Giving kids the vote: the Polanski counter-argument
Regular readers of the Scene will know that I favor giving kids the vote. However, I’ve come to think of a devastating counter-argument. No one has yet made it to me, but if I’ve thought of it surely someone else will: that of the age of sexual consent.
If someone doesn’t think kids should get the vote, they can say something like “If a 13 year old can vote, who’s to say he or she can’t consent to have sex, or feature in pornographic material?” I call it the Polanski counter-argument. To be sure, technically it doesn’t invalidate my thesis, but it is devastating nonetheless, and I don’t have a good counter-counter-argument. It troubles me.
Do you guys have any ideas?
Well, Polanski used roofies, so it’s not specifically his counter-argument, but name aside the larger point stands.
All these rights involve decisions that do have long standing consequences. However, pornography, sex, serving in the military, and certain contracts have profoundly individual consequences. With voting, the consequences are in aggregate, greatly diluted, and society-wide.
On the responsibility side, I don’t think anyone objects to kids paying taxes which obviously do have individual effects but are highly fungible unlike everything mentioned above.
— Greg Sanders · Oct 14, 04:34 PM · #
Yes, I don’t think the counter-argument to giving kids the right to vote would be that they should also be raped by a degenerate, but your point is received about whether kids should be allowed to do other things, but then they would all be non sequitors since voting is not comparable to sex or military service where the mind/body/emotion aspect is paramount. Voting rights for kids, whether one agrees or not, is not likely to have mind/body/emotion consequences.
— mike farmer · Oct 14, 04:49 PM · #
Just because they can vote doesn’t mean they can change the laws on their own (btw I am a huge supporter of youth suffrage).
But regardless, our sex-age laws, like most age laws, are mostly arbitrary. There are plenty of 20 year olds- and 50 year olds – who are not emotionally mature enough to be having healthy sexual relations. But even in the teen years, there is wide variation of maturities between 15 year olds and 19 year olds- even in terms of secondary sex characteristics. If young people want to move the discussion on what they can be allowed to do, they should, and having the vote would certainly help.
(In my utopia, the 13 year olds would be having all kinds of sex while they’re healthy and horny, and it would be the parents’ or grandparents’ responsibility to actually raise the offspring. This uses the “comparative advantage” of each generation for maximum public benefit.)
We have all agreed that no one can be elected president who is under 35, though under-35 year olds have had the vote forever. I, personally, would be happy to make the case that people over 70 shouldn’t drive- at least not outside of Florida. Though I plan on being pretty sharp in my old age, so of course I wouldn’t want that law applied to me when I’m there. Individual variation- it’s why broad-brush laws are so dangerous to our well-being- and why I’m a conservative.
— D-Blog · Oct 14, 06:08 PM · #
Um. Apples and Oranges, man. But I don’t think this argument would ever up in the campaign to suffrage the little children… it’s more likely to be: won’t parents just coerce their children to conform to their views and by extension families with more children will have a larger voter impact. I think THAT is a valid counter. I like the idea of letting children vote, but a more likely manipulation of that freedom is to decide what kind of medical care they wish to receive, so, probably none.
— emile · Oct 14, 06:13 PM · #
We have different ages for all kinds of rights and responsibilities: you can be tried as an adult in most states at 13, drive a car and consent to sex at 16 (or thereabouts, depending on state and age of partner), vote and enlist in the military at 18, can’t drink until you’re 21.
I don’t support giving the vote to 13-year-olds, but doing so wouldn’t put you on a slippery slope to legal kiddie porn.
— kth · Oct 14, 06:29 PM · #
Kids are dumber versions of adults, and adults are stupid. Why the hell would you want kids to vote?
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 14, 06:42 PM · #
Well, I see now that you’ve included a link. Press pause on that thought while I peruse.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 14, 06:43 PM · #
The best argument for giving kids the vote is that few of them are going to want to do so. It is so atypical for a 13-year-old to be interested in politics that those geeks who are are likely to be at least as informed as the average adult voter. I don’t think you can make an analogous case for sexual desire. (This is why I think coupling youth suffrage to mandatory suffrage, or even a more robust civics curriculum, would be a horrible idea.)
But I think a discussion of youth decision-making that’s mostly about maturity/judgment rather than coercion is pretty impoverished. It’s perfectly plausible that plenty of kids would vote the way their parents (or some other charismatic mentor figure) told them to, without thinking twice, just as sexual relations between a youth and an adult are likely to have more to do with the exercise of power than the fulfillment of mutual desire.
— Dara Lind · Oct 14, 07:04 PM · #
This is an invalid argument:
Except, um, for children it is valid now, regardless of how the whole thing with women shook out. See cognitive developmental science. QED.
First of all, yes, the average kid is more unreasonable than the average voter. Secondly, this is an argument to contract the eligible voter pool, not to expand it. Thirdly, Hannah Montana. Again, QED.
Question: why are young males a problem, in a way that thirty year old males are not.
Finally, the idea behind the vote is that you have something invested in the outcome, that something external pops into your prefrontal cortex to mitigate and hopefully override the petty little passions of the older parts of your brain which want you to do nothing but hump moral utopias and seek political comeuppances. Having kids, a mortgage, a job — these are those usefully affecting investments, and as such they are political stabilizers and safeguards against radicalism. You’re familiar with the theory of the middle class, the great bourgeois inertia and all that? That’s a good thing, no?
You seem to recognize that when you write:
PEG, that’s the point. Ceteris paribus, humans prefer instant to delayed gratification, and kids even more so. This has been demonstrated experimentally to the point where it is inarguable. The solution is not to oversaturate the voter pool with appetite-driven monkeys. The solution is to restrict eligibility to monkeys with Larger Concerns, concerns that, yes, tie them to the future via a Myworldline narrative.
And that leads to my last point. You say that allowing kids to vote will tie us to the future. But that contradicts your previous statement about childishness. Think about it: if millions of kids become eligible to vote, and they are even more driven toward instant gratification than their idiot parents, then will the outcome of the democratic process be a) more likely to incline toward instant gratification, or b) less likely to incline toward instant gratification. It’s pretty clear which is the right answer, no?
Am I saying that only parents and/or real property owners should vote? Yes I am. Why? Because experience with the world, understanding how difficult it is to maintain it, and having Large External Concerns that mitigate and override your petty desires — these are the founts of wisdom, and insofar as we can pursue it without losing legitimacy, we want our policies to be informed by wisdom.
So cute theory, but in its lack of wisdom, truly childish.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 14, 07:11 PM · #
Dara, sorry dear but that is a stupid, guffaw-inducing sentence. The best reason we should give kids the vote is because thank god! — they won’t use it?
You’re driven to find unusual angles and twists, in a Kramer ‘or is it so sane i just blew your mind’ kind of way. I get it. I really do. But come on.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 14, 07:19 PM · #
Some of your arguments for giving kids the vote are that kids’ needs are underrepresented. Let their parents be their representative in the voting booth. In other words, let parents have one extra vote for each kid. The parent can bring the kid in with them to actually vote if he or she chooses (many do, already). Thus, kid issues (i.e., money for schools) will have greater representation, but it will kill the argument that “Kids can vote, so why can’t they ….” issue.
— Andrew Berman · Oct 14, 08:07 PM · #
Kristoffer—
I’ll admit that that was an unnecessarily pithy way to phrase my point, and you’re right about the “driven to find unusual angles and twists” thing. (I’m gradually succeeding in reining it in—if you think my posts here are convoluted, you should see what I was writing three years ago.) But if you read the rest of the graf, you’ll see that the argument isn’t that “mind-blowing” at all.
Assume that kids’ level of informedness is roughly bimodal, with the lower mode less informed than the average adult voter, and the upper mode more informed than ditto. (A lot of assumptions, but certainly plausible.) I think the lower mode won’t actually want to vote, but the upper mode will. In this case, the cleanest policy solution is to extend youth suffrage, because it’ll increase the quality of the electorate. On the other hand, if kids will vote regardless of how informed they are, it’s much less obvious that youth suffrage is a good idea.
And while I appreciate the affection, could you not call me “dear”?
— Dara Lind · Oct 14, 08:45 PM · #
Dara, no more ‘dear’. Promise (I’m a recovering asshole, so mi dispiace). And let’s just say I remain unconvinced that “the desire to vote” equates or even correlates to voter quality.
And again, as I mentioned in my post to PEG supra, if quality is your metric the obvious solution is to contract rather than expand eligibility.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 14, 09:16 PM · #
re: recovering asshole, I meant that in an interpersonal-failings way, not in an Andrew Sullivan’s morning way.*
* [Sorry for that too — I’m trying.]
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 14, 09:21 PM · #
Forget Polanski. He drugged and raped another human being. No amount of hemming and hawwing about what the age of consent is, was, or ought to be changes that.
RE:voting
Parents are legally and financially encumbered up until their 18th birthday. Kid kills someone driving a car, parent loses house.
You want 13 years olds to vote? I assume you want parent to be legal allowed to kick them across the threshhold and say “good luck kid, you’re going to need it.”
— Tony Comstock · Oct 14, 10:28 PM · #
I know some parents who would embrace such a change in the law. I bet my father would have.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 14, 10:51 PM · #
Wow. That comment of mine was almost English. Apparently the meaning was clear enough. Yeah, your dad should have kicked you out of the house at 13; actually he should have put in in a sack with rocks 13 years earlier and tossed it in the river. Now we all live with his mistake.
Fukken Kristenstein you all need shut up about how some kids are “mature” at 15 or whatever your boner age is.
Age of sexual consent is about parental rights and responsiblities, which are not absolute (see above.) That’s why there are Romeo and Juliet laws.
That’s also why a kid can’t be in a movie, or enter into any other sort of contract unless their parents enter the contract.
— Tony Comstock · Oct 14, 11:14 PM · #
Under this proposed regime, would it be legal for parent to deny allowance, car privileges, curtail curfews, etc if their children did not vote as instructed? If the answer is “yes”, maybe I’m in.
— Tony Comstock · Oct 14, 11:32 PM · #
Under that regime, allowance would be mandatory and redistributed to be fair. And forget leaving the door open if you have a girl in your room. That shit is out fo sho.
Damn, maybe we should let this happen. My platform needs a constituency.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 15, 02:14 AM · #
Hopefully Chet will show up and tell me that when I said “your” I was actually admonishing Tony to forget about a opening a door, rather than what I was doing: speaking informally about a set o’ persons which under the circumstances fit some descriptions, e.g., what a reasonable person would take me as meaning.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 15, 04:55 AM · #
Almost germane (or now that I think about it, totally germane):
From a purely scientific standpoint, it’s a fascinating experiment. (How irrational to react that way! A random sampling!) From a social standpoint, it’s a soberfucking reality.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 15, 05:16 AM · #
“Thirdly, Hannah Montana.”
That might be my favorite thing anyone has ever written, ever.
I think a number of people might have missed that 1- I did not intend for this to become an argument about giving kids the vote, and that 2- I dubbed this “the Polanski counter-argument” somewhat facetiously.
— PEG · Oct 15, 12:46 PM · #
Kristoffer: you’ve demonstrated my point that most arguments against giving kids the vote are, at their core, arguments against democracy, since there isn’t anything you can say about kids that you can’t say about “the average voter.” (See Churchill, Winston.)
— PEG · Oct 15, 12:51 PM · #
Fair enough on not wanting to debate it here. But I wouldn’t characterize my argument as being against democracy. I’d say it was, at core, a pragmatic approach to universal franchise.
And really — this will be the last thing I say, promise — there are tons of things you can say about kids that you cannot say about the average voter (I really can’t believe we’re debating this). Most of these “things you can say” revolve around kids being impulsive and naive, solipsistic and rebellious, petty and conformist, superficial and ignorant — which, say what you will about adults, seems to militate against taking affirmative steps to allow them the vote. The only reason we have 18 year old’s voting is so they can go to war and die for us.
Hmmm, now that I think about it, a 14 year old would be more willing to fall in lockstep and bum-rush a hill. See Kohlberg, e.g. So there’s that.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 15, 02:07 PM · #
This song explains why I’m leaving home to become a stewardess.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 15, 03:07 PM · #
Okay, your post, your rules. Your rebuttal is simple. Draw a comparison to the US drinking age, which in (nearly?) all states is higher than the age of majority. As Greg pointed out in the first comment, drinking, sex, etc can have personal, acute and even catastrophic consequences. I’ve seen more than one person who works in the 818 opine that the minimum age for appearing in a film featuring actual sexual intercourse should be raised; I’ve seen numbers as high as 25.
Certainly if we can have people voting at 18, but not being allowed to buy beer until they are 21, we could as easily have people voting at 13, but not able to enter contracts until they are 18, buy beer until 21, or appear in Dirtypipe Milkshakes, volume 17 until they are 25.
— Tony Comstock · Oct 15, 03:34 PM · #
And hey, maybe we could have a commission to decide at what age it was okay to do a sex scene in difference movies. If the director is someone like Roman Polanski or Woody Allan, 13. Someone like me, 18. Someone like Max Hardcore, 25.
Remember, vote early and vote often!
— Tony Comstock · Oct 15, 03:58 PM · #
Democracy: so easy a 13 year old can do it. Now that is a pro-democracy message.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 15, 07:01 PM · #
1) PEG:
Kristoffer:
PEG:
PEG, I’m not sure how to reconcile your last statement with Kristoffer’s. Why would you say that Kristoffer “can’t say something about kids that he can’t say about the average voter” when he already did say something about kid’s that he can’t say about the average voter?
IMHO, Kristoffer can say that the average kid is dumber than the average voter and he can’t say (grammatically or logically) that the average average voter is dumber than the average voter.
If you mean that it is self-evident that the average kid is equal to the average voter in all relevant respects, I disagree.
— J Mann · Oct 15, 07:50 PM · #
Some points:
1. Being informed is not a pre-requisite for voting in America. Having interests is, and children have interests. There are people who vote by making pretty patterns with the levers on the ballots, and their votes count as much as yours do.
2. You can’t give parents an extra vote for their children, because parents’ interests and children’s interests are often at odds- think long term debt vs. short term market gains, or global warming impacts, etc.
3. Kids appear uninterested in politics because they have no power to influence politics. I have no interest in the private jet market, because I have no power to purchase a private jet.
4. Most likely kids would vote to repeal mandatory schooling and child-labor laws which restrict their ability to exercise their will and power in the world. When you treat somebody like a child they will act like one (Uncle Tom = Uncle Junior). Right now children have responsibilities (like homework) but no freedoms as a result. This is equivalent to tyranny over a minority and should not be allowed in a democracy.
5. All arguments that seek to deprive children of voting were applied to slaves and women in previous centuries and were all proven false once those groups were given power to affect their lives.
6. Just want to iterate that being an informed and educated voter is not essential in a democracy. People can be quite informed (Brooks and Dionne) and still come to opposite conclusions. It’s not about being right, it’s about having desire. And even if being right were a valid consideration, millions of senile, uneducated, old people can vote but an informed 17 year old can not. Even on those terms, this is not a just state of affairs.
7. And even assuming intelligence is a valid concern, while all young people might not be intelligent, a natural leadership would arise from those who are. Not all women or blacks (or environmentalists or WASPS) are intelligent either, but their interests can be wrangled by bright leaders within their own community. There are plenty of children who would be capable of representing for their fellows in lobbying government. This is particularly true in poor black and latino communities where these young politicians (for lack of political power) become gang leaders and express their leadership in violence rather than in debate. These poorer communities would benefit the most from youth suffrage, as they already have powerful leaders who have no other outlet to seek their own interests other than gunplay and crime.
8. Finally, engaging the generation that is closest to the future and future trends, who is fluent in the technology that will be running our lives a generation off, would be a huge boon to our community. Shunting these kids into schoolroom dungeons is the biggest waste of resources in the country. I want that 6 year old programmer developing aps for my iPhone, investing in stocks, and retiring at 40 to become a philanthropist- not memorizing multiplication tables and poetry that he doesn’t like or understand.
End of lecture.
D
— D-Blog · Oct 15, 09:19 PM · #
“(How irrational to react that way! A random sampling!) From a social standpoint, it’s a soberfucking reality.”
It has been some years since I studied statistics, but I believe that the sample in the store is a ‘convenience sample’, not a random sample. You can generalize from it about as well as you can from Ann Landers’ mail bag.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abUtcWlY8fg
— Art Deco · Oct 15, 10:46 PM · #
Parenting is a boot stepping on a child’s face forever. That’s what I used to say! I was the Robespierre of the huddled masses, who yearned for cake and candy before dinner only to be met with the iron fist of lima bean.
Fallacy! Faallllllllaaaaccccyyyyyy! Jesus Sweetpotato Christ. People said Jackie Robinson couldn’t make it in the pros, they were proven wrong, therefore any argument that my 13 year old cousin can’t make it in the pros has also been proven wrong? You sure about that? You sure you’re not begging the question?
What? I mean, what?
The salient differences have nothing to do with intelligence, which is only one dimension of cognitive development and not the relevant one.
I’m pretty sure our communities were a lot healthier before we starting fellating our kids’ self-esteem and telling them how Special and Important and Central they are to the rest of us. Modern kids don’t need to be crowned king, they need to be disciplined for a hard life ahead.
Art Deco,
Yeah, I knew as soon as I posted it. I was hoping nobody would notice. My excuse? An appeal to the time-stamp and all it implies. Thanks, though, for keeping me honest.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 15, 11:02 PM · #
Shit, now PEG’s going to be really pissed.
Anywho, I’m off to drink away this danged old common sense. Maybe I’ll come back in favor of the kiddy franchise. You never know.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 15, 11:10 PM · #
KVS, I think you’re missing the point here, and I’m afraid my bullet-point presentation didn’t help.
I am in no way for “fellating our kids’ self-esteem” or any other part of them for that matter. ALL children are not Jackie Robinson, but neither are all blacks great baseball players. ALL Southerners aren’t Thomas Jefferson either. And I’m not talking about the right to play in the Major Leagues here, I’m talking about having a say in the laws that govern your life.
People decried women and slaves as having no thoughts of their own, being too stupid to vote, or too beholden to their husbands (in the case of women) to vote independently. The point is that when you are treated like a slave and have no power, it is in your interest to act like a slave. So it goes in a circle with the behavior seemingly affirming the prejudice.
But when women and slaves were given a vote, it turns out they weren’t who folks thought they were after all, and what’s more, they could actually significantly contribute to the society- both culturally and economically. My suggestion is that many children behave deferentially because they have no power, and I, for one, would like to see what they are capable of without that handicap.
And by the way, just because “minors” would be able to vote does not mean that they would get everything they wanted like the spoiled kids in your examples. It just means that their interests would have to be addressed and balanced with the interests of everyone else who lives on this soil.
And as for your lima bean tale, Democracy actually works the other way. When you eat too much sugar – or elect an incompetent president – you get sick for a while and decide to eat lima beans next time of your own accord. That’s “interest.” Having a council of experts tell you what’s the best diet- or the best president – is the opposite of what democracy is. It’s how the grown-ups do it, making mistakes and self-correcting, and there’s no reason kids can’t do it as well.
(In Neil’s famous Summerhill School, he writes that each year the students, each having a vote in the school’s parliament, vote to eliminate bedtime. For a few weeks everyone walks around tired and unable to function, and then the kids re-vote and get it “right.”
We could look at the Palestinian election of Hamas in the same way. They were entitled to have their (justifiable) fit at the corruption of the old leaders. But the best thing we could have done would be to have left them alone to self-correct instead of meddling and entrenching their disdain for us even further.)
In terms of politics being about desire, that’s exactly what it’s about – interest. Even someone as smart as I am (to say nothing of someone who is as smart as you are) is not omniscient enough to know what’s best for everyone, so we rely on everyone pulling in their own direction in a multi-lateral tug-of-war to decide the actual policy of a nation.
Some people throw away their votes by pulling random levers or writing in their uncle as a candidate for president. But their vote counts the same as any informed vote does. This upsets a lot of us, me included, but the alternative is tyranny or oligarchy, and we have rejected both. The issue here is that our kids’ desires are not factored into the equation, so we bend over backwards trying to look after our own interests (politically) as well as theirs, and it does not work.
One example is long term deficits. You, judging by your curmudgeoniness, will likely be dead by the time those chickens come home to roost. So your interest would be in doing whatever it takes to lead a comfortable lifestyle for the next decade or so that you’re still kicking around, and that means more borrowing. For a 6-year-old who will likely live to 90, they may actually experience the fallout from our irresponsible economic policies. Their interests are in real fiscal conservatism- thus opposed to yours.
In the school system, the natural polarity to the teacher’s union would be the students’ “union,” since it is ultimately their interests that are pretended to be addressed by education. But instead, there are layers of (largely impotent) bureaucracy and PTAs acting on students’ behalf, when they have no idea what that “behalf” might add up to, since they are far less plugged into the potential future of the next generation than they are the limitations of their own.
Everybody knows more or less what they want. And what they want also changes with time. Any senior citizen would look at their early 40s and say, “What an idiot I was.” But they don’t decide to take the votes away from the 40 year olds. 90 year olds likely look at recent retirees the same way. There is no Archimedian point from which we can objectively view the citizenry. We therefore allow each interest group to speak its own mind- except for minors.
No one can say what is right for everybody else. That’s the point. And yet we presume to do so anyway with each new generation- whose very purpose is to overturn the restrictions of the generations that preceded them. In America, we are the only nation that defines ourselves by the future- not the past. There is no good reason to bind our future with the limiting ideas of the past.
I hope this clarifies a bit. It can be difficult to convince people of the validity of this argument since their early imprinting is of being powerless (KVS seems to be no exception). In Exodus it took 40 years of wandering in the desert for the ancient Jews to shake off their slave mentality. One would hope -for the good of the country – we moderns can do it a little quicker than that.
— D-Blog · Oct 16, 02:55 AM · #
Tony: Thanks. You’re right.
KVS: I’m not pissed. Just mildly irritated. ;)
To you, common sense is “kids are dumb.” To me, common sense is “one person one vote.”
— PEG · Oct 16, 06:45 AM · #
PEG,
If the foundation of your argument is that your premises seem self-evident to you, and other reasonable people disagree with those premises, doesn’t that mean you need a stronger foundation?— J Mann · Oct 16, 01:27 PM · #
PEG, to me common sense is humans are dumb, even and especially me, and children are even worse.
Will you humor me a bit more?
You say common sense tells you “one person one vote.” Would you let four-year-olds vote? Wouldn’t that be a bit farcical?
Also, what if democracy is instrumental and not intrinsically good? Isn’t it at least possible that allowing kids the vote erodes this instrumental value, or, alternatively, amplifies the associated risks?
And finally, this whole thing about women and minorities. I think it’s clear why that is not a valid argument: it begs the question of distinguishability. I’m saying children are distinguishable, and that these differences militate against giving them the vote. Relevantly — to this argument — it is true that kids are distinguishable from black adults and female adults. Obviously, whatever arguments failed for the women and minorities might still be valid for kids, simply because the female adults and black adults are adult, the children are children.
And lastly, I don’t think you’ve addressed the inconsistency in your argument re children tying us to the future. Because children are more impulsive, because they have less experience and zero investments and therefore less practical imagination, it is logical to assume that their votes would even more likely than their parents’ to chase the nunc fluens.
Clearly, that is the opposite of tying us to the future. Indeed, it would chain us to the Now like never before, in all sorts of potentially-destabilizing ways.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 16, 02:38 PM · #
Exhibit A: Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are. Here’s Chris Orr:
That sounds about right; teenagers might even be worse.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 16, 03:34 PM · #
Here’s a simple question: would you, in good faith, execute a legal contract with a 13 year old—say for a loan? If you could securitize a portfolio of tween loans, what would the rating be ;)?
I’m surprised there’s an argument over the real, developmental differences between youth and adults. Especially the reams, and reams, and reams of evidence about cognitive development.
— Geoff in DFW · Oct 16, 05:57 PM · #
In terms of distinguishability, my argument is that until someone has power and is able to act on that power, we do not yet know their true nature. There are certainly ditsy women walking around doing whatever their husbands command, just like they (supposedly) did in the 19th century. And yes, there are adults blacks who act lazy and apathetic (just like slaves reasonably did). But there are plenty of leaders in both those communities who behave independently and thoughtfully and, more importantly, serve as leaders in the community for the less able.
As a prodigy musician, I was surrounded by disciplined, brilliant youths growing up, many of whom would be exemplary political leaders of their peers. I would also contend that teenage gang-leaders have much the same talent but have no way to express it positively, since they are denied participation in the political process.
(Moktada al-Sadr, like him or not, has been largely brought under control in Iraq by giving him relatively peaceful political clout- certainly compared to what he had when he was just a gangster.)
Again, the point is you don’t know until you open the door.
I don’t know the context for the Orr quote, but I do know that adults often behave in exactly the same way. Perhaps they are living out unresolved complexes from their youth- but freedom in youth allows for those future-complexes to be lived through at the appropriate age, thus leading to healthier adulthoods anyway.
In terms of tying kids to the future- I am 33. I grew up with rotary phones and 7 channels of fuzzy TV. I am over the moon that I have a cell phone that I can use to call anybody anywhere. My burning desire for improving that technology is minimal. A 7 year old was born with cell phones and is much more attuned to their limitations than I am. He wants them faster with more gizmos, smaller, and able to run his Wii off of too. He will be pushing that technology into the future through his – yes – impulsivity and childish curiosity.
Right now the teenagers are doing it anyway. The thing is, in this world, with technological knowledge doubling every couple of years or more, there are ‘micro-generations’ amongst teenagers. A 12-year-old and a 19-year old are in completely different relationships to the technologies around them. A 5-year-old may never have seen a CD, much less a 33. Tapping the imagination of those micros would be a huge innovative advantage- and innovation is, as always, America’s advantage over other nations. We are not helping ourselves by stuffing these kids into hands-off classrooms.
In this way, I am not really making a distinction between the present and the future, so I’ll allow your notion that children may be more present based than future based (though I would need to think on that more). But creativity, nonetheless happens in the present and the future grows out of that. Older people, by dint of having more of it, are more associated with the past and what they are used to from their own childhood. It is much easier for a youngster to innovate, simply because they have less accumulated experience- that is their advantage.
And again, just because kids would be allowed to vote does not mean that they would dominate the debate. They would be another, presumably future-based, voice in the discussion, pulling in the opposite direction to the AARP. Right now, youngsters are getting jacked by the insurance mandate proposals. Healthy young people are basically being taxed to pay for sick old people (as they have been through SS for decades). But they have no leadership and no power to do anything about it.
One further point- the apathy we see amongst 18 year olds regarding voting tends to dissipate as they accumulate capital over the next decade or so. We can see that voting becomes more important when you have real stakes involved. Why not prepare children for this reality by giving them a stake early on. If you grow up for 18 years thinking you have no say in your life – because you don’t – then that can have an inertial effect on your participation once you do. If the voting age were dropped to, say, 16, we might have more engaged 23 year-olds instead of 25-year olds, and so on.
The idea is also that by allowing children to earn (modest) incomes, they can make choices about what they want, learn about the world, take the burden off their parents somewhat, and begin to save and invest over the long haul.
I wish I had had compound interest working for me when I was 10. Then, when I was 40 – and I had a sense of who I really was – I would have enough wealth to do something about it. I think most people would rather have their retirement years while they are still healthy and can get around. Why not bring in millions of new investors whose wealth will grow even greater over the course of their lives?
And of course, for abused and neglected children, being able to earn one’s own money could provide for real alternatives (through collectives, etc.) that would not involve incompetent, ineffective government intervention.
Anyway, it sounds like your experience of childhood and children (KVS) is less than positive. That is not everybody’s experience. The point of freedom for all is that those who can use it have it. And there are plenty of brilliant, able children around- and many more in the woodworks – who can do great things if given the chance. It is a pity that we waste this talent as a society- and for the many gifted children out there, it remains a source of endless frustration.
And finally, to reiterate, the fact that people and children “are dumb” is not relevant for us. In the old days, truly, we only had people with a vested economic interest in the country vote. This is just like things are in Qatar today- only a handful of billionaires can vote. There’s certainly a logic to that.
But there’s also a logic to just having old people vote, since they’re the most experienced and therefore the wisest. But there’s also a logic that only professors should vote- since they are smarter and not busy making money, they have more time to come up with really nifty ideas for the rest of us. Or maybe we should just have minorities vote since they have been discriminated against for so long that they need to balance things out. Or maybe. . .
The point is that all of these groups have a valid stake and valid opinions that must be balanced with one another- primarily through the legislature. That’s how it goes. If we want to go back to having white, male, property owners having the only vote, then fine. But if we don’t, then we should enfranchise as many people as possible who are affected by the laws of the land.
This will be my last post on the topic. I don’t want to dilute the comments section here. This is an important issue that deserves serious – and creative – thought. I hope I’ve contributed somewhat to that here.
— D-Blog · Oct 16, 06:02 PM · #
In terms of distinguishability, my argument is that until someone has power and is able to act on that power, we do not yet know their true nature. There are certainly ditsy women walking around doing whatever their husbands command, just like they (supposedly) did in the 19th century. And yes, there are adults blacks who act lazy and apathetic (just like slaves reasonably did). But there are plenty of leaders in both those communities who behave independently and thoughtfully and, more importantly, serve as leaders in the community for the less able.
As a prodigy musician, I was surrounded by disciplined, brilliant youths growing up, many of whom would be exemplary political leaders of their peers. I would also contend that teenage gang-leaders have much the same talent but have no way to express it positively, since they are denied participation in the political process.
(Moktada al-Sadr, like him or not, has been largely brought under control in Iraq by giving him relatively peaceful political clout- certainly compared to what he had when he was just a gangster.)
Again, the point is you don’t know until you open the door.
I don’t know the context for the Orr quote, but I do know that adults often behave in exactly the same way. Perhaps they are living out unresolved complexes from their youth- but freedom in youth allows for those future-complexes to be lived through at the appropriate age, thus leading to healthier adulthoods anyway.
In terms of tying kids to the future- I am 33. I grew up with rotary phones and 7 channels of fuzzy TV. I am over the moon that I have a cell phone that I can use to call anybody anywhere. My burning desire for improving that technology is minimal. A 7 year old was born with cell phones and is much more attuned to their limitations than I am. He wants them faster with more gizmos, smaller, and able to run his Wii off of too. He will be pushing that technology into the future through his – yes – impulsivity and childish curiosity.
Right now the teenagers are doing it anyway. The thing is, in this world, with technological knowledge doubling every couple of years or more, there are ‘micro-generations’ amongst teenagers. A 12-year-old and a 19-year old are in completely different relationships to the technologies around them. A 5-year-old may never have seen a CD, much less a 33. Tapping the imagination of those micros would be a huge innovative advantage- and innovation is, as always, America’s advantage over other nations. We are not helping ourselves by stuffing these kids into hands-off classrooms.
In this way, I am not really making a distinction between the present and the future, so I’ll allow your notion that children may be more present based than future based (though I would need to think on that more). But creativity, nonetheless happens in the present and the future grows out of that. Older people, by dint of having more of it, are more associated with the past and what they are used to from their own childhood. It is much easier for a youngster to innovate, simply because they have less accumulated experience- that is their advantage.
And again, just because kids would be allowed to vote does not mean that they would dominate the debate. They would be another, presumably future-based, voice in the discussion, pulling in the opposite direction to the AARP. Right now, youngsters are getting jacked by the insurance mandate proposals. Healthy young people are basically being taxed to pay for sick old people (as they have been through SS for decades). But they have no leadership and no power to do anything about it.
One further point- the apathy we see amongst 18 year olds regarding voting tends to dissipate as they accumulate capital over the next decade or so. We can see that voting becomes more important when you have real stakes involved. Why not prepare children for this reality by giving them a stake early on. If you grow up for 18 years thinking you have no say in your life – because you don’t – then that can have an inertial effect on your participation once you do. If the voting age were dropped to, say, 16, we might have more engaged 23 year-olds instead of 25-year olds, and so on.
The idea is also that by allowing children to earn (modest) incomes, they can make choices about what they want, learn about the world, take the burden off their parents somewhat, and begin to save and invest over the long haul.
I wish I had had compound interest working for me when I was 10. Then, when I was 40 – and I had a sense of who I really was – I would have enough wealth to do something about it. I think most people would rather have their retirement years while they are still healthy and can get around. Why not bring in millions of new investors whose wealth will grow even greater over the course of their lives?
And of course, for abused and neglected children, being able to earn one’s own money could provide for real alternatives (through collectives, etc.) that would not involve incompetent, ineffective government intervention.
Anyway, it sounds like your experience of childhood and children (KVS) is less than positive. That is not everybody’s experience. The point of freedom for all is that those who can use it have it. And there are plenty of brilliant, able children around- and many more in the woodworks – who can do great things if given the chance. It is a pity that we waste this talent as a society- and for the many gifted children out there, it remains a source of endless frustration.
And finally, to reiterate, the fact that people and children “are dumb” is not relevant for us. In the old days, truly, we only had people with a vested economic interest in the country vote. This is just like things are in Qatar today- only a handful of billionaires can vote. There’s certainly a logic to that.
But there’s also a logic to just having old people vote, since they’re the most experienced and therefore the wisest. But there’s also a logic that only professors should vote- since they are smarter and not busy making money, they have more time to come up with really nifty ideas for the rest of us. Or maybe we should just have minorities vote since they have been discriminated against for so long that they need to balance things out. Or maybe. . .
The point is all of these groups have a valid stake and valid opinions that must be balanced with one another- primarily through the legislature. That’s how it goes. If we want to go back to having white, male, property owners having the only vote, then fine. But if we don’t, then we should enfranchise as many people as possible who are affected by the laws of the land.
This will be my last post on the topic. I don’t want to dilute the comments section here. This is an important issue that deserves serious – and creative – thought. I hope I’ve contributed somewhat to that here.
— D-Blog · Oct 16, 06:14 PM · #
Wow, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, while I totally disagree with your position on minors voting, I respect that you have posted a counter-argument to your own view, and have invited comment on it. It’s really the reason I read this blog — there is actually civilized discourse to be found on it.
— DRK · Oct 16, 07:09 PM · #
To take this back to PEG’s point in the original post, we don’t let 12 year olds:
(1) Drive cars; (2) drink alcohol; (3) smoke tobacco; (4) enlist in the army; (5) receive the same punishment for crimes as adults; (6) have sex with adults; (7) sign binding contracts in the normal course; (8) engage in gainful employment; (9) choose not to go to school; (10) emancipate themselves from their guardians and live on their own; or (11) marry.
Note that we let adult blacks and women, the groups PEG likes to analogize to children, do all of these things.
To Kristoffer, me, and others, the explanation is that we believe that minors, on average, do not have the judgment to do the things on the list, even if some minors do, and even if the minors honestly and intelligently wish to do those things. The infringement on their liberty is also ameliorated somewhat by the fact that the minors will receive all of those rights at 18 or 21, as the case may be. Kristoffer, I and others are therefore neither alarmed or surprised by the decision not to let 12 year olds vote, a decision, if I understand correctly, that has existed in almost all democracies around the world and throughout history.
PEG, on the other hand, has difficulty reconciling his moral intution that everyone, including minors, should vote with our society’s commonly accepted view that minors, on average, do not yet possess sufficient judgment to decide whether to consent to sleeping with Roman Pulanski or any of the other things on my list.
— J Mann · Oct 16, 08:01 PM · #
Well said.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Oct 16, 08:49 PM · #