This is a misunderstanding of what happens to your eyes as you age. Your eyes lose the ability to change focus. People with normal vision will have their focus stuck near infinity and will need reading glasses for close up things. People with mild myopia will have their focus stuck at close range and therefore won't need reading glasses. They will still need glasses to see clearly far away, but they always did, so it won't be a change for them.
I guess if I had to choose, I would pick needing glasses for far away rather than up close. But I wouldn't trade normal vision for myopia just to avoid needing reading glasses in old age.
My parents had corrective eye surgery in the last decade (corrected their myopia), and they claim the eye surgery damaged their "reading vision." They lament the loss of their reading vision, and I have to keep explaining that they're experiencing presbyopia and not some damage the surgery caused.
My myopia is pretty bad (-9.25 and -8.5 in contacts), so I don't even get the benefit of reading without correction.
> My parents had corrective eye surgery in the last decade (corrected their myopia), and they claim the eye surgery damaged their "reading vision."
I'm -7.00 / -7.25 and this happens to me if I wear contacts instead of glasses. With glasses I can comfortably read a book or screen from about 10 inches away and beyond. With contacts I have to hold it at arms' length before I can make out small text. This is one of the many reasons I've stuck with glasses over the years. Another advantage of glasses is that I can take them off and have a natural and detailed "magnifying" effect. This comes in handy when soldering small components (wearing non-correcting safety glasses) or examining a circuit board for tiny defects like cold solder joints or broken components.
For a disease which affects literally everyone as they age, presbyopia is astonishingly unknown. I didn't hear about it at all until I started working on VR and eye tracking.
I guess if I had to choose, I would pick needing glasses for far away rather than up close. But I wouldn't trade normal vision for myopia just to avoid needing reading glasses in old age.