Hey Klaus

[jon-nyc]

How long until your oldest can vote?

[Klaus]

Given his current immaturity, I think he needs another 20 years before I can let him vote.

[jon-nyc]

Right, but isn’t the new government changing the rules to allow 16 year olds to vote?

[Klaus]

There is talk about that, but it's not yet clear wether that's actually going to happen.

Needless to say, I think that's a bad idea. Not necessarily because of the age, but because of the asymmetry between rights and responsibility. In my opinion, only people who have full responsibility for their actions should be allowed to vote. If they want 16 year olds to be able to vote - fine, but then let them also be judged like adults if they commit a crime, say.

A proposal I would prefer is to give more voting power to parents, i.e., they can vote for their children until they become adults. That would also counteract the tendency of our system to degenerate into a "tyranny of the old", e.g., by ever-increasing costs for pensions for the younger generations.

[Mik]

Might up the domestic birth rate a bit too.