Old people shouldn't be able to vote

[Perruzio Veloce]

Im hindsight, a test to see if people can vote just sounds bad. Too easy to manipulate it and prevent voting rights to people in general, even if it's a few. It'll be a slow but painful death to democracy

What was I thinking?

[Neu Leonstein]

Im hindsight, a test to see if people can vote just sounds bad. Too easy to manipulate it and prevent voting rights to people in general, even if it's a few. It'll be a slow but painful death to democracy

What was I thinking?

The alternative, realistically, is a debacle like the Brexit referendum. Democracy relies on people being sufficiently informed to make decisions, and our societies are not good at feeding that information to us if we don't actively go and put effort into getting it. The responsibility to make that effort used to be understood to be a part of democracy, but it is not anymore.

[Czechoslovakia and Zakarpatia]

Then why did rightwing policies cause the Great Recession and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis? Why is it that nations who have a left-leaning economy and society rank high on the HDI?

Right-wing policies did not cause the Great Recession and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Those were caused by loose monetary policy coupled with left-wing governmental regulations encouraging subprime lending.

The free market does not cause problems, but government intervention always does.

Also, the political left is the one that makes purely emotional appeals without regard to facts, whereas the political right actually debates on the basis of logic and reason.

So again, reality has a well-known right-wing bias.

Anatomy of the Great Recession

The Great Recession

The Logical Fallacies of the American Left-Wing

Liberal Emotion versus Conservative Logic

The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act by the Clinton Administration and deregulation of the housing market and the financial system starting from the Reagan administration onwards were not resembling leftwing policy in any way. Here are the actual causes of the 2008 crisis:
https://www.thebalance.com/what-caused- ... is-3305696
https://www.thebalance.com/what-caused- ... is-3306176

Certainly a better source than the Mises Institute, which endorses discredited crackpot economics such as the gold standard and anarcho-capitalism, attempts to whitewash the Pinochet regime, unironically thinks Hayek was a "social democrat" even though he was a fellow libertarian, advocates for the repeal of child labour laws and the institution of an absolute monarchy, thinks that literally anyone who doesn't endorse the gold standard is Hitler himself, and engages in outright pseudoscience by thinking the MMR vaccine causes autism or that climate change is a "worldwide statist socialist conspiracy".

I could go on and on about how the Mises Institute is factually inaccurate and thus a questionable source but this should give you a good idea about how unreliable the site is when using it to accuse "leftists" of causing the financial crisis despite the fact no leftwinger was President during that time.

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

Here's a better reason.

If you're an ex-pat trying to vote in your previous home country's election, you'd be told "you no longer have as much of a stake in the issue as the people still living there, so you no longer get a say."

Well, if you're an old person who only has a few more years left on this Earth than a young one, you no longer have as much of a stake in it either. Why should your few years' worth of benefit from, let's say, home heating oil for seniors or whatever, trump the several decades of benefit for renewable energy for everyone else? Shouldn't your vote, at the very least, count proportionally to however many years younger you are than the oldest person to ever live?

[Deacarsia]

The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act by the Clinton Administration and deregulation of the housing market and the financial system starting from the Reagan administration onwards were not resembling leftwing policy in any way. Here are the actual causes of the 2008 crisis:
https://www.thebalance.com/what-caused- ... is-3305696
https://www.thebalance.com/what-caused- ... is-3306176

Certainly a better source than the Mises Institute, which endorses discredited crackpot economics such as the gold standard and anarcho-capitalism, attempts to whitewash the Pinochet regime, unironically thinks Hayek was a "social democrat" even though he was a fellow libertarian, advocates for the repeal of child labour laws and the institution of an absolute monarchy, thinks that literally anyone who doesn't endorse the gold standard is Hitler himself, and engages in outright pseudoscience by thinking the MMR vaccine causes autism or that climate change is a "worldwide statist socialist conspiracy".

I could go on and on about how the Mises Institute is factually inaccurate and thus a questionable source but this should give you a good idea about how unreliable the site is when using it to accuse "leftists" of causing the financial crisis despite the fact no leftwinger was President during that time.

The repeal of Glass-Steagall only exacerbated the inherent instability of the fractional reserve banking system by removing an admittedly inadequate regulatory patch to a jerry-built system. As such, it indeed did contribute to the crisis, but only because it accelerated an already broken banking system.

The rest of the comments about the Mises Institute are just the ad hominem and genetic fallacies.

You have not addressed their arguments about the economy, and several of your claims about them are strawmen: for example, Hoppe, as an anarcho-capitalist, does not argue for absolute monarchy, but asserts that monarchy is the lesser evil than democracy, with which several of his fellows and colleagues disagree, including Mises himself in his lifetime.

You also have asserted that their economics are crackpot, rather than merely heterodox or distinctive, without any justification. Name-calling is not an argument.

Since this is not an economics forum, but about voting rights, I think the discussion should end here or be moved to an economics forum.

The Logical Fallacies of the American Left-Wing

The Gold Standard in Theory and Myth

[Purpelia]

Im hindsight, a test to see if people can vote just sounds bad. Too easy to manipulate it and prevent voting rights to people in general, even if it's a few. It'll be a slow but painful death to democracy

What was I thinking?

The alternative, realistically, is a debacle like the Brexit referendum. Democracy relies on people being sufficiently informed to make decisions, and our societies are not good at feeding that information to us if we don't actively go and put effort into getting it. The responsibility to make that effort used to be understood to be a part of democracy, but it is not anymore.

What debacle? Do you mean the part where people voted for something the establishment eurocrats disagree with? Yea, people voting "wrong" is a major problem of democracies. Surely there must be ways to make sure only those who will vote for what they are supposed to get to vote in the first place. Not only would that make us free from bad decisions but it would open us up to all sorts of ways to cut costs on election day. Like, we could dispense with the counting. Or the voting it self. Wouldn't that be optimization?


Democracy is for better or worse about giving people what they want.

[Necroghastia]

To the OP I would say quite the opposite. Old people have a very valuable role in society in that their votes keep hot blooded youngsters from ruining everything with their incessant demands for change for the sake of change. As far as I am concerned voting age should be =>30.

Why should legal adults not have the right to vote, if they are able to sign contracts, join the military, pay taxes, etc.? Do you have a source that there are enough people who simply want "change for the sake of change" for that to be a valid concern?

[Neu Leonstein]

Democracy is for better or worse about giving people what they want.

Is it though? There are at least two ways to look at the purpose of democratic government. One is outcomes-based, where you hope to create a government that produces the best policies for the most people. The other is representation-based, where you don't care about the policies, as long as a broad enough sample of people were involved in the process of creating them.

As you might have guessed, I'm in the former camp. I don't see the intrinsic value of representativeness independent from outcome.

And if you do care about outcomes, then you care about not just that people vote, but how they vote. And specifically, that they vote based on a reasonable understanding of the processes and facts. They need to understand their own interests and how to advance them well enough to vote on that basis.

So no, you're making it far too easy for yourself. Doing away with free elections is very much against what I'm looking for. My question to you is what value, if any, a democratic government decision to get every citizen a unicorn actually has.

[Pangurstan]

To the OP I would say quite the opposite. Old people have a very valuable role in society in that their votes keep hot blooded youngsters from ruining everything with their incessant demands for change for the sake of change. As far as I am concerned voting age should be =>30.

Ok, boomer

Old people should be allowed to vote, but so should 16 year olds.

[Volkish Amerika]

To the OP I would say quite the opposite. Old people have a very valuable role in society in that their votes keep hot blooded youngsters from ruining everything with their incessant demands for change for the sake of change. As far as I am concerned voting age should be =>30.

Ok, boomer

Old people should be allowed to vote, but so should 16 year olds.

Actually I have an idea: How about we bar anyone who is mentally incompetent from voting, be they young, old, or of middle aged? Heaven knows that might actually improve our situation as it might cut into the support of the more radical candidates both on the right and left.

[Necroghastia]

Ok, boomer

Old people should be allowed to vote, but so should 16 year olds.

Actually I have an idea: How about we bar anyone who is mentally incompetent from voting, be they young, old, or of middle aged? Heaven knows that might actually improve our situation as it might cut into the support of the more radical candidates both on the right and left.

How would you define "mentally incompetent?"

[Volkish Amerika]

Actually I have an idea: How about we bar anyone who is mentally incompetent from voting, be they young, old, or of middle aged? Heaven knows that might actually improve our situation as it might cut into the support of the more radical candidates both on the right and left.

How would you define "mentally incompetent?"

Those who lack awareness of reality, are unable to care for themselves,those suffering from degenerative mental conditions(ie Alzheimers, forms of dementia, and the like), or those who have been found mentally incompetent by a court of law.

[Czechoslovakia and Zakarpatia]

The repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act by the Clinton Administration and deregulation of the housing market and the financial system starting from the Reagan administration onwards were not resembling leftwing policy in any way. Here are the actual causes of the 2008 crisis:
https://www.thebalance.com/what-caused- ... is-3305696
https://www.thebalance.com/what-caused- ... is-3306176

Certainly a better source than the Mises Institute, which endorses discredited crackpot economics such as the gold standard and anarcho-capitalism, attempts to whitewash the Pinochet regime, unironically thinks Hayek was a "social democrat" even though he was a fellow libertarian, advocates for the repeal of child labour laws and the institution of an absolute monarchy, thinks that literally anyone who doesn't endorse the gold standard is Hitler himself, and engages in outright pseudoscience by thinking the MMR vaccine causes autism or that climate change is a "worldwide statist socialist conspiracy".

I could go on and on about how the Mises Institute is factually inaccurate and thus a questionable source but this should give you a good idea about how unreliable the site is when using it to accuse "leftists" of causing the financial crisis despite the fact no leftwinger was President during that time.

The repeal of Glass-Steagall only exacerbated the inherent instability of the fractional reserve banking system by removing an admittedly inadequate regulatory patch to a jerry-built system. As such, it indeed did contribute to the crisis, but only because it accelerated an already broken banking system.

The rest of the comments about the Mises Institute are just the ad hominem and genetic fallacies.

You have not addressed their arguments about the economy, and several of your claims about them are strawmen: for example, Hoppe, as an anarcho-capitalist, does not argue for absolute monarchy, but asserts that monarchy is the lesser evil than democracy, with which several of his fellows and colleagues disagree, including Mises himself in his lifetime.

You also have asserted that their economics are crackpot, rather than merely heterodox or distinctive, without any justification. Name-calling is not an argument.

Since this is not an economics forum, but about voting rights, I think the discussion should end here or be moved to an economics forum.

The Logical Fallacies of the American Left-Wing

The Gold Standard in Theory and Myth

Pointing out that the Mises Institute repeatedly endorses pseudoscience (Such as the "MMR vaccine causes autism" myth and climate change denial), scientific racism (From time to time), Axis apologism, whitewashing of authoritarian regimes, discredited forms of economics ("Crackpot" essentially means something that is eccentric and/or foolish) such as anarcho-capitalism, the Austrian School (Debunked here: https://www.pragcap.com/understanding-w ... is-flawed/, here: http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/whyaust.htm, and here: http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-ausmain.htm) and the gold standard (Which was debunked here: https://www.moneyandbanking.com/comment ... y-bad-idea, here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-a-gold ... 1482247915, here:
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/ar ... ts/261552/, and here, this time by a rightwing economist:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstal ... a-just-no/), repeal of child labour laws, and baseless claims that "ahkchually, it was leftwing policy that caused the Recession, not deregulation!", and is thus at best a questionable source is not a genetic fallacy.

The consensus of reliable sources and economists is that deregulation and neoliberalism were the reasons for the Great Recession of 2008, and therefore, laissez faire economic policy is ineffective:
https://www.thebalance.com/the-great-re ... es-4056832
https://www.thebalance.com/what-caused- ... is-3305696
https://www.thebalance.com/what-caused- ... is-3306176
https://journals.openedition.org/regulation/7729
http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cg ... xlTdGuwsIH (PDF)
http://www.cepremap.fr/membres/dlevy/dl ... j-6CPgmG4X (PDF)

[Telconi]

To the OP I would say quite the opposite. Old people have a very valuable role in society in that their votes keep hot blooded youngsters from ruining everything with their incessant demands for change for the sake of change. As far as I am concerned voting age should be =>30.

Ok, boomer

Old people should be allowed to vote, but so should 16 year olds.

Yeah, maybe we shouldn't.

[SD_Film Artists]

How would you define "mentally incompetent?"

Those who lack awareness of reality, are unable to care for themselves,those suffering from degenerative mental conditions(ie Alzheimers, forms of dementia, and the like), or those who have been found mentally incompetent by a court of law.

That sounds like a very slippery slope.

[Telconi]

Those who lack awareness of reality, are unable to care for themselves,those suffering from degenerative mental conditions(ie Alzheimers, forms of dementia, and the like), or those who have been found mentally incompetent by a court of law.

That sounds like a very slippery slope.

Slipperier than any other limitation?

[La Xinga]

*When nations fight over A forum.*

[GLDF]

No, unless they are mentally unable of making decisions.

[Neanderthaland]

Pft! You young people think you know everything. What with your bronze tools and 25 year life-expectancy.

But when you're surrounded by sabertooths, with nothing but flint, what are you going to do then? Vote your way out of it?

[United Muscovite Nations]

There shouldn't be enough government to have a need to vote.

Best take in the thread.

[Cekoviu]

There shouldn't be enough government to have a need to vote.

Best take in the thread.

Very not.

[Fahran]

A curious place to take an argument that residents are somehow different from citizens when it comes to representation. Or indeed, any number of teenagers who earn taxable income.

They haven't undergone naturalization and, quite often, aren't a settled population base with strong ties to local culture and institutions. Our contributions to society do include taxes, of course, but they go well beyond it. Someone who has inherited citizenship as a birthright, who has grown up attached to institutions and traditions that underpin our society, who has been registered for conscription for decades, who has given us generations, who has worked, and who has paid all sorts of taxes is sitting in a much better place to demand representation than a child, a non-naturalized alien, or a convicted felon.

I think you're reaching a bit here. You want to make an argument that domestically born old people have, if anything, even more of a right to vote than, say, foreign-born young people. But the only thing the oldies have going for them is that they've lived there longer. Which requires a quantitative measure.. something to add up that scales with time.

The vast majority of them do. They have paid into social security and half a dozen other programs. And the disparity grows when we focus on contributions beyond the government's wallet. There's no reason to amend the franchise at present, and most proposals to do so are nakedly partisan or nakedly ideological.

And the problem with that is that anything of that sort ends up with an inequality problem. Anything other than just "being" can be done in different amounts by different people who were born in the same place at the same time. And so they should have the right to representation to different degrees.

All people are unequal. I have no desire to remedy that for its own sake. However, we have no reason to amend our system to amplify the power of the affluent, especially when they have often shirked their responsibilities of late.

I've cut a lot of your post, because I think this sentence is the crux of the issue, and the remainder is mostly distraction for us. You're arguing from a nativist understanding of citizenship and therefore democratic representation. I vote because it is my right by birth, and you don't get to vote because you were not born with the same right that I was. It leaves naturalised citizens in an awfully difficult place. And by extension, anyone who might hope to become a naturalised citizen, i.e. immigrants of any sort.

Naturalized citizens are eventually allowed to vote after going through a series of hoops that citizens who attain citizenship through birthright are not required to leap through. We do this because they do not have the benefit of being socialized amid our institutions and traditions in many cases.

It implies an extremely static idea of what a society is. One that seems to be at odds with what we actually observe in the real world.

Not quite. My basic argument is in favor of the efficacy and philosophical footing of the present system.

[Neu Leonstein]

They haven't undergone naturalization and, quite often, aren't a settled population base with strong ties to local culture and institutions.

"They" is a bit of a weasel word in this case, isn't it? You're making an argument about people's franchise stemming from things that they are or they do as individuals. Then you dismiss applying the same standards consistently based on "quite often they aren't". What about the exceptions?

And indeed, what about the people who genuinely are part of more than one society? I don't know anything about your circumstances, but I do know mine. I'm a migrant, I've lived years in three different countries on two different continents. I'm surrounded by people who are the same, as the company I work for is a global one from yet another continent. The idea that I, or they, are part of just one society just runs afoul of lived experience. I have "ties to local culture and institutions" in more than one geographic locality.

National borders and the bureaucratic barriers created by naturalisation are attempts to create black and white differences, where in practice things are grey for a not insignificant number of actual people. And maybe that's an abstract point that doesn't matter too much in practice. But the exercise of some influence over the laws that affect me, from where roads are built to how healthcare is paid for to what the tax rate is, that is an actually important thing.

We recognise this already. People are allowed to vote in local elections based on residence, rather than where in a country they were born. We recognise that a Texan can live in Baileyville, Maine, and have enough of an interest in their adopted home to vote for their local mayor or even rep at a higher level. But move that Texan to Little Ridge, New Brunswick, and everything is different?

As I said, to make that work you have to create rigid categorisations and impose them on people whose lived experience doesn't match them.

Our contributions to society do include taxes, of course, but they go well beyond it. Someone who has inherited citizenship as a birthright, who has grown up attached to institutions and traditions that underpin our society, who has been registered for conscription for decades, who has given us generations, who has worked, and who has paid all sorts of taxes is sitting in a much better place to demand representation than a child, a non-naturalized alien, or a convicted felon.

You're not really engaging with my argument though. Almost all the things you talk about are measurable, countable things. How many years of conscription. How many years of work. How many dollars paid in taxes.

You use those to say some have a better claim to the franchise than others. Except you only do that for non-citizen residents when contrasted with born citizens. You don't make any distinction between born citizens. You don't claim that old rich people should have more votes than poor young ones.

So the argument is actually nowhere near as well supported as you make it out to be. It does boil down purely to "Person A has an inherent right and Person B does not". Even naturalisation is really a distraction. At a minimum, you're asking that Person B should suffer "taxation without representation" for some measure of time, and spend some amount of their own resources, before they can be granted the right. It's really got nothing at all to do with contributions to society.

There's no reason to amend the franchise at present, and most proposals to do so are nakedly partisan or nakedly ideological.

[...]

Not quite. My basic argument is in favor of the efficacy and philosophical footing of the present system.

The choice to do nothing is not the absence of a choice. It's misleading to imply that this choice is any less partisan or ideological than any other choice would be.

[The Free Joy State]

There shouldn't be enough government to have a need to vote.

Best take in the thread.

If I remember correctly (it's been awhile), after statements like both the above, you're supposed to cross your fingers, turn around and remind everyone that it's Opposite Day.

Because, really, a system without a fair vote for all adults is far from "the best" of anything.

And it always seems to be the people who have grown-up in nations with the facility for a democratic vote who are keenest to get rid of it, too. Perhaps a case of "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone". Just as an observation...

[Ghost Land]

I was born in ’97

Marketers, statisticians, academicians et. al, have different years for what different demographics are and they do not always match. Sometimes, like the line between Boomeers and Gen-Xers it can vary by 3 years. If you are on the cusp just identify with what demographic best fits (if at all). Don't let others put you into a box.

This. I've seen some people list the millennial birth years as 1976-1990, and others use 1991-2005. Why not use ranges of consistent length, which would make Generation X 1965-1983, Generation Y/Millennials 1984-2002, and Z/iGen/whatever 2003-2021? This fits in pretty well with my personal "my generation" range of 1987-2004. (Yes, I'm in the under-30 set myself.)

Or better yet, get rid of these pseudoscientific factions altogether. Judge people for who they are, as opposed to writing off every concern of a 60-year-old as that of a "senile boomer", or writing off every concern of a 20-year-old as that of a "millennial snowflake". As for the OP, disenfranchising "old people" is incredibly unfair to those over the predetermined, arbitrary age cutoff whose mental faculties are still intact, and it only serves to trivialize the needs of concerns of an entire generation. Besides, how old is "old" anyway? Is it people over the age of 80? 70? 65? 55? 40? 30?

By the way, the Purple Generation (those born December 1992 only) will kick everyone else's butts. That's my own belief, and I'm not saying whether I'm part of that cohort.