immortality for pessimists

Larry Niven wrote, somewhere or other, that if you live long enough you’re bound to get rich at least once. It occurs to me just now that, if you live long enough under an immortal dictatorship, sooner or later you’re bound to be dragged away by the secret police; whereas if life is short anyway you’re likely to die in bed if you keep your head down. Perhaps that is part of what Kim Stanley Robinson meant when he wrote in Icehenge that longevity raises the political stakes.