So there’s a push to give younger people more of a vote, “because they’ll have to live with the consequences for longer“. What a charming thought. Lets undermine one of the foundational principles of democracy, 1 person = 1 vote, and give extra voting rights to the people with the least life experience! What could possibly go wrong?

This of course seems like a great idea to greenies / progressives / socialists, because most of their support is among younger voters. They would like to believe that this is because the ‘old people’ are stuck in the past and can’t adapt to the future…

Progressives have expected the conservative ‘small government’ vote to die out… literally… as the older generation has passed away. They’ve been expecting this to happen since the 60s, and frustratingly for them, it never quite seems to work out that way. How can that be? How is it that after 50 years of the cultural revolution they still have to contend with this ‘old conservative vote’ problem? The ‘oldies’ from the 60s are all dead, so where did these conservatives come from?

Simple, old people don’t vote small government because they’re stuck in the past, or because they always voted that way, they vote small government because they’ve seen enough of the world to know that big government is bad news, and many of them have changed from voting progressive to voting conservative. And this makes sense! The older you are, the more qualified you are to make decisions about… anything, because you’re able to draw from more life experience, more perspective, and are typically more able to forecast the long term impact of a decision.

Of course, all that foresight makes you harder to manipulate, all the life experience makes you harder to intimidate, and all the perspective makes you far more likely to call out the idiots when and where you see them… and progressives find that irritating to say the least.

So the latest tactic? Instead of waiting for the ‘oldies’ to die out, which they never do, because as people get older they typically change from being progressives to conservatives, now they’re going to be stripped of their voting rights… or pretty close to it.

The revealing thing is that the article linked above is actually written by a ‘Lecturer in Justice Studies’. Boy, there’s a shoe that fits! A career academic who doesn’t like the fact that democracy isn’t giving him the politics he wants is looking for ways to game the system to his liking even if it undermines the very principles of democracy? Say it ain’t so… I’m shocked I tell ya!

In the interests of putting the shoe on the other foot, here’s a few alternative (and also very unjust, even if I do admit to finding them a *little* appealing) ways to allocate votes:

1. One vote for every dollar of net tax paid. (tax minus direct government payments) Oh the howls we would hear if voting were restricted to the people who pay for everything the moochers get for free… And just imagine how conservative / small government / low welfare the vote would suddenly be if the freeloaders were excluded!?! And as a fringe benefit, it’s an incentive for people not to cheat on taxes or take welfare they don’t need…
2. One vote for every person you employ. Oh the heads that would explode at the ‘injustice’ of only giving a vote to people who give jobs to others!
3. One vote for every year of life experience you have. This makes far more sense than giving younger people a bigger vote! Let the most experienced people make the hardest decisions, and let the youngsters watch and learn.
4. One vote for every child you’re raising. Parents almost universally want a good future for their kids, and usually do a good job of taking a long term view of the consequences of their actions. Why do they fight to make kids each vegetables? Because it’s good for them in the long run. Why the battles over school grades and employment prospects? Because in 5-10 years it’s going to be really important… I think parents are eminently qualified to vote for their children’s future.

And if any of the above sound unjust to you, then you now understand how unjust it is, not to mention how dangerous it is, to abandon the principle of 1 person = 1 vote.

Follow Topher:
Website: topherfield.net
Facebook: Facebook.com/topherfield
Instagram: @topherfield
Twitter: @topherfield
Youtube: Youtube.com/topherfield
Subscribestar: Subscribestar.com/topherfield