What if, out of the blue, everyone in the world would start respawning on death?
But, ultimately, it would mean that they would make it impossible for country boarders to really be a practical thing. The amount of money we would then need to invest in forcing some of these people to go back to their countries would be astronomical. Additionally, this would make things like the death penalty completely impractical and a terrible idea.
The world would almost certainly become much more open to the outside world. African children appearing in all sorts of places, that would be much harder to ignore than a Facebook post. Places like prisons would need to make it as hard as possible for inmates to kill themselves or each other, otherwise, they could end up on the other side of the globe in half an hour's time after a few drownings and freezes. The last thing the people in charge of keeping Guantanamo Bay secure want is for their most demented killers to find and torture another innocent person in Moscow by lunch time.
But, then, what would the law look like? Would murdering people really be as bad as it's considered to be today? Or would we just treat it as an offence on par with theft? Sure it would be inconvenient for the victim a lot of the time, but, it wouldn't even always be inconvenient (depending on the details of the situation), but, at the end of the day, it's like their lives can ever come under threat again. They'd, at most, be landed in a very annoying situation when they'd die. Would that really deserve the current prison sentence? They'd no doubt see anyone who mattered to them again after a while.
It would put them in a bit of a geoguesser situation, sure, but, given a bit of time and money, they'd be able to get out of there and back home.
The problem becomes apparent when you think of people who don't die via accidents/being murdered. People who die from things like illnesses or old age would be forced into an endless loop of death. Dying over and over again unless the respawning somehow made them healthy and put them into their mid-20's (beyond that, ageing is pretty much just a compilation of errors in our DNA). But how the hell is it meant to do that? Eventually, there would be millions of people in that situation, until we'd find some way to reverse the effects of ageing and cure pretty much every sickness that can kill us.
Another thing that we'd no longer be able to take for granted would be the problem of overpopulation. It's becoming an issue in this day and age, with it excepted to reach critical point at the current rate by about 2050 (which is well within the lifespans of a lot of people in the world now, especially with medicine getting better at keeping people alive for longer). With immortality for all, and nobody being able to stay dead, making more mouths to feed would only cause more problems. People would no longer be able to just have a kid, because if everyone had kids, and those kids had kids, and those kids had kids, and so on, we would be in some serious trouble in terms of space for people, not to mention keeping people fed. Sure, starvation wouldn't keep us dead, but, it would still feel horrible. I for one, would not be up for experiencing it and experiencing the slow death it brings over and over and over again. And I doubt very many people would, to be honest.
The final point I'm going to make, is something that I did touch on a bit earlier which would be the enhanced ability to escape. Are you a drug lord with the DEA banging on your door? Are you a terrorist who's been hunted down for decades and have finally been tracked down by the US? Do you have a gun nearby? Great! Shoot yourself in the head, and you'll make the escape that the people after you will have a very hard time tracking you down through. It would work as an amazing reset button to the games of hide and seek that those kinds of people play.
Anyway, I think that's enough from me right now, I'm curious as to whether anyone agrees/disagrees with me on the points that I've made up above.
