As for old people in politics, it's because there's a lot of old people who get to vote.
If it were up to me, your vote would depend on some rough measure of remaining time in the society, plus you'd get to vote for your underage children.
That’s only a small part of it. You can’t get anywhere in US politics without being in one of the two main parties, both of which have become in-effect oligarchies. Age and wealth are big factors in getting ahead in oligarchies.
So voters have little choice but to vote for one of these two oligarchies which are both stacked with rich old people. It’s not that much different from the Roman republic, except that instead of a single senatorial class you get to choose between two competing parties of patricians.
Too many people are voting emotionally based on something someone told them one time about how the world should be.
Not enough people voting based on having to grapple with accomplishing something difficult, wanting to improve the circumstances of their community, and seeing what human nature looks like over time.
But no one asked me.
I'll note many countries did have voting restrictions like that, and it did nothing good.
Or are you suggesting they don't vote based on what they've been told the world should be?
"An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people" - Probably Jefferson?
I wish that the voting population were more knowledgeable about civics, the issues at hand and basic economic theory (i.e. no such thing as free money/services, that someone pays and not just everyone but you). I get a spew of party talking points for any interaction. I don't get a sense they even understand what they are saying. (Hence the reason for the first quote).
A lot of people I see (or am exposed to), don't read the news and base their decisions on clickbait-y articles (without even reading it) or shared/liked articles with dubious authenticity from their family/friends.
I get a sense of massive tribalism and am completely dumbfounded about it all.
To quote Jefferson again: “The government you elect is the government you deserve.”
What a great way to jumpstart a new feudal age. Lawmakers start pandering those two groups, eventually burning the bridge of mobility and turning all the renting working people into de-facto slaves.
I am very relieved that nobody asked you.
But restricting vote to property owners is the kind of thing that'd make me seriously consider fomenting armed insurrection.
Most HN commenters seem to not understand that the majority of Americans are homeowners. The “mobile” city dweller is an exception. And although it might hurt feelings, most Americans probably don’t want to have policy shaped by people who are so mobile they can vote in bad policy and then move to somewhere else with little cost to themselves.
Similar to most commenters on the internet don’t realize the TSA didn’t use to exist. The airlines dealt with security and everything was faster and more pleasant.
Not all progress is good. Sometimes society makes mistakes and we need to figure out how to course correct.
And as I said, if I was a citizen of a country that decided to disenfranchise 35% of the population, then despite being a homeowner it'd be time to organise an armed insurrection; it's totally intolerable and a government that tries something like that needs to be overthrown with force.
Our current politics isn’t even representative of what people want, it is a mind control contest. Whoever can manipulate the population the best wins.
What if I changed my suggestion to only people who pay net taxes get to vote. This would disqualify people living on social security so the comment I was replying to would get their wish.
Voting isn’t a natural right, the way speech or self defense is. Voting is participating in making decisions about how the country will be run and what force can be used to curtail other members of the society.
The whole concept of universal suffrage was probably silly to begin with. There should be a buy-in. If you can’t even pull your life together, why should you be empowered to influence how I live mine?
Also, why is is somehow less radical to want to disenfranchise the elderly?
Then the richest 49% will need to decide if the society they live in is worth that, or if they want to leave or otherwise separate.
> Our current politics isn’t even representative of what people want, it is a mind control contest. Whoever can manipulate the population the best wins.
I agree with that, but the solution is not to strip people of rights out of the assumption you know who knows best - that's the playbook of a substantial proportion of brutally oppressive, authoritarian movements who started with a notion of wanting what was "best" only to find out the people they claimed to want the best for had their own ideas of what that meant.
> The whole concept of universal suffrage was probably silly to begin with. There should be a buy-in. If you can’t even pull your life together, why should you be empowered to influence how I live mine?
The whole concept of universal suffrage is based on the concept that if you're not willing to give me a say, you have no legitimacy for demanding any say over my life whatsoever, and so can expect to face years or decades of resistance - however long it takes until you lose. No government will in the long run survive ongoing disenfranchisement, because a proportion of those you oppress will always be prepared to fight for freedom.
> What if I changed my suggestion to only people who pay net taxes get to vote. This would disqualify people living on social security so the comment I was replying to would get their wish.
Property requirement by proxy. Time for an armed revolution.
> Also, why is is somehow less radical to want to disenfranchise the elderly?
It's only marginally so as long as the proposal you replied to was vague on the extent of it, proposing to weight the value of the vote somehow based on the time they'd have to live with the consequences. That could be taken to outright disenfranchise the oldest, or slightly skewing it. Had they come out with something firmer, and you hadn't proposed something very direct with clear parallels to past real-life disenfranchisement they might have been the focus of the same level of opposition instead of you.
To be very clear, I think any disenfranchisement is unjustified. As it is, the US, and the UK where I live, can hardly be considered democracies given their horrible electoral systems have a similar effect for anyone who disagrees with the main options, but at least they don't go so far as to openly deprive any significant competent population group the vote (though I do consider the disenfranchisement of portions of convicted felons to be blatantly undemocratic and unjustified as well).
No more get out the vote campaigns. No more encouraging people to vote. The new message is ‘voting is your right, use it wisely.’
‘Vote responsibly.’
Everyone would have the right to vote, but would be encouraged only to vote when they feel educated about the issues and/or candidates.
And encouraged to abstain if and when they are unclear about what they are voting for.
‘I voted’ would no longer be a point of pride. Voting would be messaged as something to be done carefully, and anything resembling ballot harvesting would be totally illegal. In the broadest possible terms. People would need to care enough to actually figure when and how to vote.