this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
76 points (100.0% liked)

Politics

10193 readers
57 users here now

In-depth political discussion from around the world; if it's a political happening, you can post it here.


Guidelines for submissions:

These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.


Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

We already have age limits at the lower end. Why are people so against age limits at the upper end?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] joelthelion@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

We already have age limits at the lower end. Why are people so against age limits at the upper end?

Probably because some people age better than others? I'd argue term limits are probably a better solution to this problem. Although, people could also have the courtesy of resigning when they're clearly too old for the job.

[–] Lowbird@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Some people also young better than others, though. There are 18 year olds in the world I've have no problem voting for, if I could.

But yeah, a lot of age limit sentiment seems to be just straight up just ageism to me, as if every person becomes senile as soon as they turn 80, or even just 70 or 60, which just isn't remotely true. Intelligence can remain sharp as ever, and sometimes elderly wisdom is indeed a thing. And every politician is surrounded by aids who will notice if something starts to go wrong.

I'd be sort of okay with a very high age limit, like 90, I guess, but on the whole I agree term limits are better anyway.

[–] lvl13charlatan@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I disagree, even if you're not senile you should be moving out of the way for younger generations. Wisdom doesn't count for much if you're completely out of touch with modern problems (see climate change, LGBTQ+ rights, "series of tubes" guy). Part of the reason millennials have been infantilized and poor for so long is that boomers won't relinquish power in government or business.

[–] megopie@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Frankly, I oppose term limits as well, if people want to keep electing a politician they like, they should be able to, and it’s really anti-democracy to insist they have to pick someone new after an arbitrary amount of time.

The issues with bad politicians are not coming from them being allowed to keep running, it’s that the systems around elections are so broken that bad politicians can keep winning.

[–] MJBrune@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is exactly it. We need to move past first-past-the-post voting and do something like ranked-choice.

[–] megopie@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I’d say we need to go one further than ranked choice to multi member districts with ranked choice voting, that way even those groups who aren’t a majority still get represented but larger groups get a roughly proportional amount of representation.

[–] MJBrune@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting, this is the first time I heard of multi-member districts but it makes a lot of sense. I'd certainly be in support of them.

[–] megopie@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I really like them because they would solve a lot of the issues around minority representation.