That is a sad and powerful statement.
The first signs of change appeared in the 2012 election, as the young people voted for marijuana legalization (and gay marriage) in two states and the hundreds of millions spent by the wealthy on campaign ads (enabled by the Citizens United ruling) failed to produce material results. Unfortunately, it appears that the older generations' viewpoints are largely stagnant, so this change will probably have to occur one funeral at a time.
0: http://www.amazon.com/Who-Stole-American-Dream-ebook/dp/B007...
No ultrawealthy can prevent the middle class to vote all these guys out. If they keep instead voting them in - it's time to stop blaming the aliens and start realizing who the real guilty party is.
People have probably seen it a dozen times, but a fairly famous Steve Jobs quote:
“When you’re young, you look at television and think, there’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth.”
I think that's largely true with the proliferation of felonies also. It's not a handful of elites who want absurdly long sentences for "computer hackers" and shoplifting; a huge proportion of middle-class "regular" people have absurdly retributive views on throwing people in jail for long sentences.
I think there are other things, especially in the economic sphere, where the concentration of wealth is a likely factor explaining our current situation. But when it comes to "tough on crime", that's middle-class suburban America voting its fears.
The book I mentioned debunks your theory of the ultrawealthy not being responsible for these problems. The statistics are quite clear regarding the increase in lobbying efforts by the wealthy and by large corporations during the 70s.
>>>> And you say voters want more people in jail?
If they didn't, politicians would be afraid to talk about more restrictive laws and more criminal prosecutions. For example, racism is despised by a large percentage of US population - at least open, overt racism - and show me one politician that is playing on the national scene and is openly racist? Does not happen. Did the wealthy do it? Nope, the people did. You want to make the problem of over-jailing become better? Make politicians supporting jailing people for minor offenses as popular as racists. No wealth would help them then.
>>>> marijuana was legalized in 2 states this time around.
Yet in California, where anybody can see that anybody willing can smoke like a 19-century locomotive 24hrs a day, legalization proposals still fail. I do not blame abstract "the wealthy" for it, I blame specific people of California being stupid.
BTW, I never said it is "simple". It is insanely complex and insanely messed up, and I have no slightest idea how to fix it. But I know one thing - blaming abstract "wealthy" for problems caused by regular citizens being stupid is not going to fix anything. Adding more stupid to the stupid doesn't make it better.
>>>> The statistics are quite clear regarding the increase in lobbying efforts by the wealthy and by large corporations during the 70s.
So what? Of course, lobbying is the most profitable investment in the known universe. Of course, there will be more of it. But try to think why it is profitable - who gives the politicians the power that they are selling and lobbyists are buying? The answer is - you do. Take it from them, and they'd have nothing to sell, and corporations would have to go and sell directly to you. Less profitable for them (wholesale is always cheaper, and buying power wholesale is not an exception), but better for you. The only thing you have to do is to get rid of the idea that you should give power to politicians so they solve your problems. If you can't - read your book and see what happens. The choice is yours.
Have you noticed how few people actually vote? When there are only two parties and neither is particularly appealing, people just don't vote.
> I do not blame abstract "the wealthy" for it, I blame specific people of California being stupid.
Then you would be wrong. The wealthy support marijuana being illegal. It results in increased revenue for the alcohol and tobacco industries, increased revenue for the for-profit privatized prison industry, and it results in more money for government contractors that get funneled money via DEA contracts.
The wealthy are in better placed to get their policies in place than the poor, because they can influence politicians even when there aren't elections coming up. The only chance the poor have of influencing politics is when there's an election coming up, and those elections aren't structured such that they're very effective.
> But try to think why it is profitable - who gives the politicians the power that they are selling and lobbyists are buying? The answer is - you do.
No, they do not. You still fail to understand the basic problems with our current electoral system, which limits us to two parties. When there is no competition in the electoral system, politicians can be influenced in other ways.
There's a good argument out there that a lot of the recent social change has nothing to do with Obama, the internet, education, awareness, etc but the fact that so many of the old guard are dying out and that what we Americans call "liberal" or "progressive" is the new norm. It just too many conservatives had too much sway in politics. I mean, look at the desperate Texas and other red state gerrymandering. These guys are certainly scared of something.
If you look at recent progressive victories, they're often of a slight majority. Votes that come in real close like 48-52 or 47% vs 48%, and losses are pretty narrow too.
I guess until a lot of the boomers start dying out, this stuff will continue. Heh, by the time I'm old and gray I won't have to worry about no-knock raids on harmless potheads and computer nerds being roughed up by the DOJ. Oh well, maybe I'll feel better about my country when I'm retired.
PS: And I have done some hacking, stolen some files, financial information a long time ago, but I agree that it is highly illegal and should be punished and I do regret my actions. Thankfully I stopped before it was too late
This is the problem. It should be "illegal" but not "highly illegal" -- the penalties should be along the lines of trespass, e.g. 30 days in jail or a $1000 fine, not 30 years in prison and a million dollar fine.
More than that, the crimes need to be defined with actual specificity. Read the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act sometime if you want to scare yourself. It's preposterously vague. How about we repeal that in its entirety and defer to the laws that prohibit the actual bad stuff, like fraud, identity theft, misappropriation of trade secrets, etc.
If all you do is get root on a server and then leave, the penalty should be a $5 fine and a stern warning, and the same penalty for the "victim" who put an insecure server on the internet.
The point is that they should both get the proverbial slap on the wrist -- the person who breaks in should be chastised but hasn't caused any real harm and the person who allowed it to happen should endeavor to be more careful and not redirect responsibility for something trivially harmful that they could have themselves prevented if they deemed it worthy of the required effort.
I'm actually ambivalent about this, but I'm always intrigued as to whether people's sense of "Protect yourself on the internet or you deserve what you get" translates to "Protect yourself at home, or you deserve to be burgled".
Indeed - one could take it so far as, "Protect yourself with a weapon late at night/in your home, or you deserve to be beaten/mugged/etc..." - but, in general, we recognize the black and white line somewhere between "ssh server" and "put in hospital with contusions" - I think the "snooping around my house with unlocked door" is the gray area.
In that situation having a bunch of mostly harmless curious kids banging around creating antibodies in the system is probably a net positive, so that you find out your security is broken when some kid (who isn't trying to avoid detection and steal your trade secrets) is the one who opens your eyes to the vulnerability instead of the eye opener being a Chinese company selling your secret formula for near-cost on the world market.
There's a persuasive argument that no nonviolent crime should be punished by prison time at all.
His own father believed that he was involved.
Note the same content is now available over the Internet for free legally. So what has changed, and what was lost?
It is something of a solution, but not much. Those older folk have a long time to poison a new generation, and the ideas which they hold are easy to believe and propagate.
It's only through real leadership and setting exampls which run counter to the narrative, that our hope lies now.
While the old grudges are being laid to rest, the effect is more like reduced signal propagation.
This is definitely possible. But my hope is that the internet has started to change these things. Even someone living in a small rural town can now see what other young people are thinking and be exposed to a more diverse set of ideas.
For example, if you go on Reddit, you can see how people have become atheists after reading about how religion is bunk. Someone who is forced by their parents to go to church every Sunday can find solace in the fact that there are others going through the same thing, and that there are others who have successfully escaped from such situations. I think such communities have the ability to accelerate change among the youth.
Well, that's nothing new.
But this may just be a dream
However, the internet has proven to be a very effective way of getting people to go to the polls, and you can target your campaigns much more specifically, so as to include young people and exclude the elderly (who don't use the internet much anyway).
This is an important thing to keep in mind in a country like America, which has relatively low voter turnout. Election engineering can make all the difference in the results, as we saw with the success of Obama's reelection campaign machine.
A vote in our system is a vote for what should be. The concept of a vote is inherently tied to the future; the young have the most to win or lose because the vote is for something in their comparably massive future, while for the elderly it represents little more than an opportunity to influence a world they will (again, comparatively) soon have zero stake in.
Of course that is more of a pipe-dream than owning my own bartending unicorn.
I don't know about you, but I learn more every year, so I imagine by the time I'm 75, I'll know at least three times as much as I know now. I'd give my 75 year old self the vote long before I'd give my 13 year old self the vote.
Nor do I think being in school adequately prepares or informs anyone to be a citizen.
Why is it that preventing the old from voting is "bigotry", whilst preventing the young from voting is merely an act prudence? You must remember that democracy is governance "by the people, for the people", not governance by some arbitrarily selected subset of the people. There is an age below which the majority of people are unable to make informed decisions about political representation (either due to lack of understanding or pressure from third parties like family), but I'm not convinced that 18 is that age.
Mind you, age cutoffs aren't the only way of tackling this problem.
> I don't know about you, but I learn more every year, so I imagine by the time I'm 75, I'll know at least three times as much as I know now.
Unlikely. Net knowledge growth rate usually decreases significantly with age. You'll likely accumulate more knowledge between now and when you're 75, but certainly not three times more[0]. Ask a 75 year-old ;-)
> Nor do I think being in school adequately prepares or informs anyone to be a citizen.
I couldn't agree more. In fact, that was the point of my proposal. I don't think that today's youth take an active enough interest in politics, and I believe that allowing them to participate in the democratic system could increase their motivation to become more informed citizens.
[0]: At least, not by any measurable metric. "Common sense" is completely different.
There are lots of laws that restrict certain rights and privileges to adults only, and for fairly sensible reasons. No one wants to be governed by children. Maybe you want to lower the age of adulthood, and maybe that's possible, but it's something we'd need to do across the board.
There's also the troubling idea that you'd be taking the franchise away from people who already have it, rather than simply not extending it to people who do have it.
Finally, why would allowing people to participate in the democratic system at age 13 make them take an active interest in politics when allowing people to participate in the democratic system at age 18 does not? The root problem is that young people don't really have vested interests yet. They don't have jobs, or property, or children they're sending to school. When the 26th Amendment was passed, they did have the vested interest of not being drafted, I'll give you that, but that went away. Extending the vote to people who have even fewer vested interests won't have the desired effect.
I actually think that lowering the age of majority across the board to around 16 would be a good idea. You'd have to do it sensibly, though. So at age 16, compulsory education is over and you begin two years of national service, but you also immediately get voting and other rights. I can see something like that working.
> Net knowledge growth rate usually decreases significantly with age. You'll likely accumulate more knowledge between now and when you're 75, but certainly not three times more[0].
I was taking that into account, though. I'll probably know two and a half times more by the time I'm 50 ;)
Instead, what would you say about jlgreco's contention that voting power should be given to those who have the greatest stake in the future?
On the other hand, that jump does provide contribute to the conversation by demonstrating the exact reason why wishing for a bartending unicorn would be a better use of my time. That is the exact sort of ludicrous hyperbole you would face if you sincerely brought this sort of proposal to the public. I mean hell, people already bitch about euthanasia when public healthcare comes up.
Any sort of unfamiliar change is absolutely impossible within the confines of the political system we have built ourselves into.
I would also say "all adult citizens" is probably the most just way to go about it. Inventing rationales to disenfranchise people is a dangerous way to enable bigotry.
On top of that, if you really want to give voting power to those who have the greatest stake in the future, then you should probably disenfranchise people without living descendants, or potentially give people more votes the more descendants they have. If you die without ever having children, you have no interest in what comes after your lifetime, but if you do have children, you want to pass on a better world and a better country to them. This is doubly true if you have grandchildren, since now you're interested in an even longer term, even after your children die. So why not give people one vote for themselves, two votes if they have children, three votes if they have grandchildren, and so forth, with one additional vote for each new generation added to their family line? This is also radically bigoted and unjust, but you could just as plausibly argue that it does give voting power to those who have the greatest stake in the future while having nearly the exact opposite effect.
Regardless of whether you want to take away anyone's right to vote (and I don't), I take jlgreco's suggestion as a starting point for a discussion of the fact that, through politics, much older people have an undue influence on the present and future lives of the young.
I also wanted to pry a little into the assumption that people only care about their own well-being and not about anything after their own lifetimes. Actually, people are concerned about the well-being of the children and grandchildren that will survive them. I suspect if you measured it, you'd find that young, childless people are the worst at long-term orientation, partially because they have less reason to be, partially because they haven't had the personal experience of short-term thinking turning around to bite them, and partially because they have less conception of the fullness of time in the first place.
But who knows, right? Either one of us might be wrong, but either one of us can make a pretty convincing-sounding argument to disenfranchise arbitrary groups of people, which in effect means that either one of us will end up trying to disenfranchise whatever demographics vote against us. People used to think there were convincing-sounding reasons to disenfranchise women and blacks, or even people who didn't own land. I'd like to think we've moved past that kind of thing.
I would also argue that concern for one's offspring is not sufficient to know what's best for them, let alone the offspring of others.
Yes, it's bad enough what already happens, but that's hardly an argument for making it worse.
> I would also argue that concern for one's offspring is not sufficient to know what's best for them, let alone the offspring of others
Now you're changing the argument entirely, and not in a very promising direction for you. If it's a question of knowledgeability, you've just undermined your entire scheme to give 13 year olds the vote.
In fairness, that was proposed by jlgreco, and I just wanted to use that suggestion to move toward a more practicable discussion of the de facto disenfranchisement of younger voters by the two-party system, higher turnout among older voters, etc.
A possibility I would like to consider for discussion is a multi-tiered legal system in which every ~25 years the new generation starts from scratch with a new set of laws, limited only by a small set of human rights guidelines. People can then opt into whichever generation's set of laws they want, with the ability to switch tiers every year or two, but you can only vote in the tier for your age group.
It's not a fully formed idea and I"m sure one could poke lots of holes in it, but I still think that it would be interesting to discuss in another context (this thread's already long enough that this comment is only an inch wide on the article page).
It's bad enough that people are statistically disenfranchised by things like gerrymandering and small states. I can't imagine what it would be like if you let the politicians actually disenfranchise people.
The only real issue I see with it is that it could allow conservative religious parents who pump out kids to add a multiplying factor to their own vote. Efforts would need to be taken to ensure parents could not influence the votes of their children (improved voter privacy, and improved education).
Really though, with the amount of 18 year olds currently voting, the 13-18 demographic would only have token representation. The important part of this change would be the age cutoff.
And if it doesn't work to disenfranchise those old stupid bastards, should we maybe put some arsenic in their food, so they leave us alone faster? If they don't deserve to have a vote, maybe there are other things they don't deserve too... Just kick the bucket already and free the road for the fresh 13-year-olds, eh?
>>>> The only real issue I see with it is that it could allow conservative religious parents who pump out kids to add a multiplying factor to their own vote. Efforts would need to be taken to ensure parents could not influence the votes of their children (improved voter privacy, and improved education).
Yeah, so the elderly is not the end. Let's get rid of all that disagree with you. Let's make it so they can't have kids, of at the very least - so that they can't poison kid's brains with their incorrect opinions. The only opinions the kids should be having are the right ones - yours. And with improved education it is of course exactly the opinion they would be having - because any person educated enough agrees with you. Or he isn't educated enough. Brilliant!
What hyperbolic strawman bullshit.
So the 75 year old has 10 years left to care about (actually 3.2 years on average...) while the 13 year old has well more than half a century.
If the 75 year old feels they have information and insight that is critical to the future, they should be spending their time telling younger people about it even without my proposal. With today's system they will only get the opportunity to vote a handful of more times; if they know something that their children and grandchildren need to know they should talk to those children and grandchildren to let them know. Elections are a horrific way to pass down generational knowledge. That is not what they are designed for.
The elderly should be in a position to advise, never to dictate.
The way I see it is that the elderly could still effect politics, but only indirectly. If 7+ decades on this planet have not taught them how to effectively communicate their ideas to younger generations, then I really don't see how they could have any worthwhile insight at all.
If you are old, you can engage in public political discourse and pass on your knowledge, but you have no business leading by example anymore. That time is past.
I am sure your average 13 year old could tell you that.