Ageism, I Love It

[Japher]

IMO, in order to vote one should make x% of their income themselves. Thus, kids whose parents support them and ppl on welfare wouldn't get a vote.

[Flip McWho]

Aye its definitely got nothing to do with rationality, never has.

Originally it started from property owners, to all males, to all people over a age limit. Rationality has never been a consideration for whos been allowed to vote.

Also, not everybody is rational already. You have the religious fundies, bigots of all shapes and sizes.

As for a standard well:
1) maybe level of independance (though this would be hard to decide). For example, children under the age of I suppose 18 are still dependant on their parents for care. Thus their parents give their consent to be governed when they vote. Also another issue here is that children under the sway of their parents in some cases will just vote based on their parents voting choice, in which case their vote is essentially two votes for the parents (or more depending on the amount of children), heck I know twenty year olds who still do that.
2) Tax payers maybe. Only people who pay tax can be included on the voting role. This way it would include all people under the age of 18 who hold down jobs. Problem with this is its fairly discriminatory, though the vast majority of people do pay taxes. It would be discriminatory against people who don't earn money to be taxed. Such as those young that don't get jobs, plus the rich enough to retire on their own funds. I don't seriously advocate this as a option.


But then its not really up to use to set the standard. The standards already been set, age limit of 18 (admittedly all the paradoxes surrounding age should be ironed out to one age). Now the onus is on you to provide the limit it should be moved too as well as the reason for. And well rationality doesn't cut it.

[OzzyKP]

How can I prove the limit is unjust if the limit is based on nothing?

If voting doesn't have anything to do with reason, or citizenship, or taxes, or independence, or any other neutral standard and it is purely on one's birthdate, then do you not see that is by its very nature arbitrary and discrimanatory?

Someone is 17 years and 364 days old, a software engineer who has graduated college and makes $50,000 a year, but none of that matters, since he isn't 18. But who cares? The voting age has as much basis in tangible, logical standards as Jim Crow laws. We might as well limit voting to right-handed people only if that's your attitude.

[Japher]

If voting doesn't have anything to do with reason, or citizenship, or taxes, or independence, or any other neutral standard and it is purely on one's birthdate, then do you not see that is by its very nature arbitrary and discrimanatory?

How can it be both arbitrary and discrimanatory?

Or, I guess a better way to say that, is that if I create a basis other than age would I not be discrimanating against whoever falls outside that basis? Either way I will be discriminating against someone, won't I?

At least with age it is something most people will acheive without even trying... it just happens.

[Kontiki]

Having a voting age at all is always going to be arbitrary, Ozzy. Almost every argument you spout out now about 16 and 17 year olds in relation to 18 year olds is equally applicable to 14 and 15 year olds when the voting age is lowered to 16. And on and on.... when 10 year olds can vote, how can you argue that a great many nine year olds aren't as capable as all these 10 year old voters running around?

[OzzyKP]

Yes, having a standard is by its nature discriminatory. I should have said "unjustly discriminatory" Though perhaps that's redundant with arbitrary.

The point remains though, if age is not understood to be a substitue for other qualities (like reason or independence) and it just stands on its own, then it is no more valid and no more tied to the process of voting than requiring people have brown hair, or be over 5'7''

[Flip McWho]

No but it is much simplier to use age as a limit. Everybody turns 18 (unless they die beforehand). Therefore at that moment of coming of age everyone becomes able to vote.

I suppose some reasons for using this age could be:
1) By 18 most people have left school.
2) By 18 most people have some degree of knowledge about how to look after themselves and have independence from their parents.
3) By 18, most people have enough of an education (or at least should have, its not the governments job to make sure people pay attention) to be able to vote on an informed basis.
These reasons are obviously very generalised.


I agree that the age is arbitrary, the discrimination argument however is really dead duck.

I agree that things as they are at the moment are fairly illogical. Especially considering (using NZ examples) you can be tried as an adult at 14 (one coalition partner in the govt wants this dropped to 12), drive (or start learning) at 15, have sex at 16, drink at 18 and vote at 18.
It is entirely possible to argue that if you can be tried as an adult at 14, (thus accepting (or society at least accepting) that a 14yr old has the responsibility and the awareness of their own actions and their effects on others) then you should be able to **** at that age as well. If you're considered responsible enough to murder someone as an adult then you should really be responsible enough to use your wang. Continuing it is reasonable to assume that if your both considered responsible enough to be tried as an adult and **** like an adult, then you should be considered responsible enough to drink as well, and lastly if you are considered responsible enough to drive (which I would say is probably the greater responsibility of all mentioned so far) then you should be responsible enough to have a say. Especially considering that voting means you can have a say regarding the laws that apply to the country, and if you can be tried by said laws, then input should be necessary.

I can envision the voting age being lowered to 15.
1) Make 15 the tried as adult age/ sex at 15/ drinking at 15 (I would add provisions here) - balances that issue
2) Start a political education course at entry to high school (here thats at age 13)
3) Used the age of 15 because well in NZ thats when you're allowed to drive (i'd say carries the greatest responsibility out of all the age limited things) and b) thats when you start getting properly tested at school, plus its the school leaving age.

[JohnT]

Damn that's complicated. Why not just make the legal age of everything (consent, voting, army recruitment, driving, drinking, etc) 17 and be done with it?

[Flip McWho]

Yeah we have a different age for everything down here.

Thats why I'd make it 15 ideally. Realistically its not a very important thing to do yet. Under 18s aren't that hard done by not being able to vote.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Flip McWho
I can envision the voting age being lowered to 15.
1) Make 15 the tried as adult age/ sex at 15/ drinking at 15 (I would add provisions here) - balances that issue
2) Start a political education course at entry to high school (here thats at age 13)
3) Used the age of 15 because well in NZ thats when you're allowed to drive (i'd say carries the greatest responsibility out of all the age limited things) and b) thats when you start getting properly tested at school, plus its the school leaving age.

Works for me.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Should there be a standard?

A black person will always be a black person. A Jew will always be a Jew. A woman will always be . . . . . er, I guess that doesn't necessarily ring through, with surgery, but for MOST people, they will always be the gender they were born as. And so on, and so on.


As someone already pointed out, age is something you are not permanently stuck with. Since you will not always be 16 years old, and will one day become 18 and older after that, I would say age IS a fair standard.

[OzzyKP]

Would you have voted exactly the same at 16 as you would now? Will you vote exactly the same when you are 40 as now?

If not, then you can't assume that you as a 40 year old can represent you today. It doesn't work like that. You can't have proxy votes. Making the argument you are making in essense says that a teen's future self will cast a proxy, retroactive vote for his current self. That isn't fair.

The fact that all 16 year olds will one day be able to vote, does not remove the injustice created by denying them the vote now.

Circumstances change as well. Someone in high school has a vastly different perspective on school, education, and many other issues that affect youth than someone who is 18, or 25 or 40. People need to be able to vote based on their current circumstances.

For example, what is the problem with a poll tax? Is it because it eternally shuts out poor people? No. Even the very poor could save up to pay the poll tax. It isn't an absolute barrier. So would you say that a poll tax is just?

Hell even if we had an income threshold people had to pass, that wouldn't be an eternal ban. People could make more money and get the right to vote. But then they'd be voting as a middle-class person, not as a poor person. Vastly different priorities, and vastly different voting behavior between those groups.

Unless you are saying that a person's voting behavior gets locked in at 10 and never changes until they die no matter what happens to them in life, but of course thats obviously false.

[Straybow]

I tell my friends that I love their kids and consider the whining and minor misbehavior part of the package. I don't have to put up with stuff all day and night, so it usually doesn't bother me as much as it does them.

I don't really know anybody with out-of-control kids except one. Julie says she knows she spoiled her son rotten by not disciplining him when he was a baby. He is a total pill.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Would you have voted exactly the same at 16 as you would now? Will you vote exactly the same when you are 40 as now?

If not, then you can't assume that you as a 40 year old can represent you today. It doesn't work like that. You can't have proxy votes. Making the argument you are making in essense says that a teen's future self will cast a proxy, retroactive vote for his current self. That isn't fair.

The fact that all 16 year olds will one day be able to vote, does not remove the injustice created by denying them the vote now.

Circumstances change as well. Someone in high school has a vastly different perspective on school, education, and many other issues that affect youth than someone who is 18, or 25 or 40. People need to be able to vote based on their current circumstances.

For example, what is the problem with a poll tax? Is it because it eternally shuts out poor people? No. Even the very poor could save up to pay the poll tax. It isn't an absolute barrier. So would you say that a poll tax is just?

Hell even if we had an income threshold people had to pass, that wouldn't be an eternal ban. People could make more money and get the right to vote. But then they'd be voting as a middle-class person, not as a poor person. Vastly different priorities, and vastly different voting behavior between those groups.

Unless you are saying that a person's voting behavior gets locked in at 10 and never changes until they die no matter what happens to them in life, but of course thats obviously false.

News -- the temporary denial of voting rights for minors, even given your explanation on why you THINK this is wrong, is by no means enough of an injustice. Even after reading your thoughts quoted above, I still have to disagree with you.

The world is not perfect -- no matter what rules or regulations we come up with, there will always be someone who whines about it, and conjures up outrage over some supposed injustice because of it.

[Flip McWho]

If the voting age was lowered it would have to be followed with a political course starting in early highschool. Thats one of my greater concerns surrounding the idea of lowering the voting age.

Without that educational component I don't share your optimism that the youth will rise to the occassion of voting. I suspect many will just vote the way their parents will vote, or not vote, or vote based on stupid things like whos the coolest, or hottest or whatever.

But yes, lacking in optimism really.