We can vote for old farts. We just can't be elected.
Double think starts: But that isn't discrimination. Because it is legal. Instead it is called 'age of candidacy'.
I'll quote from the wikipedia:
"In the United States, a person must be aged 35 or over to be President or Vice President. To be a Senator, a person must be aged 30 or over. To be a Representative, a person must be aged 25 or older. This is specified in the U.S. Constitution. Most states in the U.S. also have age requirements for the offices of Governor, State Senator, and State Representative"
Also, let's be clear. Generally a Senator or Congressman has a long history of local public office before being a Senator or Congressman.
Young people are locked out of those offices until AT LEAST 30. That means, they start running for some small office in their mid 30s, to end in higher office at a much older age.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_candidacy_laws_in_the_U...
If you are one of the people drafting the Constitution, that you want to work forever, why risk it?
I searched for "teenage kings" and found https://www.history.com/news/6-child-monarchs-who-changed-hi... . Ptolemy XIII, from age "11 or 12": seems to have screwed things up. Fulin / "Shunzhi Emperor", taking power at 12, seems to have done a decent job. Elagabalus, becoming Roman emperor in A.D. 218 at 15, screwed up horribly. Pharaoh Tutankhamen, starting at "9 or 10", seems to have done well. Mary, Queen of Scots... I don't see much about decisions she made during her reign; she seems to have been trampled by more powerful enemies without it being obviously her fault. Baldwin IV of Jerusalem, from age 15: seems he did well. Incidentally, all of the above died in their 20s or younger (except Mary, who was locked up for life in her 20s).
So that's two screw-ups, three did-well, and one don't-know. The article says "who changed history", which means something significant happened, which might give us a biased selection—in many professions, the easiest way to do something very significant is to mess up something critical. I wonder if someone has made a more extensive and non-selected list.
Regarding this particular set, I also might say we should compare Elagabalus with other Roman emperors in the 200s A.D.—I'd guess there are other stinkers on that list... Looking at the others in the Severan dynasty... Elagabalus was succeeded by Severus Alexander (age 14!), who apparently did whatever his mother recommended, and seems to have done ok-ish (though the army grew to hate him and eventually overthrew him). Before Elagabalus was Caracalla, who co-ruled with his father Septimus (who did very well) starting at age 10 (!) and became emperor at 23 (technically co-emperor with his brother, but he had his brother killed that year), and was awful.
Hmm, interesting. Unfortunately the Severans after Septimus were all young, which makes it hard to tell between "the Severans being too young made them suck" or "the Severans after Septimus sucked". Let's look at another Roman dynasty... the ones after the Severan seem too short and interrupted by weirdness to judge... Let's try Flavian. Vespasian began the line, was a military officer before he was emperor, and did well; Titus, his son (age 40, also already a military commander), did well (until he died of a fever); Domitian, Titus's brother (age 30), seems to have been effective though possibly tyrannical.
It seems a main lesson from the first bunch of Roman emperors was, if the emperor chooses a successor for reasons other than "family", things tend to go well; if there is automatic inheritance, it tends to go badly. But it also seems to go along somewhat with age: Caligula became emperor at 25, Nero at 17.
It's possible that there's unexpected wisdom in the age-35 rule. Still... If someone had been tutored from a young age by great teachers (Alexander the Great was apparently tutored until 16 by Aristotle), then managed to gain a few years' experience running a large chunk of a mid-size company (perhaps by a parent bringing them along to meetings, having staff explain things, then having the kid do research and come up with his own proposals that he delivers in meetings, and ultimately grow into some CxO role) and, by all accounts, running it extremely well; and finally managed to rise to national prominence by, I don't know, identifying a national crisis and getting several companies to work together to fix it, and everyone who's interacted with him says he's great; and if he did this all by the age of 19, would you think he's a worse candidate than the last several presidents of the U.S.?
That's like saying that if a woman could pass the same physical tests as a man they should be able to do the same things as a man!
People who don't believe in discrimination are weird, they have all these concepts of equality.
I've meet people in their late 90s who have more wits than people in their 70s.
I've meet teenagers who were way wiser than adults.
I'm not sure why people are so afraid of letting things run on merit. Can things go wrong that way? Yes. But it's not like the other way is perfect either. And let's be clear, what you are advocating for is discrimination. I've found most people who advocate for that don't do so with intellectual honesty, they like to call it a 'requirement'.
In your opinion, at what age should we let people vote? Smoke? Drive? Sign contracts? Drink? Have consentual sex? Get married? Require them to be off their parents' health insurance? Permit catch-up retirement contributions? Allow tax-free withdrawals from IRAs? Allow claiming Social security? Etc.
Given what we have now, 18. Stupid 18 year olds you say? No problem they won't get elected. What if someone does? Well, then that person is clearly an extremely exceptional 18 year old and might be smarter than both you and I. Basically, meritocratic participation. I'm not sure how someone can argue against it.
Now, if you want to put in a requirement to have some level of public service experience before being president, that is not discriminatory, though it opens up a whole other can of worms - Personally I'm against this, but at least such a requirement would actually make sense in a meritocratic way, instead of just being silly ageist discrimination, which hopefully one day will be seen for being similar to other vile views like racism, sexism and classism.
The rest of your questions aren't really relevant to this point.
I disagree. We, as a society, discriminate on age in myriad structural ways because we believe that it is beneficial for both individuals and society as a whole.
Maybe there are exceptional 6-year-olds who should be able to smoke, drive automobiles, and collect Social Security. But I see no reason for our culture to permit them to do so, even if they landed a majority of the Electoral College.
We are talking about adults being treated like adults when it's in societies interest (pay taxes, go to war, go to jail), but not being treated like adults when it isn't (get elected) - This is an issue.
The issues you bring up don't cover this issue. These questions are a whatabboutism, bordering on trolling given the extremity.
Specifically, you are responding to the following comment, so any comment that is a sub of this comment is expected to be on topic, which you will see your smoking 6 years olds are most definitively not part of:
"Yeap, and legally enforced age discrimination means we can't actually take many offices. We can vote for old farts. We just can't be elected.
Double think starts: But that isn't discrimination. Because it is legal. Instead it is called 'age of candidacy'."
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Whatabboutims works like this: Person 1 says "adults are being discriminated upon so they can't be part of the political process"
Person 2 doesn't agree, but has no argument. So person 2 states "But what about children smoking? what about pensions? what about..."
Person 2 isn't (an many times can't) answer the point, so they try to highlight that some similar issue is happening in some other place in a way to undermine Person 1's position. But in the end... Person 2 isn't addressing the issue being brought up.
I thought those were no longer valid to be applied to huge swaths of people as it is discriminatory. I mean, not everyone who is part of a race or gender will have that correlation applicable to themselves.
Yes, some teenagers are dumb. Most. I was. But I've meet teenagers that are way smarter than I'll ever be.
I'm afraid many people view discrimination from a situational ethics point of view; it's only discrimination if it is the type of discrimination they don't like. Otherwise, it isn't discrimination.