I mean if we’re even going to entertain the idea of minimum ages for shit like voting and serving office we should have to consider maximum ages too.
Disagree. Children can’t vote because 1) biologically incapable of making good decisions yet 2) parents are legally allowed to punish them for voting incorrectly.
Voting because of old age can only be a problem because of stuff like dementia, and then you’d have to disenfranchise all people who are not mentally capable of voting.
what’s currently being done if is a person is mentally incapable of voting, a handler votes for them, which is okay because handlers will probably trend towards voting for candidates that help people who are mentally incapable
we need to encourage more people to vote not disenfranchise them
I’m saying the opposite. Since we won’t consider maximum ages, why are we considering minimum ones? Just let children vote. “Biologically incapable of making good choices” is exactly the same argument for taking away the vote from old people with dementia or the mentally ill.
So what you’re saying here is just a roundabout way of suggesting we should disenfranchise the literally demented and the mentally ill.
And of course, taking your other reply into account, I, too, value the power of soft authoritarian technocratic dictatorship.
Unless, of course, you are suggesting that because some limits are not present due to the dangers in imposing them, other limits which already exist and aren’t particularly dangerous to enforce should not exist?
Might I suggest that the lack of wide support for this policy by a group which consists entirely of people who were once teenagers might not be quite the same thing as the other two examples?
I have no idea what you’re talking about. Why are rationalists so impenetrable?
I’m saying let children vote.
Am I a Rationalist? Hmn. Anyhow, Actually, banning the literally demented and the literally delusional from voting would improve voting quality. The reason it isn’t done is because political operatives, who are terrible people, would immediately begin trying to classify all opposition as either senile or demented regardless of whether they actually are. (See also: how ‘gently’ politicals have handled the word “Nazis”.) This does not hold in the case of children, as there is a fairly defensible line which is applied to all children, and thus political operatives cannot race to classify all their enemies as children in order to disqualify them.
So no, don’t let the children vote.
It’s not defensible though. Children make up like 25% of the population but get no voice. That undermines the concept of consent of the governed.
Oh right, some people still believe that government is justified by such concepts instead of its effectiveness at delivering benefits to the national population.
It’s “defensible” in the sense that it isn’t going to be constantly moved around by Republicans and Democrats fighting each other.
I’d be more inclined to agree with you if most children were sinesalvatorem as children, but they aren’t. Children are largely ignorant. Often, the part of the brain responsible for evaluating long-term outcomes is literally underdeveloped in children. It isn’t their fault, but that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be a net reduction in voter quality - and even more constant political brainwashing aimed at children than is currently aimed at them.
Additionally, by the “consent of the governed” logic, children are also not responsible for the government and therefore are not valid targets in war. Let children vote, and this status is lost.
Now you’ll say “but we let incredibly ignorant people vote” as if this weren’t a lesser evil in comparison to having politicals write knowledge tests which exclude only their political enemies, or not letting the conditions of the ignorant in society risk a backlash for politicians so that there is at least some incentive not to destroy them.
