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Comment by geff82 | Hacker News Reader

The problem we currently have in politics it demography. People get older and older, the baby boomers forgot to "produce" children. Elder people tend to be deeply conservative and anti-technology. And as they are the majority now, they vote for stuff that they think is right ("let's 100% control that freaking thing called internet") and totally strangle the younger generation with their bad taste and shortsightedness.

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I think a better way to come at this is to assume that on average, most people have given this decision a reasonable amount of thought, young people as well as old people. The debates have been going on for months, and pros and cons have been discussed at great length.

Further, I don't think it's fair to underestimate the experience and historic perspective old people have, that young people don't. After all, many of the older people who voted yesterday where around before the EU came about, and are able to factor in that extra information, plus their historic perspective in their decision, which, by definition, makes for a more informed decision.

You are right that older people tend to be more conservative, but you yourself may end up being more conservative when you are 90, vs. how conservative you are today, and you may only realize the reasons for it once it happens, and perhaps you will think those are actually quite good reasons, who knows.

The bottom line is that if you just attribute the older population's decision to "bad taste" and "shortsightedness", you may not realize the true reason behind their decision, which diminishes your ability to understand and influence others.

> After all, many of the older people who voted yesterday where around before the EU came about, and are able to factor in that extra information, plus their historic perspective in their decision, which, by definition, makes for a more informed decision.

Not necessarily. You'll still end up with people making decisions based on looking at the past with rose-coloured glasses, which isn't necessarily a fact-based decision. I think it's also equally likely that people will draw conclusions from economic conditions that had zilch to do with whether the EU existed or not. Thinking that experience necessarily leads to a informed decision ignores the way that humans works.

Blaming people (older people, immigrants, whatever) for our problems isn't productive. Let's figure out what's broken about the systems we're living in instead of alienating the people we should be working with to fix them.

In both the US general election and this referendum, the primary forces at play are emotive campaigning backed by false or at the very least misleading information (in our case: portrayal of immigrants, the '£350m a week' figure that has already had some very serious backpeddling, etc. etc.). We have an electorate that is woefully misinformed for a whole host of reasons. How you address this is beyond me.

Honestly I think our best bet is to focus on education and childcare, then try to hold on for a generation. Many parents don't have time to raise their children as well as they'd like. Teachers are underpaid, under-respected and have in many cases had their agency taken away by standardized tests. It's no wonder so many people find it difficult to stay informed when they're starting from so far behind.

Agreed, for the Brexit vote, anyone with a degree was much more likely to vote remain (and there was a strong correlation between more education and likelihood to vote remain). This current government has made higher education much less attainable, and much less attractive for many people by raising the fees that students must pay (or loan) up front.

This was also the reason for the voctory of current anti-european and proto-nationalist government in Poland last year.

Misinformation, fear campaign, memes, troll farms. It seems in social media age that's how you do politics. Viral marketing means you never have to say you were wrong.

I agree the new government in Poland is an embarrassment.

But you are mistaken in blaming the electorate. The "misinformation, fear campaign, memes..." have always been around. The primary reason people voted out the previous bunch is corruption and tunneling of the wealth created to a narrow group of people (a problem not limited to Poland only)

Simply describing the arguments you disagree with as false and people who listen as idiots is why Remain has lost the referendum.

Are you going to learn from that and change your ways?

There was lots of flatly false and misleading crap coming from the Remain camp as well. Just look at how Cameron see-sawed on the consequences of an exit. Before his negotiation it was "things will be OK even if we leave, the economy is fundamentally strong". Then it was chaos, doom, "economic self harm", permanently worse off etc. Now the vote went against him it's back to "everything will be fine".

When the leader of the campaign can't even stay consistent on such a basic thing, that campaign cannot claim a monopoly on truth.

I'm not saying Remain didn't peddle crap (or even implied that only Leave was doing so). The two issues I've highlighted are demonstrably false. The whole campaign descended into the worst kind of politics on both sides.

I find it at a little odd to read this characterisation on HN of all places. I mean, it's pretty much run by "old" technologists, right?

You are absolutely right, while I am, too. Of course there are progressive, far thinking elderly people and I enjoy being around them. I recently talked to a 71 year old who is into fractal programming and wants to get into Linux, soon (all while being politically liberal). But the elections and polls show always the same picture: the older people get, the more conservative/right wing they vote, which is often not what the younger need. I don't think it helps the younger UK generation, that has been used to think globally/European, that they now are politically separated from EVERY neighbor they have.

Well, it'd help if the younger generation actually bothered for things instead of complaining about them on social media. Less online petitions, more going down to the ballot box. If they were represented in the vote, more politicians would listen to them.

But they currently don't because the older generations actually show up on voting day.

This is disingenuous. Blaming millennials for not showing up at the poll is a strawman argument, as the vast majority of younger folk did show up (80% turnout ages 18-24)[1]. Sure, it's less than the 95+% of people 60 and older, but there's a hell of a lot more baby boomers than there are millennials. The problem isn't as simple as "young people don't vote".

[1] http://graphics.wsj.com/brexit-whos-voting-what/?mod=e2fb

Then I guess its another downside of an aging population and the obsession with money/status/career success over having a family. Gives you more old folk than young ones.

> Blaming millennials for not showing up at the poll is a strawman argument, as the vast majority of younger folk did show up (80% turnout ages 18-24)[1] > [1] http://graphics.wsj.com/brexit-whos-voting-what/?mod=e2fb

I guess nobody followed up on your citation, because the link you supplied clearly states:

> Sources: YouGov online poll of 1694 likely voters conducted June 15–17; (demographics); YouGov online poll of 2001 likely voters conducted June 9–10 (economy and immigration); margin of error for both: +/- 3 percentage points

Absolutely nothing about the actual vote, just polling predictions.

the older generations can show up on voting day because they don't have to work

If you can't get paid time off to vote, no questions asked - you have an entirely different and more serious problem. That, and isn't youth unemployment a very real problem in the UK too?

> If you can't get paid time off to vote, no questions asked - you have an entirely different and more serious problem

Welcome to the United States?

    Truth never triumphs — its opponents just die out.
     - Max Planck

Unfortunately, political progress tends to be the same. For some issues, the only way to move forward is to simply wait for enough old people to die off.

The demographic problem. Highly recommend reading "The Accidental Superpower" as it explains how this, as well as a few other geopolitical considerations, will shape the next few decades. (Hint: it's not pretty.)

No, the problem is that the younger generation is that they don't vote. They whine on Twitter . The only way to take control of the system from within.

Today was a very harsh lesson for young Brits. They'll have to live with the outcome of this decision for three rest of their lives.

The one positive is that those young people might now be encouraged to actually participate.

And that's how Remain lost.

> The problem we currently have in politics it demography.

I misread that as "demagoguery", and was going to vigorously agree.

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