[Serious] The revolution was successful! The old government is gone. You get to help write the new Constitution. What do you put into it?
You're viewing a single thread.
The entire body of the state, be it executive, legislative, or judiciary should have a youth quota.
Like say at least 60% of members must be 40 or under.
People over 50 are fundamentally incapable of comprehending the modern world and because they won't have to live in the world they are building -- They are more than willing to sacrifice us all to guarantee their own.
Full disenfranchisement of the old would be reckless, but a quota? Yea.
Had shit to do. Had to stop short. Now that I'm back, a few additions:
While I'm in board with the sentiment, I think there would be a lot of implementation problems with this. Just off the top of my head:
As for the wealth tax thing, I don't care if it has implementation issues lol
In general my argument is that copyrights as they exist right now are a stifling force that mostly protects corporations while punishing both small creators and just... Regular individuals. For engaging in like. Human culture. Since I was suggesting lines for a constitution and a constitution is generally meant to be a sort of meta-law, like 'these are the intents of this state that we are forming, so the actual laws will reason on the practical application of it based on the intents', I didn't speak as to how this might be in practice. But to actually get into it --
I recently read the works of Lawrence Lessig, who is a bit of a stick in the mud and too much on the side of corporations for my liking, but when talking copyright the point he makes, which is a good point, is that at their root, copyright laws seek to regulate creativity as a commercial activity, I.e.: So you can't deprive creators of the money they might make from making stuff to sell by just waiting for them to make it and then reselling it. And that in the age of the internet where the line between "commercial creativity" and "just human culture being human culture" has become hopelessly blurred -- And that bad actors seek to keep that line blurry because it invests them with power. Power to use invasive DRM schemes. Power to charge for repeated viewings of something already purchased. Power to control what is even said about their product.
So if I were to make this into actual law, I'd make it so that every creative product would necessarily be copyrighted to a person or persons rather than a company. Because even bigass team projects are not made by a studio, but by the people that made them. Disney didn't make Aladdin 1991 -- It was written by Ron Clements, John Musker and Ted Elliot. So the story should belong to them. The amazing music was written by Tim Rice and Alan Menken, so it should be theirs, while the performances of said music in the movie should belong to the performers, the animation? It'd collectively belong to the people that made the drawings.
It's more overhead than saying "THIS CORPO OWNS IT ALL BECAUSE THEY WERE WORKING WITH THIS CORPO" but it is ultimately needed, because this in itself would already do a lot to cull what, to me, is the biggest abuse within the copyright system. If something belongs to a person, that person will eventually die, and at that point the whole "you are denying this person the fruit of their own creation" argument dies with them. A corporation is an immortal abstract entity and should never be allowed to own -- Anything really.
I would also ensure the text of the law specifically protects creators against people profiteering off their creation without them being duly compensated -- So like, selling copies of someone else's art? Crime. Showing other people the art with no commercial intent? Not a crime, can never be one.
I like the copyright idea described above. I'm not sure how well it would work in practice, because I've never heard of anything like that being implemented, and new solutions almost always have problems. It's interesting though.
Regarding the kids making their own decisions thing- my example was intended to be a little funny, so I may not have picked the best one. Instead of the ice cream example, what about sex with adults? Sex changes? General amputation? Living on their own? Cigarettes? Harder drugs?
These are all things that kids can have opinions about, all things are mostly changes to their own body or bodily freedom, all things that can have terrible long term consequences. Should we prevent parents from controlling their kids, and allow the children to decide whether they want to do any of these?
Sometimes the finding-out part of the fuck-around-and-find-out experience is an irreversible addiction that there's no coming back from. Parents aren't always better, obviously, but they probably avoid more permanent harms for their kids than the kids would in their own.
Eeeeh, I can concede on the general premise of 'sometimes find out is something you don't come back from', although I am also skeptical of parents having childrens' best interests in mind when it comes to things like gender-affirming care because [gestures vaguely at the literally everywhere]
Yeah, fair. My parents were painfully religious and harassed me unmercifully because I wasn't, so I'm not saying it's all sunshine and roses. But leaving kids free to do whatever they want seems like it would have an attrition rate similar to turtles running for the ocean.
Adults can't be allowed to do whatever they want either, so it's not really a good idea to establish a hierarchy based on age. There are few things specific to kids that don't also apply to adults.
Actually the junk food example is a perfect example of this. Adults get diabetes from eating too much of it just as kids do, so everyone needs to cut down on their sugar intake.
And doing that doesn't require authoritarian intervention, just reclaiming of the means of production and restructuring them so food production no longer puts fucking sugar into everything.
This life doesn't have to be hard. Balancing health and freedom don't have to be hard. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
I would bet that the obesity rate among children if they didn't have parents deliberately trying to get them into sports and making them meals at home would be almost 100%. You're saying "this affects everyone" which is technically correct but ignores that it almost certainly affects one group much more.
Yet most kids don't, and most kids aren't obese from it.
You can't simply force people to be healthy either. People, including kids, have the right to be unhealthy, and that's just something you have to accept if you want a free society.
If you don't accept it, that just means you don't want a free society, that's all.
And if you don't, you can advocate for it in the thread. As I said, I want people's honest opinions. But you can't have it both ways.
You're asserting that they have a right to make all of their own decisions, then asserting that I don't believe in a free society unless I agree. Neither of these things is obviously true- it's possible to support children having some decisions made for them without supporting totalitarianism.
See my other reply for examples of kids making their own decisions. Do you support all of those?
Most of those problems go away simply by banning capitalism, having direct democracy, abolishing the prison system and accepting that people have the right to be unhealthy and that includes kids.
Or one could advocate an authoritarian society where junk food is largely banned or made unavailable, rights are arbitrarily denied individuals when they are convicted of a crime, having AIs run everything politically and having the state own all corporations and all profits.
I was intending to make a more general point about the ability of children to make their own decisions. Obviously, I think the idea of punishing people for being unhealthy is ridiculous.
Also, I appreciate the optimism, but I don't think capitalism would go away if you banned it.
The former is a debate worthy of its own separate thread, I think.
A simple ban on capitalism alone wouldn't work, I agree with you on that. I'm of the opinion that the government and workers' unions ought to own the means of production and, when they do, they need to fully automate said means so money isn't necessary anymore, and when that happens, capitalism will go into the dustbin of history where it honestly belongs.
I probably come down more in the side of coops and unions than government, but yeah, that's probably more doable than an attempt at a ban.
Too many too old politians. But how to slim the fat. Quota is a neat idea. How about senility test, based on current known conditions and the avg age they occur. The test needs to occur more frequently on people of older ages due to increase odds.
I feel a quota alone would sometimes screen out perfectly fine older people, while keeping the ones who shouldn't be there .
Also 40...damn. I think 20 and 30 year olds can, but rarely have enough life experience for something like this. 35-65 is probably prime age for politicians IMO.
Also a pretty interesting idea, a sort of per-election test to see if they are both fully sane and up to date on current events.
... Although the senility test might end up as a tool of disenfranchisement anyway. Just remember Literacy Tests in the American Slave States during Jim Crow.
Aren't a lot of professionals who build this world 50-somethings?
Broadly because of gerontocracy and the idea that oldness = competency.
It is also why the world is slowly dying and the people in charge don't give two shits: They'll be dead by the time it gets TRULY shitty so they don't have any incentive to care.
And as far as like, work is concerned, gerontocracy is fine.
Not so for politics. Hence, youth quota.
Ehh. Blaming it on age and not the isolated actions of a single generation is really doing a disservice to all of humanity. Historically older people never hosed younger people as things have been happening now so it can't be an age thing.
Granted, there's historical precedent for having a mandatory retirement age and age minimums for a lot of things, but banning 50-70 year olds is a really hard sell, especially since that's around the age when people are the most influential and productive in their lives.
I didn't say a ban. I said a quota of young people in bodies of government to ensure the ancients can't piss all over the future just to get their own.
And I maintain that the main reason people are at their "most influential and productice" at 50-70 is because of a culture of gerontocracy, and that should not be the case.
And the late bloomers who are unable to start their lives until their 50s, what about them? And that happens a lot; domestic abuse victims who are never able to escape and are turned into slaves for their narcissistic parents or spouses until they die is a pretty good example. It's at best an unnecessary hurdle devoid of context.
Quotas are just a slippery slope to bans, honestly. It's how all people are, not the current generation of tyrants we're trapped under.
I'm not judging you for offering your opinion on the matter at hand or anything. I just thought it was worth a quick debate, is all.
"Quotas are a slippery slope to bans" to me smells the same as "affirmative action is racist".
Pretending that there is a slippery slope where there isn't even a slope to begin with, and if there is, it's sloping the other way.
Enfranchising the disenfranchised is not the same as disenfranchising the enfranchised and never will be.
And no, I don't think the "current generation of tyrants" is in any way special or different. It just so happens that we are living right now, and the current sword of damocles of climate change is so transparent and all encompassing that their sacrificing of the young to maintain their spoiled lives is so damn obvious.
But "old people in power make decision, and it is the young who pay for it" is in fact older than feudalism. Who declares the wars? The white-haired old heads in government. Who actually goes and dies in the wars? The young who are under their thrall. Who makes reckless economic decisions that lead to recessions? The old who already have property to lean back on. Who lives through those recessions and suffers without being able to afford a living? The young who had no choice. Etc. etc. etc.
It is older than feudalism. The tyranny of the ancients is the most -- Er -- Ancient. Form of tyranny in humanity. Simply because having time already gives one an unfair advantage in consolidating power.
Many ancient kings who'd send people to war were themselves young or middle aged.
And we can see on Lemmy that tons of people explicitly want politicians of a certain age to be forcibly retired, be that age 80 or 75 or 65 or whatever. You're swinging young even by our standards. So we can conclude it is a slippery slope because it is kind of what people want, and will incrementally allow people to make what they want socially acceptable enough to pass bans completely. Which is, of course, what a slippery slope is.
Everybody else did the same with smoking bans. We have eyes that can see and ears that can hear. Come on now.
I don't even necessarily disagree with you. I just want you to think about what you're asking for.
Also if you have a 'youth quota', it incentivizes the gerontocracy to actually value the youth and their knowledge (or lack thereof) and work to improve it.