Over three-fourths of Americans think there should be a maximum age limit for elected officials, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey.

  • TheLurker@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You mean like how most places don’t let you vote before you turn 18 because it is accepted that children have not developed the cognitive ability to make sound decisions in regards to electing officials?

    That kind of implication?

    Yeah old people don’t have to see the failures of their poor decision making skills. They lack the understanding that their ideas and ideals are based in a world that no longer exists.

    I think once you get over 80 it is time to step aside and let the world move forward.

    • Kalcifer@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      You mean like how most places don’t let you vote before you turn 18 because it is accepted that children have not developed the cognitive ability to make sound decisions in regards to electing officials?

      This is a strawman argument. OP was talking about an age limit for elected officials, whereas you are now talking about age restrictions on the voters. Yes, we are both talking about cognitive decline in decision making; however there is a substantial difference between putting an age limit on those who can be in power vs. putting an age limit on those who can decide who is in power.

    • aidan@lemmy.worldM
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      1 year ago

      There are plenty of perfectly capable and intelligent people until the day they die. People are individuals not the average of their demography.

      • TheLurker@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        And there are plenty of capable, smart and thoughtful children as well.

        That’s not how laws work. Laws are made for the 1% that fuck it up for the rest of us. Or they are made based on the average.

        You can’t have laws that are based on individuals, they have to be broad by definition or else they are unenforceable or they are oppressive towards certain groups.

        Also the average of a demographic is exactly that. The average. To suggest that no-one is the average is either nieve or disingenuous.

        Demographics, like most things are a bell curve and most of us are no more than one standard deviation from the mean.

        • aidan@lemmy.worldM
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          1 year ago

          I agree, I oppose a minimum age on holding office as well.

          You can’t have laws that are based on individuals, they have to be broad by definition or else they are unenforceable or they are oppressive towards certain groups.

          Yes you can and do, thats why courts exist

          Demographics, like most things are a bell curve and most of us are no more than one standard deviation from the mean.

          Any bell curve across hundreds of millions of people has hundreds of thousands to millions of outliers.

          Also the average of a demographic is exactly that. The average. To suggest that no-one is the average is either nieve or disingenuous.

          Basically no one is average across a sufficiently large number of discriminators.

      • talkstothecat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        For me, the main issue isn’t the increased risk of cognitive decline, it’s the fact that I share very few life experiences with people born before the invention of color tv, and someone who has another 5-15 years left will be less impacted by policy decisions than someone who’s going to be around for another 50-60 years. Octogenarians are not representative of the majority of the population and, in a representative democracy, I think that is important consideration.