very radically. Certain imprints just stay with us the rest of our lives. If billionaires would be able to live forever our world would divide heavily into those who could afford to be demigods and accumulate wealth in perpetuity, and those poor buggers who would toil away in the companies the rich would own.
Maybe at one point the cure could become universally available. But the aristocracy of super-wealthy would remain and the gap between the poor and the rich would become magnitudes greater than it is today.
But the reason they progressed out of slavery wasn't death but because free economies were far more productive and those which were more meritocratic than hereditary casted as well. Contrary to the popular "salty aristocrat origin" memes of new wealth only from exploitation and wealth only being ill-gotten they tried factories in the South Antebellum - they largely failed in comparison even with literal slave labor.
The point isn't how profitable slavery is or was. The point is what would happen if people who don't follow moral norms lived forever having accumulated a lot of wealth. If in this current system wealth is concentrated to a very small percentage of people, surely this would only increase given longer lifespans.
You are making the point that death promotes _change_. Not that it equalizes anything. That's a point I 100% agree with, except that you're saying that point is disagreeing with what I said. Because it doesn't :P
> Death is the one great equalizer between billionaires and the poor.
Firstly, that's not really true on an individual basis: Poor people die sooner. Just because they end up in the same place eventually doesn't mean the journeys were the same.
Secondly, death seldom matters for "billionaires" or "the poor" as classes, because biological death is the domain of individuals, not the clan or sociopolitical group. The billionaires have technology called "private property" and "inheritance" to adjust for the deaths.
That is a rather childish spiteful and envious logic masquerading as virtue. It is essentially saying "Because they have more than me (I want it and they have it therefore they stole it), it is fair that both of us will be hit by a train?"
Regardless of the views on fairness (the very definition is so solipsistic that the Just World hypothesis means that they can rationalize anything bad as happening because the victims clearly deserved it.) it makes the entire matter moot because both are dead.
Eternal and robber barron are is also both bad assumptions. It assumes that those with more neccessarily have stolen it and produce nothing. Stealing and production aren't mutually exclusive either. If someone actually dominates resource consumption without any production "prememium" to justify it then there is always something to gain by killing them and taking their stuff. If said "eternal robber barron" actually turns out to have been a net positive from say their lengthy experience in managing considerable holdings any bandit or revolutionary will taste their winnings turning to ashes in their mouth.
It is a morally awkward lesson but very grounded in the real world as even when the defeated actually was an oppressor instead of just looked upon with envy the new owners who never ran one before will find running the "old machine" whether a farm, factory, oil well, or mine or isn't as simple as they thought - let alone an entire country. Production soon crashes and on top of that are the market effects. Unsurprisingly property owners don't want to trade with those who are still is stained in blood with seized property who declares it all righteous. Would you show up on a cannibal warlord's doorstep to buy a used car from him? No because he might eat you and add your junker to sell.
