

Should children have the right to vote?  - spottiness
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=389

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nostrademons
This was a hot-button issue all through my childhood, then somehow I lost
interest once I actually gained the right to vote. ;-) I think that's the main
reason why there's less pressure to fix this. Unlike with other oppressed
groups, children eventually grow out of it, with no effort required on their
own part. There isn't time for hopelessness and resentment to bubble over into
an actual movement for change, because the people mostly likely to lead such a
movement (teenagers aged 14-18) will be able to vote in 4 years anyway.

But it's worth remembering that this is _not_ fair, it's _not_ just, and it's
ultimately bad for American democracy. Do you think our public school system
would be in such a shitty state if children could vote? How about the national
debt, which is a transfer of wealth from current generations to future
generations? Maybe we would've fixed social security had the generation most
likely to get screwed by it actually had voting power?

Seniors often have mental capacities that are not much better than children
(Florida 2000, anyone?), yet the AARP is a massive political force, and
seniors turn out to vote in disproportionate numbers. It's pretty lopsided
that children do not and cannot have such representation.

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lhorie
One should be careful when making arguments like "do you think x current
problem would happen if y happened?". There are a lot more in play than just
voting rights when it comes to country-scale issues like national debt.

Like I wrote in one the last comments in the blog, you should instead
consider: given that all systems have good and bad points (and loopholes,
etc), which would you prefer, the current one or the system where children can
vote? At the end of the day, it's a highly subjective choice, and given that
this is a binary choice, the worst case scenario is that we get the second
best option.

