this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2025
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Asklemmy
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Votes should be inversely weighted by age. The vote of someone who's going to clock out before the next election even rolls around shouldn't be worth the same as the vote of someone who's going to have to live with the consequences for half a century or more.
But what about the reverse argument?
The elders know much more than the young generation, shouldn't they have a larger say?
Or have the voting age be 18 years old to the average national life expectancy, although i really haven't thought this through too much. I assume if such a situation were to exist, it would be much easier to cut Social Security and Medicare without losing the elderly vote, so that probably would backfire.
Voting age should be raised to at least 24, so that the frontal lobe is fully developed.
Not really my belief, but you're opinion marginalized me, so I'm counter-proposing.
Then cap the voting age at 50 when cognitive decline of the frontal lobe really kicks in, if we are talking about fully developed brain function.
Neural plasticity has even declined once you are past your 20s. One of the reasons people find it much much harder to learn a new language past then, for example.
reasoning, memory, and speed of reasoning reaches a decline threshold when you are around 40.
My unpopular opinion is I guess that humans were never evolved to live as long as we do (and certainly not meant to labor as long) so everything in our brain gets very wonky. Empathy is also one of the things stunted with age. There is a reason the "grump old man" trope exists.
EDIT: Maybe I wasn't clear enough. Pretty much everything regarding age is arbitrary because you are "developing" until your mid 20s and then you start declining, brain-wise. It is all arbitrary. And then the above poster doesn't even check that I am a different person than the original comment and sends me a hate message somehow thinking that I am wishing death on him (why would anyone wish for a stranger to die?) for simply pointing out that our brains get weirder with age especially because we are forced to work for much longer and often have less empathy.
Perhaps there's an IQ cutoff you'd favor as well? Perhaps a psychological exam? Surely the mentality handicapped shouldn't vote, right?
You speak to me of empathy?
Read and think critically. It is all arbitrary. If we cut off people at 18 or 24, why shouldn't we cut them off at 50? There is scientific evidence both ways.
Not to mention that IQ is pretty much a farce and completely biased by certain types of education and only measures a small subset of human brain function, The cutoff would also be completely arbitrary.
Not everything is a personal indictment on you or your beliefs.
Ooooh dark. I like.
Vote 1! @Sordid